Slashdot Mirror
The End of Physical Media
L-s-L69 writes "The register is reporting that Forrester is predicting that a third of all music sales will be made by downloads in the next five years. They also predict that almost 15 per cent of films will be viewed by "on-demand" services such as rather than by DVD or video by 2005. "
So here's the question: what effect do these predictions have on the ways in which companies in control of these industries approach their market? Do companies move to prevent the predicted move to electronic means or do they embrace it because of it's new seeming inevitability? Or has Forrester taken the very effects of its own findings release into account? And if so, might companies recognize this and try to undermine the research adjustment by acting differently than it otherwise would. Don't you just love how these silly little viscous cycles can come out of attempts at predicting trends in a market so easily controlled?
I've used the on demand viewing for at home, but haven't been 100% happy with it.
The whole pause, fast forward, etc... is laggy and inaccurate. I don't like it.
I don't like only being able to watch it for 24 hours, give me lifetime viewing for 15$ then we're talking.
As of right now it's just a waste of money as always.
Such as what?
... but in some way they assume that dl'ing music and movies generates revenues ????
I mean in the worst case scenario this will only mean pay-per-view and draconian DRM.
BOO! TERRO
After you download the movie/music, you still need physical media to store it. It may be your hard-drive or your CD-ROM. The title sounds almost like you store the files in thin air.
Like, I mean, wow, dude!
This comes as a real surprise.
Uh, only one third?
Ceci n'est pas une signature
The register is reporting that Forrester is predicting that a third of all music sales will be made by downloads in the next five years.
I wouldn't go as far as to say 'sales'...
I believe this will in fact happen, and the ironic thing here is that a lot of the customer's dollar (yen, etc.) will be shifted to the bandwidth providers, rather than the creator of the content. This is really the opposite of the renaissance for artists internet distribution was hoped to provide.
(Related one-time-no-financial-interest-rant: How many hours of quality reading do you get in a week on Slashdot? Toss your five bucks into the hat already...)
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
They said this exact same thing 5 years ago...didn't happen so they are trying again?
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
I just don't see this happening. I believe most people will still want to have something solid to show for the money they spend.
DeviantArt Page
NSFWPaperless offices are a reality! No more paper used at offices! News at 11.
third of all music sales will be made by downloads in the next five years
As opposed to a third of all music acquisitions being made by download today (as opposed to actual sales)?
Services such as OnDemand on cable are way too over-priced. It's usually $3.95 per movie. I'd much rather buy a used DVD for 10 bucks instead. It's the same reason I never rent anything from Blockbuster (Overpriced American movie rental store). I don't see DVDs dying anytime soon. It may get marginalised like VHS in a few years, but it is unlikely to "end" as mentioned in the title
The P2P effect. Music, video and books are all "on demand" via this outlet. They better act fast if they want to keep any sort of business model.
Trolling is a art,
How is this the end of "physical" media? So is this stuff just going to be stored on nothing? It's rather misleading.
I am over here... now I am back over here!
I hope the music biz marketing machine does commit suicide like this. This will force people to support their local musicians instead, or better yet go out and buy instruments and learn to make music themselves.
Ds and DVDs are 'doomed'
By Tim Richardson
Posted: 02/09/2003 at 13:02 GMT
CDs and DVDs are doomed - so say those soothsayers at Forrester, who reckon that the "end of physical media is nearing".
Forrester reckons that a third of all music sales will be made by downloads in the next five years. It also predicts that almost 15 per cent of films will be viewed by "on-demand" services such as cable TV rather than by DVD or video by 2005.
Although this will "wreak havoc" with traditional retailers flogging and renting the stuff, digital downloads and on-demand services could give the creative industry a much-needed shot in the arm, concluded the report From Discs to Downloads.
"On-demand services are the future of entertainment delivery. CDs, DVDs, and any other forms of physical media will become obsolete," predicted Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff.
"Music and studio executives are finally beginning to understand that they must create new media services through channels that consumers will pay for. Consumers have spoken - they are tired of paying the high cost of CDs and DVDs and prefer more flexible forms of on-demand media delivery," he said.
According to Forrester, music sales are set to increase by more than half a billion dollars in 2004 thanks to online revenues.
Equally, on-demand movie distribution channels will generate $1.4 billion by 2005, while while dicklicking Rob Malda believes revenue from DVDs and tapes will decline 8 percent.
