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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.
Pay per view only makes up a very small portion of the entire media universe. There is no reason to believe that VOD will make significant headway against DVD. DVD, VHS, and CDs have the fundamental benefit of being able to be watched/listened to any time that it is convenient. VOD requires too many infrastructure improvements to be a viable media delivery system for years to come.
I have been pwned because my
It seems pretty clear? I hardly think so (at least not with the traditional definitions of video on demand). People want content they can keep around as long as they want, whether it be a VideoTape/DVD they purchase, or a TiVo recording they keep on their unit for months. Even Netflicks lets you keep the DVD for as long as you want before sending it on to the next person.
:) ..Jeff Keegan
The era of video rental stores demanding a return within 48 hours will eventually end. If given a choice, I don't think anyone will choose another system where they have to hurry-up-and-watch something, even if it's video that they ordered whenever they ordered it.
Look at Apple's recent music offering. People can purchase music and keep it as long as they want. Whether you like the idea or not (and whether you plan on buying music that way or not), it's a sign that we won't be limited in our purchasing options to such restrictive pay-per-view watch-it-now methods.
DVD's will be around a while, and when they're gone the replacement will be something more akin to a permanent download into a huge video jukebox appliance than some watch-it-once-and-never-see-it-again model.
Then again, that's just my opinion.
..Jeff Keegan
seven syllables explain TiVo: kee gan dot org slash ti vo
It occurs to me that while VoD has its advantages, most people will still want to own a tangible copy of the product in _some_ form (vinyl, cassette, CDROM, DVD etc).
VOD won't kill DVD since what if you want to watch something more than once. Each viewing adds to the cost while DVDs that cost more are a one time cost. If you want to watch something more than once DVD becomes more cost effective (plus you get all of the extras).
Some people just want to own their favorite movies. Now, VOD may put a dent into the movie rental business though.
The VOD is in a way very similar to the previous DVD standard called DIVX where you'd "buy" a movie but after you started watching it you had to finish watching it within 24 hours and after that it was locked up. The DIVX players had to be connected to the phone line for that very reason.
And DIVX disappeared. Although I believe that he is right in saying that VOD will be very important in the years to come I believe DVD (or some HDTV successor) will continue to thrive too.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
Seriously, VoD is nice as an alternative to the video rental store but look how DVD sales have sky-rocketed in a few years in comparison to VHS sales over 2 decades of trying. People want to have high-quality libraries of movies that they can hold on to and claim as their own. And they definitely don't want to have to pay for them more than once.
Video always lags behind audio by several years because it has a much higher bandwidth requirements.
You could edit digital audio on a home computer years before the computers were powerful enough to let you edit video. You can stream quality audio to your home over the internet today, but the pipes are still a bit too small for quality video. That will change eventually.
My suggestion is to look at all the cool things you can do with audio today and extrapolate to video. That should give you a good idea as to where things are going.
You got it backwards.
VOD will die once it is discovered that you can capture video streams.
I have been pwned because my
"Dead end" is a bit harsh. Nearly all technologies are transitional given a long enough perspective. I suspect DVD's will have pretty good staying power. Not as long as fire or the wheel, but longer than the 5.25" floppy I would guess.
And there will always be a demand for a fully private media, the consumption of which can't be logged by an online service. Whatever finally replaces the DVD, it won't be VOD.
I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. BB
Depending on the intelligence and power of the set-top box. Historically, controls such as pause, fast-forward etc. involved the set-top box having to communicate with the server. People get annoyed very quickly when they hit pause and the video stops three seconds later. Latency is a serious pain. Clever programming can alleviate a lot of the problems, but it's just another thing that makes VoD inferior to DVDs. This killed most/all the pilots I saw several years ago.
If I decide half way through a DVD that I'm too tired, or something comes up, I can power off the player and come back the following night and carry on as though nothing had happened. I don't believe VoD offers this kind of flexibility. If the content providers could truly supply a huge library of video, fix the latency issues, charge a decent (low) price, provide the needed flexibility etc. etc., then maybe VoD has potential. I'm not aware of any provider committing to this yet.
Tim
Lotsa life left in DVDs, particularly when 27gb blu-ray hi-def DVDs hit the market in the next 12-24 months.
VOD is pay per view. Convenient, but...it means paying each time you watch the movie. Purchasing a DVD means it's on your shelf so you can watch it (and all the extras) as much as you want; very convenient if you have kids who want to watch a favorite film twelve times.
