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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
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station-wagon filled with DVDs!!!
I have VOD now (surewest broadband), and there is still plenty to be desired. I don't always watch a movie all at one time, some movies I want to watch a little today and some tommorrow, and DVDs never fail to play when the network connection goes down. The ownership model of video delivery will always exist in some form or another, but the business models and technology will change.
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.
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).
In fact... while MPEG4 may result in smaller file sizes than MPEG2, there are probably going to be some people who don't like it, anyways. Dolby Digital has better compression than DTS, but... audiophiles insist that they can hear a difference. In fact, enough people prefer DTS to Dolby Digital that many movies are released with both DTS and Dolby Digital tracks! And also, let's not forget SuperBit DVD's... DVD's which sacrifice the special features to give the video a higher bitrate. If these didn't sell well, the company wouldn't *still* be releasing SuberBit DVD's, but they are. So... even if the compression *did* manage to shrink the video down to managable amounts, it still might not be enough to give VOD a "nudge", so to speak.
Further, any VOD system will be riddled with DRM. Some people will no doubt complain that they can actually see this DRM manefist itself in the movies they download, and still others will no doubt have problems with the playback.
I believe the future lies in the HD-DVD. There are a number of proposals for this, including one that uses MPEG2 on a Blu-Ray disc (~50gb, if dual layered) and another that uses MPEG4 on a DVD (~9gb, if dual layered). you can read about them here:
http://www.dvdsite.org/
I personally think that if the movie studios didn't tie everything down with their endless squabbling about DRM, we could and would have been enjoying VOD right now for a few years.
The technology is already there -- codecs like DiVX and its MPEG-4 based counsins can deliver near DVD quality video at bitrates around 1.5 Mbit/s, within range of most residential broadband technology. Server infrastructure, on the hardware and the OS side, has matured as well. With IP multicast, this could be even made more efficent. And all you really need on the client is a inexpensive box -- a current game console or TiVO could handle the decoding.
Sadly, it seems like the studios are holding it up, with their iron grip on content, not technology itself.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
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.
but what about when you're in a situation where you have no connectivity?
That's what suicide is for.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
And so is the combustion engine with the innevitable creating of super cool transporter beams. And so is television when they plug wires right into our eye sockets. And so is lip balm when they upload our consciousness into RAM. I'm not ready to count out portable physical storage media just yet. Ubiquitous bandwidth is a long ways away, and people *like* owning things that can't be taken away from them.
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
I too have VoD already. It's called kazaa. :)
j/k
I bought a Strawberry Shortcake video for my girl last week (just before I heard about Penny Arcade's mix-up with American Greeting), and she has watched it at least two times a day since then. One day she watch the video 5 times! If I hear one more "Have a Berry Lovely Day!" I swear there will be @#*! to pay.
Quite frankly, when I purchase a video it is only because I plan to watch it so many times that it is worth having around where I can get my mitts on it. If the entertainment industry thinks that I am going to fork out money each and every time my little girl wants to watch Strawberry Shortcake, then they have another thing coming. Even at $0.50 a viewing I have saved money by purchasing this particular movie outright, and I didn't have to sign up for an expensive cable system either.
I think I will go read a book now.
Welcome to Microsoft DRM-enabled DVD-XP. In order to activate the video you have inserted, please call 1-8MP-AAO-WNSU.
*place telephone call... get authorization code... enter code into player*
Welcome to Microsoft DRM-enabled DVD-XP. Video activated.
Warning: unknown television set detected. If you are using this player with a new television set, you will have to call to re-enable this product. Please call 1-8MP-AAO-WNSU.
*user mumbles, "aww, fuck it" and grabs an old VHS tape*
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
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
SGI and Time Warner installed a mpeg VOD over cable system in Orlando, way back in 1994 (Scientific Atlanta did the cable modems). SGI later helped design and build a VOD over fiber-direct-to-the-home system for NTT near Tokyo in 1996. This was back when supercomputer CPU's clocked slower than some of today PDA's, so the set-top boxes were pretty pricey.
Then Mosaic got too popular and distracted everybody.
yeah like Beta, and the new Coke.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
MPEG-7, incidentally, is not a compression standar, it's a standard for video meta-data (allowing content-based video retrieval).
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.
DVD's are not going anywhere for at least another 5-10 years. Look how long the CD has lasted. THey tried to replace it with the MiniDisc and that did not even phase it. Cd's and DVD's are just too easily produced and cheap as well, which gives them good staying power in any market.