In both cases it seems that the rise in revenues is due to punters becoming more comfortable with online alternatives leading to subscription services taking-off.
Forrester's survey of 6,000 people found that one in five Americans downloads music, with half admitting that they buy fewer CDs. (R)
How is this new? I've been getting 100% of my pr0n online now for almost 8 years!
.I'm married. I can only imagine what you single guys are doing !!
:)
Heck, I've even got my 51" tv hooked up to a computer for pr0n viewing, and for chrissake.
The article says that CDs and DVDs will become obsolete. I think this is wrong. There will always have to be at least one hard copy that can't easily be deleted. Moreover, it says that people have already started to shun buying CDs. People haven't stopped buying CDs, they are just buying more blank ones. For those who see no need to spend several hundred dollars for an MP3 player in their home stereo or car, and then spending all the time and frustration installing it and syncing it with their PC, burning downloaded music onto CDs is a very viable alternative.
10 Bits= $.25
100 Bits= $.50
110 Bits= $.75
1000 Bits= 1 byte
Due to a warehouse clearance I have the best prices on spindles of metaphysical CDs. Using our exclusive "Angels dancing on pins" technology, you can store infinite amounts of data for all eternity on a single CD. Think of how long a single spindle will last!
Hooray, five years of tinny-sounding 128-kbps MP3s rather than properly sampled CD-audio tracks!
MP3s are great because they're portable, but they still don't sound as good as compact discs. Never mind the fact that downloading an entire MP3 album pretty much requires broadband to start with.
what eats me is the fact that if the broadband suppliers and the RIAA and the MPAA got their act together and stopped trying to protect their market as-is we'd already have this. As a whole, we've wanted this for a long time. I'm not even just talking about geeks . . .my grandparents would MUCH rather get a movie on demand than drag themselves out to the video rental shop.. . .
A third of all music "consumed" might be downloaded within the next 5 years, but I suspect the vast majority of it won't be paid for. And of the part that IS paid for, I highly doubt that online purchases will comprise 33% of all sales anytime soon. That is, unless music sales falls to a level that makes it possible.
As for on-demand services, it's an easy way to get the movies you want that haven't made it to Blockbuster or NetFlix. But if the movie's available from either one of those places, it doesn't seem to be a very attractive option, given the usage restrictions, for the named price.
...that these predictions are worthless to me today. Here's my prediction: There's going to be a backlash against DRM. Whew. Am I glad I said it. Where do these predictions come from? Who sits at work or at home looking for this stuff?
-- No sig for you!
VHS .?
Hmmmm, digital downloads and on-demand content with draconian DRM restrictions? The end to CDs and DVDs? Not bloody likely. People want to own what they buy and they want to be able to share it. People will reject content which is "delivered" (always in transit) instead of controlled and owned. Recording VCRs and rental stores were a boon for Big Hollywood, despite Hollywood's whining. Sharing and pirating generate sales, not stifle them. When will Hollywood learn?
I used to have HomeChoice at home, and it was excellent. The only reason I stopped using their service was because I moved out of the area they cover, and I miss them very much.
:-)
They use a DSL line with a set-top box which splits the signal into two parts: one for video on demand, and the other to plug your computer (or network) into. The video service has an archive of TV programmes in all kinds of genres, as well as music videos and the most recent news bulletins from a variety of sources.
Plus you can also 'rent' movies from them, just by clicking a few buttons. You get to play it as much as you like for 24 hours and the cost is comparable to (if not better than) the Blockbuster round the corner. You can pause, fast-forward, rewind, no problem. It works great.
It's fast, very usable, convenient, cheap and it works. I have seen the future and it is video on demand. And no they're not paying me to say this.
--
Karma: Chameleon (you come and go)
"...almost 15 per cent of films will be viewed by "on-demand" services such as rather than by DVD or video by 2005."
So all codec, player, bandwidth, and DRM issues will be ironed out in the next 15 months? Sweet. </sarcasm>
I don't know where I first heard it, but the best way to do on-demand (at least for a handful of current films) would be to send them to your TiVo in the middle of the night withou you even requesting it, then you just pay for a key to unlock it. But still, I'm big into ownership--pretty much anything worth seeing is worth paying $10-$20 to have forever.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
With a digital copy it'd be just a matter of decrypting the file, sending it along and there you go. If DeCSS was the best the industry could come up with then I don't forsee any online media protection scheme being hard to crack.