Folks like to collect, they like the extras, and they like the convenience of having it on their own shelves. VOD, like pay-per-view, lets someone else keep tabs on your buying/renting habits.
From a consumer point of view, VOD is good for things you know you'll only want to watch once, but DVDs are for things you want to collect. The market will support both.
You're asking slashdot? For the future of video, you should be asking the porn industry. Whatever the future is, they're probably the first ones who are going to be implementing it.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Look at why DVD's are popular:
- No degradation through normal viewing.
You can watch your DVD as many times as you want and it will look the same every time. They are however less damage resistant in that 1 deep scratch in the right spot will turn the disc into a beer coaster.
- Near-instant access
You can fast forward or rewind to almost any point in the feature with the flick of a finger. With on-demand tech, this may never be an option. One of the biggest complaints with VHS were that you had to rewind them, and this took a long time. As did fast forwarding(or slow, I should say). Finding a particular scene took quite a while with VHS. Try doing this over a latency ridden network! It wont work. I don't think my cable company is going to install multiple, seperate gigabit networks for each neighborhood or street. If they did, I'm afraid of what I'd have to pay for it. Bandwidth costs. The cost structure to support it would be unfavorable to most consumers.
A high percentage of the cost of a DVD is the content, bonus content, profit, and packaging. The DVD disc itself is a small percentage of the cost of a DVD. If an on-demand service let you buy rights to view an on-demand movie whenever you want, however often you wanted, there would be continual costs incurred as well as initial investment. Even if I only pay $5 to buy a movie the first time, I won't pay another dime to watch it again. The recurring costs for the cable company to let you watch a movie again and again for free is unprofitable.
I'm not saying Video-on-Demand is built to fail. It can work in the same capacity that Pay-per-view does. The infrastructure required to suport VoD will not be put into place until either it comes over the preexisting copper or wide adoptance will make it profitable.
In short, VoD must provide the same features as a DVD at a lower cost before most consumers will consider it over actually purchasing a DVD. There are also those who, given both options, would choose the DVD every time.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
I agree with the parent post. I think DVD is all about "owning" a movie while VOD is all about renting. Some people will always want to "own" their favorite movie.
Still, VOD is going to share the space for sure, but definitely not replace. It's probably the end of Blockbuster more than the end of DVD.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Video on demand won't replace DVDs for the same reason that proprietary (and possibly all) e-books won't replace regular books.
In a similar way in which a regular book gives me the security of knowing that I don't have to worry if the company that published it goes belly up, if I buy the DVD, I own it (for my own use, of course). I can watch it when I want. I can watch it on an airplane, I can take it with me on business trips overseas. It's going to be a long, long time before everyone in coach can watch "on demand" flicks on an airplane.
When you have a DVD, you're not dependent on the whim of a company. Consider shows like The Family Guy or Futurama where Fox never gave them a fair chance, then pulled the plug. They treated these shows like shit the first time; what possible reason do I have to believe that they're be treated any better "on demand?"
What about British shows like I'm Alan Partridge, Good Neighbors, or Father Ted? At best, I can watch them on BBC America or PBS, but unless I buy the DVD (or VHS, or whatever comes next), what are the chances that I *know* I'll be able to see these shows, when I want, here in the USA?
Then there's the content itself. What happens when the company that owns the rights to these shows goes out of business? What happens if a bunch of Jeezoids decided to buy the rights to something just to kill it (for the chillllldren, of course)? Or what if they just decide that something is insensitive and cut it. Jesus, what if they alter the original: Colorizing it or adding those fucking "informational" popups like they do when they show Double Indemnity on the Lifetime network?
What happens when some soulless bean counter decides that since I'm the only one who wants to watch Seriously Dude, Where's My Car?, they should just save the server space and dump it? You already see this sort of thing in video stores, when they decide how many foreign films can fit in that little section. The Internet Movie Database lists 268,836 movies released theatrically, 35,200 made-for-TV movies, 23,625, TV series, 21,420 direct-to-video movies, and 3,081 mini series. How many of these are going to make the cut? Which do you think will come first, some of those films, or "on demand" sports, so folks can have "Classic Games of when the Red Sox blew the World Series" nights?
Finally, why should I keep paying for the content through a subscription or a download fee each time? Compare the price of DVDs with rentals and pay-per-view -- if I think I might watch it three times in the rest of my life (or I might want to loan it to a friend) why not buy it outright for the extra ten bucks?