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
Hmm, perhaps something to research, then, would be Apple's newly released Music On Demand service, as a model? Wherein CDs are made obsolete by broadband, Visa, iTunes4, Quicktime, AAC, and iPods? You'd therefore want/need something similar in place to implement Video on Demand, if you envision something similar replacing DVDs and movie distribution.
Notice though that Apple isn't marketing it as a pay per view system, but a pay for the convenience of finding what you want when you want it system.
So in a world with fatter pipes, more aggressive encoding, and a defined distribution system, I can't see why Video on Demand can't work, as long as consumers have the ability to play an unlimited number of times, download at will, and burn to CD/DVD at will.
This doesn't mean DVDs are dead, it merely leverages the internet as a more efficient distribution method, without any of the political doublespeak of DivX or content leasing, or EULAs.
Though if you thought about it carefully, the success of Apple's model does demphasize the medium, it only does so because you have content you don't care to purchase, like other tracks, or because it's hard to find. A similar video solution, then, might not have the multiple languages, subtitiles, commentary, etc, which you would still want a DVD for.
GPL Deconstructed
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?
Whether VOD surpasses DVD is not the issue. Recorded media will always be better than transmitted media for the same reason that wired connections will always be better than wireless ones.
Think about this way: in order to view VOD, there is recorded media somewhere that is being transmitted. Now unless you are willing to say that the transmission takes no additional time, then you can always get more information from a local recording.
And as long as you can get more, why wouldn't you?
Now, that's not saying that I'll go out and buy every movie I would otherwise demand, but certainly the ones I like I will record.
Along the same lines, if I need to transmit information over a never-changing span of ten feet through a wall, I will always use a wire. Transmission, besides being subject and prone to interference, needs to encode and decode, encrypt and decrypt, correct and transmit. That all takes time. Why do it when the wire is faster?
Consider this:
First, the wide release in theaters. $10 out of your pocket for a ticket (a majority, if not all of your ticket price, goes to the studio).
Then, the in-flight movies, the hotel rooms, and other "semi-controlled" environments by which a studio can license to third-party vendors. $5-$10 tacked onto your plane fare, your hotel room, etc.
Then, the movie networks-- HBO, Showtime, Skinemax, etc. Another dollar or so that you pay, indirectly, to the studio by way of your cable bill.
Then, the DVD/VHS release. $25-$45 (if it's a "special edition").
Finally, the major networks -- ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox. No money directly out of your pocket, but the networks pay out of the nose to the studios to be able to show a popular movie in primetime.
All of these selling points take place a few months or so after the previous one. You don't get current movies on the plane, but you get movies that were in theaters just a month or so ago.
etc etc, I hope you get my point. There are many points along this chain by which the studios can collect money for the movie. By saying "DVD is dead" you're eliminating one of those sell points. That will never fly with any studio exec.
Instead, think of this: insert the VOD service somewhere in that timeline. Let's say, in between the in-flight/hotel room and the major movie networks. Pay $5-$7, and you can see the movie you want when you want. Pay-per-view is somewhat like this, and if any selling point changes, it'll be the pay-per-view system. No longer will you have to wait until 4pm to see the movie you want to watch, you'll be able to have it start at 3:47 if you want.
As far as codecs go, that is the absolutely last thing on the studio head's mind. I guarantee you that whatever the major cable operators are using, that's what you'll see. Right now it's mostly MPEG-1, with a smidgen of MPEG-2 in some systems. For VOD, you'll need a more intelligent head-end system and a better set-top box. There might be some concern around conserving bandwidth, but I highly doubt it. You're getting HD streams of ESPN these days on the current systems, so we won't require a more efficient codec to do VOD.
I run a software company called Onion Networks that provides peer-to-peer content delivery technology to movie studios building VOD systems.
With fast P2P content delivery technology, MPEG-4 compression, and PVR-like time shifting devices - the speed, storage, and economics are there today to provide DVD-quality VOD.
The only problem is that it is taking the studios a long time to roll out there VOD solutions, but trust me, they'll be upon us in the near future.
For more information on the protocols that underly these P2P content delivery systems, please check out the Open Content Network Specs
Then again, the video store's not far away, so I could always just get there with my jet pack to avoid the parking hassle, so maybe I can live with video on demand anyway.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
But the reality is, that disconnection will, for a very very long time, trump a full-time connected model (for viewing video).
Sure, it SOUNDS great that I can just get that video anytime I like... of course, to equal a DVD all of the following things have to be in place:
1) I have to be able to get to commentaries/deleted scenes/etc, on the fly, just like a DVD (I suppose some of that is a bit optional, sometimes people really just want to see a movie)
2) I have to have the player I want to watch on connected to whatever service feeds up the video, at the time I want to watch it.
