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The Future of Digital Video?
An Anonymous Coward, in name only asks: "I've been asked to write about the Future of DVD technology for a newsletter and I've been doing some thinking and research regarding this. It seems pretty clear that DVD is a dead-end technology, due to be replaced by Video On Demand. Already Disney is launching a VOD service, albeit through traditional broadcasting. It's to be a brief piece, and I plan to touch on how VOD will affect viewers as well as professionals. What is a realistic timeframe for beefing up broadband (such as Powerline Broadband?) and smartening compression (On2's VP5 , MPEG7?) to create a workable VOD system that will replace DVDs? Is delivery more likely to be based on an open or proprietary standard? What do you see as the future of Digital Video? Any input is greatly appreciated." While I don't think that Video on Demand will spell the end of DVDs, it would be interesting to know how far the technology has progressed, and how much further it would need to be developed before you could can pick-and-choose your movie-of-the-night from your own living room.
Working in the video industry for 7 years-- from my experience things will never go the way of VOD. The Video industry believes they have found a sweet spot with DVD's at sell through price.
There are those in the industry that have been dipping in the VOD technology pot for some time with no success (blockbuster). And there are also those that want the industry to adopt the VHS rental model with DVDs released exclusively to rental (at a much higher cost to the rental store) and eventually releasing the disc for sale at a devalued price. This is unlikely because the cost to produce DVDs is next to nothing and the studios want to capitalize on high volume sales, which is exactly what has happened. It has been the revenue sharing companies pushing that model--cheap DVD's hurt their business.
Also there has been talk in the past of a business model where Theater, Video, and VOD are all released at once, and there is always talk of shrinking windows between sell-through and theater releases.
DVD's will continue to evolve, in the next couple years you'll have High Definition DVDs-- which are the next big thing (HD-VHS already exists for those with the cash, but its still very pricey).
The fact is studios are paranoid about piracy, they've seen what's happened to the music industry and will continue to try to pump out encrypted product at as high a bit-rate as possible- in turn, making it more difficult to pirate high quality movies.
Video on demand is just not going to happen like some people think, it will really just become the next incarnation of Pay Per View and really only eat into that customer base. The technology exists, and there have been tests of services from different companies all over the U.S. but it still isn't a business anyone is interested in.
It all comes down to corporate interest, Sony wants to sell high priced HD-DVD players, so then they can also sell the HD-DVDs to go with it. How will Sony, for example, make money from a VOD service when they are able to make more selling DVD players. You also have Panasonic/Matsushita, JVC-- and all the other major electronics companies foaming at the mouth for the missed financial opportunities on DVD player sales (due to some cheap players coming out of the south pacific). In the end it all comes down to how to make the most amount of money.
See the description from the MPEG group's page for more information.
To quote:
It was assigned the number 7 under the assumption that MPEG-5 and MPEG-6 would be used for future video compression technologies.
For additional information about MPEG-7, see the MPEG-7 home page