And as for the reduction in costs being passed on to the end user? Doubtful - they'll just be absorbed as profit because if people are happy to pay current prices, why reduce them? CDs were cheaper to produce than tapes yet are more expensive.
My guess is that broadcasted (cable/airwave) media and physical media will always coexist to fit different niches in the marketplace to fulfill different needs.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
These will be the films such as "Gigli" and other no-name box office flops. They will now not leave our lives, but will be provided and forced down our throats on such places as our on-screen TV guide. (God damnnit, I hate comcast.)
"Missed 'Gigli' in the theatre, see it first on PPV-On-Demand!
And how long until this "rent for 24 hours" idea jumps into the music realm.
Having a party? Get 'Bootylicious Beats Vol. 5' streamed directly to your TV/Receiver for the less than the price of an electric toothbrush! Order Now
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
I'm commenting on /. stating that the Register reports that Forrester predicts the end of physical media.
I disagree.
Now others might agree/disagree about my commenting on /. stating that the Register reports that Forrester predicts the end of physical media.
Listening to one song over and over again would be too expensive if you needed to pay for it every single time. I think a lifetime license would be more reasonable. Thank goodness cable companies have always been reasonable.
I hardly doubt the end of physical media is near. Right now video on demand services offer a very limited amount of movies available, and are not available in High-Definition (HDTV). I can't even get Dumb and Dumberer on Time Warner's Video on Demand service. Until just about every movie is available on demand, and until its all available in Hi-Definition and with at least dolby digital 5.1 sound, I will be sticking to DVDs and I am sure a LOT of audio/video-philes are with me on that.
Gives new meaning to my $.02 worth doesn't it?
That will be 30 downloads worth.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
These two predictions aren't as closely related as everyone seems to think. The first is just a shift in media from CDs to mp3s. It's really nothing that hasn't happened every ten years since the 45 was introduced.
The second prediction is just stupid. Just because video on demand is possible doesn't mean people will loose all sense of ownership. I could see VOD replacing video rentals (if it became 100 times more useful than the crap Charter has been pedaling for the last two years)... I don't see why it would replace DVD. People still want to own movies. Otherwise, Blockbuster would have replaced VHS long before DVDs were invented!
foreasster reseach suggests that by 2015, we won't need brains. We'll be the human equiv. of thin clients plugged into the machine. 2015? Good thing we won't be around for it.
.sig
This sounds about right. The vast majority of the music I have been getting for the past 3 years has been free downloads.
Part of this is a reaction against the RIAA censoring Napster.
The other part is because the record companies refuse to sell this music (out of print albums, and concerts never committed to CD or LP) in the first place.
I would rather think that DVD's will become cheaper and will flourish.
I doubt that within 1 1/2 years, online multimedia will make the leaps and bounds necesary to replace DVD. But, I do think that they will make enough progress to signifigantly drive down the prices of DVD due to the competition.
I for one, prefer DVD's to online because of bandwidth, availability, features, etc.. Also, having the DVD play connected to the internet could enhance the DVD, while not replacing it..
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
I can see the point about downloaded music becoming the norm, although I think you'll always have a hardcore group of audiophiles who will want a physical (analog) recording to play on top-shelf equipment. But I have to disagree with the prediction about on-demand movies. My girlfriend's 80-year-old mother (who is not at all tech-savvy) is wowed by the difference in quality between a DVD and digital cable.
What's even more significant is the archival nature of DVDs: it's easy to watch what you want when you want, and they're inexpensive enough to produce that there is a plethora of obscure, old, special-interest or otherwise non-mainstream titles. On-Demand can only handle a finite number of titles, and I'd imagine that the vast majority will be new releases.
Given the cost/benefit situation as well as more limited access to less popular or less current titles, I don't forsee the demise of the DVD or other similar future format (blue laser DVD?)
----------
Something cleverYes, physical media is definitely going away. Researchers are looking into using storage media that only exist in metaphysical planes of existence to store data. Rather than clicking a mouse, the user meditates intensely and mutters a small prayer to Hardus Discus, the god of data storage. They've already found that delusional maniacs can hold up to ten times as much data as a standard hard drive platter.
Are highly doubtful in general, much of the time. I'd really hate to say it, but a lot of it is corporate-funded pandering and dreaming out to try and force the market in a certain direction.
I think most people lost their faith in the powers of technological prediction when whole the flying cars by 1990 fell through.