3) I have to keep paying that service forever if I want to watch the video much later on.
4) The service and connection has to be up (a storm is a great time to watch a movie).
It's just so much easier, for now and a long time from now, to use DVD's. I can buy a $50 player and hook it up to a cheap TV to watch stuff in a shop. I can take the netflix DVD on a plane. I can bring a DVD over to a friends house to watch instead of my own. All of these things are going to be hard to do for a long time with VOD... the number of people with connections fast enough to stream DVD quality video is going to be small for a while, the percentage of those with receivers hooked up all over even smaller, the number of players with really high speed wireless connections built in so you don't have to place them near a connection smaller still.
I think Netflix has about 20+ years of growth ahead of it. And I'm not sure that a physical model will ever be totally replaced by a networked model, even for things you get to keep like downloaded songs. Even though I can buy songs from Apple online now, and whole albums cheaper than a CD, I think I'll probably still buy CD's from some artists anyway.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
. . to see that this VOD nonsense is being put back where it belongs - in the corner.
:
There is largely enough posts against VOD for various reasons, but I'd still like to add that, for me, VOD will only stand a chance when it answers the following conditions
- always available (talking connection stability)
- always perfect (talking streaming quality)
- very cheap (like $0.05)
- very large catalogue (like, everything)
Compare the situation to viewing a DVD : it is always there, there is no delay in viewing it. A DVD always plays perfectly, no skipping, no frame stutter, no bandwidth issues. It doesn't cost anything to view it, but of course one can only choose amongst what that person has bought. Yet, the available catalog is vast (count the number of different films available in the store) and the methods of access varied and abundant (supermarket, video store, even gas stations have some).
There is another point I'd like to make : the digital media industry is the ONLY industry where the same product (one item) can be resold an infinite number of times without a production run renewing item availability. I want to see that reflected in the price of usage.
I will not accept excuses about storage costs (going down monthly) inflating the price, nor do I wish to hear about bandwidth issues (just get more fiber).
In short, it costs little to make (the film is supposed to have paid for itself in the theater), nothing to store, next to nothing to sell, and just a bit to distribute.
Half a dollar is an acceptable price for a start, even though to view one must have at least a 512Kb/s Internet connection (and that is far from being the norm).
Later, with a large catalog and many regular users, I'll expect that price to go down to below 20 cents. Even later, with a worldwide catalog and user base, I'll expect to be billed in micropayments.
If it doesn't happen like that, it just means that the media industry have once again decided to fatten their wallets at my expense. In that case, I'll cut the costs and buy my DVDs. I'll pay the price once, and I'll have something I can pass on to my kids, without anyone billing me each time I so much as think about playing it.
To reply to a whole bunch of comments that declare how VOD is going to fail:
First of all, people are confusing delivery method with reproduction technology. VOD is delivery, DVD is delivery (as in a shiny disc) AND reproduction (as in MPEG2 and AC-3): A DVD is in fact VOD. It plays whenever you want it to. So basically we are comparing Apples and IBMs here. VOD, as per definition, does not mean that you don't get to keep a copy on a local storage device.
Now for VOD failing because of
- Quality: "people will want better quality"
Not really. People had CDs and moved down to MP3s; obviously people care more about convenience than about quality, especially since quality is arguably more important in audio than video. In any case, some day digital video _will_ reach a state where a human can not distinguish technically better quality.
- Physical Media: "people will want to have a hard copy"
Same argument as above applies, I don't think anyone downloading their MP3s from Kasaa cares all that much. But think of a world where you could play the movies you had paid for anywhere and anytime you wanted to. Now does VOD still sound bad? Who the hell cares about physical media??!!
People that use this argument have become slaves of the RIAA and MPAA. This is EXACTLY what they want. But in all reality, the future has no place for things like CDs and DVDs. At the end of the day, the real value is in the movie or the music, not the booklet or the silver disc. The music or movie's what you want to get, so who the fsck cares where it comes from?
- People want to keep their own disc
Yeah right, ask blockbuster how adament people are about that.
I think people are confusing licensing issues with the true defninition of VOD, which is to watch video when you want to. I think VOD could be just as popular as internet for the very same reason: information when you want it.
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.
Somewhere, I remember seeing an article that the total data bandwidth of the USA is dominated by Netflix. By this, the article meant, there are more gigs of data shuffling around the continent in Netflix envelopes than on all the fat data pipes combined.
That was several months ago. Netflix has had negligible market penetration (think... how many of your family have even *heard* of Netflix or dvdbarn?). In the next few years we're to expect action by Blockbuster in this niche. Some are predicting 30 percent or more of households will have an 'unlimited rental' membership somewhere by the time the market saturates.