Horizontal resolution is traditionally measured in lines per picture height (not width), so that the horizontal and vertical resolutions have the same scale. (Note that film resolution is normally measured in "line pairs", but video resolution is not.)
A DVD normally has 720 pixels horizontal by 480 vertical (interlaced). If it is mastered with Academy Ratio (4:3) video, that means it has 720 * 3/4 = 540 lines of horizontal resolution. By comparison, VHS has about 240 lines of horizontal resolution. Note that the horizontal resolution is different for anamorphic widescreen DVDs when played on suitable equipment, because of the different aspect ratio.
HDTV at 1080i has 1920 pixels horizontally, and 16:9 ratio, so it has 1920 * 9/16 = 1080 lines of horizontal resolution. Since the horizontal and vertical resolution are the same, the pixels are square, unlike most video formats.
I was a subscriber about 5 years ago of Hong Kong telecom's Video on Demand which delivered VHS quality content to your televsion. I watched a total of 3 or 4 movies in the 2 years I had it (it was also Hong Kong's first broad band internet service).
The strengths that VoD has are
* Access anytime
* Access "anonymously" (atleast the store owner does not know your perverted viewing habits, which I must mention I do not have!)
The strenths of DVD are
* Its everywhere now...
* Its cheap -- US$50 players can be found (they sell for US$20 here on the border in Hong Kong)
* Its international and not legislated by telco / Disney / whoever
* Its collectible. I have two 300 DVD players stacked with DVDs I've purchased over the last 4 years for the simple reason that I love movies and want to keep them around for a bit.
* You can pass your DVD along to friends to watch
* Progressive SCAN + DTS / Dolby 6.1
* Amazing data transfer rates
* Rentals are getting cheaper. In the US you can rent using Netflix (quasi anonymous again)
A big weakness with the VoD service that I had subscribed to was the ability to watch the movie again in a couple of days time (or pause and continue watching the next day) as the "rental period" was 24 hours.
I really don't think VoD is going to replace DVD. It has potential in the pr0n industry for ummm impluse viewing, but not in the mainstream world. Sorry... been there done that, paid the bills and don't see myself going back.
Well, if this achieves deep penetration, then obviously it'll be the end of movie rental. But for people who still want to own the films, rather then paying every time they want to see it, DVDs and their successors will be around for a while.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I disagree with your other points, though. People don't always want just the music or the movie. Sometimes they want liner notes, documentaries on the production process, a poster for their wall, or simply a physical presence so their small pre-literate child can let them know WHICH movie or show they want to watch with a minimum of whining. Not only that, but when we bring home a DVD my child wants desperately, he is busy for hours and carries it around with him, and practices the alphabet, and wants to learn to read so he can read all the words on the cover himself. Sitting at a computer browsing through a catalog simply doesn't provide the same experience.
And yes, go ahead and ask Blockbuster how adamant people are about keeping their own discs. Haven't you noticed the new "get a discount when you buy a movie you've rented" program? I'd say they're trying to capitalize on the people like me, who rent a movie solely to find out if they like it enough to buy it, and then buy it somewhere cheaper! However, there's currently no way to tell which people purchase for economic reasons (it's cheaper to buy than to rent over and over) or hard copy reasons (simply liking to own a physical copy). The people who buy for economic reasons would probably love VOD if it was a purchase, rather than a rental scheme. However, the people who simply like hard copy are unlikely to ever embrace something so ephemeral.
Independent musicians and registration-free net radio at EmergentSound
IP Multicast? For what, VOD? Just in case you and half of your neighbors by chance suddenly all decided to watch "Plan 9 from outer space" the same millisecond??? I thought that the whole idea about VOD is "private showings". IP multicast done perfect might give you something vaguely similar to what we're used to: broadcasts. Why not just broadcast it? One way media are very, very cheap...
Also, I might add that a 1.5mbit line is NOT ALWAYS 1.5mbit... The lack of QoS guarantees in the IP protocol will demand plenty of surplus bandwidt both for you and your ISP. Do people here have any idea how much data your average TV system is transferring??? How about digital broadcasts? Why not just use these channels and pump over lots and lots of encrypted videos, and people's PVRs can record shows in probabilistic or programmed manners. You can then hire a key when you want to se the movie.
And oh, DivX is nowhere close to DVD quality...