People like to own things. It's the hunter-gatherer in us. The author does not understand consumers if he thinks that on-demand services is going to satify collectors. People want to own tangible things - whether it's a table or a DVD. Often times renting something is not enough. They are not as fond of paying for something they get to enjoy once.
...the downloads own you! Actually, the kicking and screaming of the RIAA will try to slow down that process as much as possible.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
In the next 'xx years'
Voice Recognition
Video Phones
TV on demand
Meanwhile CNN reports that 69% of all statistics are made up...
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
People love owning shelves full of stuff, shiny CD cases and DVD boxes and books.
The purchased and owned media will not go away in our lifetimes, no matter how many over-enthusiatic reports suggest that they will.
erroneous: look me up in a dictionary
There will still be physical media, it just that the producers are going to shift the extra cost to the consumer. Supply your own damn cdrw. Print off your own liner notes.Buy your own jewel case.
For rentals - sure. But for music I will still want something to hold in my hand and read while I listen.
I know people that have CDs and still download the MP3 version off of Kazaa. Why? It's because they have no clue how to convert a CD to MP3. None whatsoever. It's these people who I assume would be apt to buying "downloadable" music. These are the same people who also don't know there is an audible difference in quality between CDs and MP3s. Can't fault them for not picking up the difference on their stock car unit with the cassette adapter and their home stereo system purchased at Walmart for $99. It's these people that are going to kill off the last (and only) good audio format left: CDs.
Sorry, but what do these estimates mean? Even if they were factual statistics about now they'd be doubtfull. I could say "95% of all data in office is in the computer - the paperless office must be a reality!" and still be only refering to 3GB data on a computer / 2 MB data in a phone book.
I really like the idea of industry controlling it's content with an iron fist and ridiculously high prices... maybe it'll render MPAA and RIAA "culture" material so unaffordable it'll leave enough room for an unexpensive cultural renaissance. Music and Video on demand, pay per view, drm, so many weapons that might help industry's own decline. "If Britney's too expensive, try to listen to something else!"
And in other news:
:-P'''
The register is reporting that Forrester is predicting that a third of all financial transactions will be made by credit companies and online banking services in the next five years. They also predict that... ahhh PPPPTTHTHLLTLTTT
Just because more sales/downloads are being done online doesn't mean it's the END of the old disk way. A new media format is needed to kill the old media format. [phonograph... 8-tracks... cassettes... CDs... BlueRay??] And even THAT doesn't mean the old format will be completely gone for a long time.
Karma: NaN
If you can view it, you can't copy protect it.
If you can hear it, you can't copy protect it.
How hard is this for people to understand? Short of a capitalist police state, copy protection is impossible!
Now, maybe you can make it not worth peoples time and effort, but I'd really like to see you try. The only way to do it is have dynamic DRM, and then, even that isn't totally unhackable (look at DTV, for example). No, even with the advent of quantum cryptology, copy protection will be impossible, because if you can view it, you can copy it.
Frankly, I would rather have a CD than a MP3. I use MP3's a lot, but there is something to be said for having an entire album complete with cover art and a disc that has the intended design on it.
I use mp3s today for checking out a band to make sure I'm not going to buy a CD that I don't like.
Now if CD prices could just come down a bit and I don't have to look at a CD rack full of white CD cases labeled with a sharpie... I'd be happy...
While it's fine and dandy to have bits flowing around, they're not permanent, and you need some kind of redundancy if you don't want to lose your data.
The fact that sales of stuff won't be made through physical media doesn't mean the end of it.
AC comments get piped to
While the cable and local phone providers sit with their thumbs up there ass' by NOT getting High Speed Internet Access to the rest of the country, this prediction will fall flat on it's face.
I live about 4 miles from AOL and MCI's world headquarters, and I can not get HSIA. What a GD joke. These ass clowns are going to ruin any shot of having the internet be anything other than a place to get stock quotes if they do not hurry up with deploying access to the rest of us. Even those of us who are in their back yards.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
I download 100% of my movies on demande from the internet already ...
What will then SGAE (spanish author and editor society, who has recently levied a charge on blank digital media) charge for? Breathing air? Or will they introduce a 0.001 per-transmitted-bit charge?
It's just a BloJJ
Somewhat different story for movies, of course. Sending the contents of a DVD at this rate would cost around $12 which is cost prohibitive.