Meanwhile, the regulated residential broadband providers are resisting/lobbying/preventing any competition, telecom reform has just taken it in the teeth, and most home users I've talked to have seen stagnation or degradation in the measured bandwidth per buck they're getting in the last 2 years. A lucky few are seeing alternative providers and the beginnings of competition, but I'm betting a decade goes by before we see enough alternatives that prices drop hard and performance soars.
As much as I love 802.11b and other wireless protocols, that mediocre pipe ain't the answer to a whole neighborhood of VOD-loving customers without some astounding cell-like protocol improvements to get a couple dozen 8mB/s (based on my replay/tivo experience; I'm likely wrong on this detail) streams of data per Access Point out to all them suburbanites.
From there, a buncha me-too's on stuff like people liking ownership of dvd's, the effect of PVR's, market-stifling price structures, fingers pointed at how well Music-on-Demand is working (see market stifling price structures), DivX as a cautionary tale, etc etc. that everyone else is saying.
I know this isn't the first time, but thought I'd ask:
Cliff, was this a screwup, or do you plan to pick fun Troll questions like this regularly? Cuz if you do, I'll start writing some questions....
Based on the success of Tomb Raider, it's clear that sex is superfluous and I have decided to write a paper on this. Can anyone talk to me about the overall trends toward the entire species dying off due to lack of interest in anyone else in comparison with Laura or Angelina, and what's the consensus on how quickly this will happen?
A cousin of mine who works on an Free Software project just got hired by Microsoft and I'm wondering just how long it'll be before everyone doing free software gets hungry, gets real jobs, and Linux dies off?
My cat just hurled up something truly horrendous. Has anyone tried using this stuff for case modding or overclocking? If I do, where should I submit my story? Tom's hardware seems the obvious choice, but this goop smells suspiciously like the Register's style of investigative journalism.
Well, the overclocking didn't work quite as planned, but the heat and electrical jolt seem to have spawned a new life form. Am I required to get a patent on it, and if so, is there a GNU-like document for preserving li'l blobby's rights without exploiting him/her/it?
Then why didn't North America get the NES disk drive ("Famicom Disk System") or the N64 disk drive ("64DD") that came out in Japan? Simple: after Nintendo test-marketed those formats in Japan, the company decided that they were too easy to pirate.
He wouldn't know, considering that he's a fraud.
Except that few ISPs implement multicast because they don't know of a fair revenue model.
I think one of the biggest obstacles is the fact that there aren't any services that use multicast. The reason for there not being any services is that no ISPs support multicast. This is very similar to IPv6, where there's very little implementation due to the lack of demand. The lack of demand is because no one else uses IPv6 (hey, why should I upgrade my systems, when it'd make me unable to talk to almost anyone else?).
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
Its another one of these misnamings, such as Moores law (a marketing term coined by the head of Intel to sell their product philosophy).
Its never been _on demand_. Its been on request. If I demand I want repeats of an obscure late 80s comedy show shown on uk television (called Absolutely), theres no chance I will get it.
And it will never knock out recorded technology.
Yet again the MPAA wants a shift away from anyone owning their content in the end. Maybe its the future, but its a future where they will sell less, and get less money for their product. And in the end, it just means we record it off the television rather than buy it legitimately from them.
Didn't they learn from the original DVD-subscribe idea of DIVX?
As for Video On Demand itself, its been one of those "killer app" technologies which the telecomms companies have built since 1995, and never hugely deployed because the customers don't really want it. It offers them little, and local rental shops can always deliver (or post rentals to you). Its a novelty, and probably the last choice of the consumer. So they don't demand anything in the end...
Unless everyone manages to standardise on MPEG4 (the main player in the codec battles), then I suspect we'll end up with loads of proprietary standards being used, depending on which set-top box you have. The only issue with this is storage for the content aggregators who will have to store the movies in all the possible formats to farm out to all the different set-tops.
Microsoft will make a massive push with Windows Media, and rightly-so too - their codec is probably the best right now and includes it's own multi-channel audio codec too. At least they've finally opened it up so that it can be made available on other platforms - before this happened I would have been wary.
And anyway, they've already encoded Terminator 2 which will be available as a WMV file in the new T2 DVD release!
> Chaz
I've already got a VOD service - homechoice - delivered over ADSL and no way is it going to replace DVD. For a start, it doesn't support widescreen tvs, the compression method they use means the video doesn't look anywhere near as good, they don't have all the extra features you get on dvd and most of all you only get the film for 24 hours. Even if they changed over to mpeg 4 and started supporting widescreen tvs it still wouldn't replace DVD's - at least with a DVD I can play it whenever I want and I don't have to worry about the film not being on thier server in 6 months time. However, homechoice also comes with a selection of tv programmes and music videos that come 'free' with the service, which is nice when the Tivo hasn't got much on it.
What VOD is usefull for is that it helps to eliminate any need for going to video rental shops - the back catalogue on homechoice is cheap and if I really want to see a film right now I can. With that and Blockbuster UK's dvd rental by post I need never darken the doorway of my local video shop again.
I think DVD's will be around for a long time - or at least 5cm shiny discs holding video will be around a long time. My bet is that some 'superDVD' will come out at some point to support High Definition (though the apperent lack of take up of HD in most of the world will probably slow down it's arrival), and after that another super-superDVD for super definition TV when that eventually comes out.
Tk
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
It's not a video codec, is it?
Try Ubuntu GNU/Linux, it's great!!!
Consumers look to DVDs as the CD-equivalent for home video. That's not entirely correct. Unlike CDs, certain dual-layer and double-sided DVDs can suffer from corrosion-by-air called "DVD rot" (basically, air gets in side the layers through micro holes created when the layers were slapped together at the factory).
If DVD rot begins to appear in large numbers in a few years, some consumers will begin to distrust DVDs, feeling betrayed that the one-thought infallable format is potentially self-destructive.
In large numbers, this could either spell the end of the DVD or spur the creation of a better disc format.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Have you even done any reading about it before mentioning it? MPEG1 is a compression scheme. MPEG2 is a compression scheme. MPEG4 is a compression scheme. MPEG7 and MPEG 21 are not. If my memory serves me correctly, MPEG7 is a Metadata description language and MPEG21 is a more holisitic solution incorporating MPEG7 and compression technologies.
You're missing one key point. To use VOD (aka pay-per-view w/o the time constraint -- in theory), you have to pay each time you want to watch it. At least with my DVD's, I can watch them any time and as often as I wish. If I want to pay once to view something, I'll go to the movies where I can enjoy it with more people than can fit into my living room.
m unications/two-tin-cans-with-a-string....
Oh, wait! What am I thinking? It costs as much to go see a movie as it does to buy the DVD and hold a cookout for all my friends and then sit down and watch the DVD.
Problem is, the market won't support it. MP3 players are a fine example of this. There's already growing resistance to RIAA trying to control all channels of what people can view. When people pay to own something, they expect that they will have material possession of that item, to use wherever and whenever they choose.
VOD is more akin to video rental.
If you want to find out about what will replace DVDs, you should look at the budding technologies coming out of data storage. Holographic cards the size of a credit card that can hold multiple terabytes of random access storage at high throughput data speeds.
Don't forget about quantum computing approaches. I know of at least three major computer manufacturers that are in a quiet race to develop quantum-level computing for the consumer market. It will be a while before we see a functional CPU, but the storage capabilities may show up sooner. Rather than have bits that can only have two values, 0 or 1, a quantum bit can have many more values. How about 0 through 9 -- a true decimal computer. I'll leave it to the math gurus to figure out the storage density of decimal over binary. My guess would be multiple terabytes in something the size of a grain of salt, and all data accessible instantly (forget about discussing xHz).
In the end, VOD is only about control of distribution. If people have to pay every time they want to view something, or pay on a regular basis, it will get old real fast. Look at pay-per-view. It's exactly the same thing as VOD, just using a different moniker. Only, I can't use VOD/pay-per-view when I'm sitting on a plane with my computer. Or, if I'm on the road. Or visiting relatives who don't have cable/broadband/satellite/some-form-of-modern-com
Whew! This water sure is cold!
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
I recently attended the NAB conference and sat in on a lot of presentations. The industry is building the tools to deliver MPEG-4 and/or WMF9 through digital cable/satellite. The talks about DRM seemed to balance the need of the producers to make money off what they make and the need of the consumer to do what they want with the content (outside of sharing the content with one million of their closest friends). The big thing with DRM was to create tools that would allow for a wide range of potential usage.
There seemed to be an assumption that within the next 5 years the PVR will be ubiquitous. I also observed a large amount of set-top-boxes on display from a number of manufacturers - many of these had DVD burners built in with the PVR and digital TV tuner. There was also some concern expressed about delivering content in a format that consumers could re-purpose for any devices (home or moble) that they want to view their content on.
Oh yeah, and a lot of talk about how the broadcast industry would be able to change their business models in order to take advantage & make money off all this.