Are negative values valid? Taco, I'll send you my paypal link later.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Does anyone here live in the Boston area? Have you actually tried to use Comcast's "On Demand" feature? At least 75% of the time I try to watch something, it skips, or audio drops out, or there are horrendous artefacts, or it just won't start. We actually considered ordering an On Demand movie last weekend, but when the preview wouldn't even play, we gave up and watched Jason X on Showtime instead.
(Jason X is a fine film. Really.)
I really do not see sales of CDs dying out completely. Although CDs do not have quite the same asthetic charm of old Vynil LPs, they are something that can be placed on a shelf and browsed through.
There is that whole ritual of playing music that is rather lost with digital mediums. Where is the "fun" in selecting what you want to listen to from a menu? Its been diluted a lot already from loading the disc on the turntable and aligning the stylus to just shoving the thing into the tray.
For all the evils of the RIAA, I do enjoy having a collection of something phsyical - I can't believe I am alone in thinking this. Sure, I use MP3s, sitting at my desk now I am listening to some, but thats mostly pure convenience while I work. (or procrastinate as the case may be)
I would bet that Sales Of Singles ( e/g/ one song download like iTunes etc.. ) on the web will explode into a viable long-term market... especially when it becomes obvious to consumers that the CD has only 1 or 2 good songs on it for far more $$$ and the DRM on singles gets less painful. As regards DVD -- bah. 4-9 gigs download to really get the movie off the web with the extras and all that is just not likely in the 5 year span. IMHO HD-TV even being mandated into use by the FCC is not going to make digital formats happen any faster than the market wants anyhow.
-=|hook
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...DVD movies, and to a lesser extent CD's, still make sense. It's cheaper to transfer eight gigabytes of data on a little plastic disk than to send it through the 'net, and only a fundamental shift in the way data is carried over the internet will change this.
There are economic factors other than the actual cost of getting the DVD's to retail outlets--things like marketing, which tends to be more expensive and obnoxious when they're selling something physical--that make wired distribution look more attractive, but looking purely at the cost and convenience of shoving bits around in different ways, sneaker-net wins.
First a paperless office and now no physical media.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
I have an iPod... IN MY MIND!h tml
http://www.theonion.com/previous_opinion1.
I can't agree about Jason X, however over here in San Jose, Comcast sucks balls too. Me and the GF tried digital cable for about 6 months and after continuous outages, supposed upgrades, and ordering shows that would cutout during important dialogues or just get all scrambled for a bit during the great sex scenes, we decided to get rid of it. Now we are much more happy with being able to rent/buy a good movie put it in and not have to worry about it skipping (unless the dvd is dirty, but thats rare) - hell we can even pause it and then go back to watching it something digital cables hasn't figured in yet.
Ave Molech Setting
This is utter bullshit. The same kind of baseless claim could have been made years ago concerning pay-per-view movies. PPV and VHS rentals have similar quality, yet, PPV hardly displaced VHS rentals. While in more upscale markets the Ballbuster is stocking mainly DVD's, the point is clear - it takes a superior PHYSICAL medium to displace a physical medium.
Check it out - how many cash strapped friends have you offered to help them convert their DVD's to SVCD's - so they can sell the DVD? The picture quality on a TV is almost identical, but people love their DVD collections.
The idea of owning a set of films is attractive to many movie fans.
Since the DMCA - and the way that the big nosed middleman of Hollywood made me buy a DVD player (to watch Matrix & South Park) - I only harbor bitterness, and I will personally get rid of all my media - so long as I have perfect backups.
People on /. love to comment on concepts that have nothing at all to do with them. They have to come off all elite... "I don't listen to the radio... I don't like mass market movies... Me? I don't even own a TV." Guess what? The rest of us don't give a shit. Some people like top 40 music. Some of us don't have fancy schmancy taste in movies. Some of us are just stupid American consumer drones. That's who this technology is directed at. Not you. So shut your piehole, no one cares how elite you are.
Am I the only one who's really annoyed by people using the word "video" to describe VHS tapes and specifically exluding DVDs?
A DVD with a movie on it is a video. Can we start saying "Available now on DVD and VHS," or is that just too confusing?
Well, if any of this download-on-demand stuff is ever going to happen the FCC, Congress and the various ISPs had better get their act together and make serious broadband happen. Whether than means fiber to each home, data along the power lines, high-speed DSL, or whatever technology they pick, none of this will happen until we starting seeing 25 mbit/s or more to the home at least. A hundred would be better.
I was on @Home back in the days when they delivered 4 mbit/s symmetric. Pretty good for an internet connection but still nowhere near what is required for truly on-demand anything. Now under Comcastoff I get 1.5 mbit/s down and a whopping 256 kbit/s up and that's on a good day.
Personally, I'm not holding my breath.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
-Ladd
Don't Panic.
I think people will continue to buy DVDs and watch them rather than using "on demand" services (even netflix) just because that seems to be the trend going on right now. Collecting DVDs still seems to be at the beginning stages of growth, and more and more people are getting more and more DVDs.
For the 15 percent claim, I think it's a little too high. For the other claims, they seem reasonable.
paul
When we "suddenly" move to content delivery via the internet (which has been tried, tried and tried again and every time it has failed; anyone remember "push content" and those "nifty" clients?), where will the accountability begin?
For example, IIRC, there is a competitor to iTunes, for example, which only allows the user to download the song once. What happens if the computur crashes? What is going to happen if the user no longer likes that artist and wants to sell the music?
For example, recently I bought a Dvorak music box set to replace the numerous number of single CD's. I then proceeded to sell those CD's. What happens if I want to do the same thing with on line music.
Also, another thing Forrestor fails to realise is that there still a *VERY* large number of the computing population that do not have access to broadband. In Australia, for example, broadband take up is low, why? because there are terrible pricing like $60 a month for 500MB download.
When the consumer looks at that vs. $60 for Foxtel, heaps of channels and they can watch it morning, noon and night without incuring any "consumption" charges as with the case of broadband, no wonder the uptake isn't that high.
Ultimately, that is what is going to kill the adoption of on demand content.
"The difference between pornography and erotica is the lighting" - Woody Allen
Is that we are to live in a topsy-turvy world where sound and pictures will travel down galvanic wires (snort!) or through the very aether (guffaw!) instead of being carried on good old reliable phonographs and daguerrotypes .
What next, I ask you? Flying-machines? Women's sufferage? Coloreds sitting at the front of the bus? One can only hope that the imminent dawn of the twentieth-century will put an end to this poppycock.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Okay, I thought this was interesting. I got to thinking though, if by 2005 physical media will be well on its way out, that would mean that the vast majority of consumers of DVD (and whatever) would have to have broadband service (with the exception of on-demand via digital cable or satelite, but again, this infers broadband).
So, I went and googled and found this study that basically says that by 2005 only 40% (or so) of US house holds will have broadband service. This too, is a forecast. So, it just seems to me that this projected date of 2005 is a bit, well, optimistic?
sad robot making broken music
I want it replaced with a system with no moving parts. As someone who likes to go 4x4'ing it's frustarting when there doesn't seem to be a good CD player appropriate for a jeep. Something that's no big deal if it gets stolen (when the doors and windows are off), yet doesn't skip when pounding the trail. I'm thinking some sort of huge flash media. Or an iPod type of thing that is really just the faceplate of the stereo, and the cradle is the actual stereo unit itself. That way just the faceplate could be taken into your house and sync'd.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
They mean the same thing, 'while' is the original, 'whiles' is a reasonable but now-dead adverbial form, and 'whilst' arose from 'whiles' by some sort of confusion or other.
'While' is probably the better form since it's common and 'whiles' is both spurious (originally) and kind of stupid-sounding, but I think they can be considered interchangeable.
NB: I am a pretentious jackass.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
A boon for Hollywood? My friend, Hollywood would have been marginalized if not put out of business entirely, were it not for video rentals and sales. They have bitterly contested every new innovation in media distribution all down the line, and when it was eventually forced down their throats anyway they earned billions. And STILL they fight change. These people will never learn: Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator character possessed a "neural network processor, a learning computer" for a brain but the Jack Valentis and Hilary Rosens of the world do not. They understand only two things: control and money, and in their dim understanding of how the world operates have equated one with the other.
... extinction is the usual fate of dinosaurs.
The only good news in all of this is that both the MPAA and RIAA are not responsible for the creation of the content they purport to control. They are industry organizations, whose only relevance lies in their ability to assure their member companies of a revenue stream. That paradigm, I'm afraid, has been failing for some years now (for a variety of reasons) and at some point the big boys (the Vivendis, BMGs, Universals, and so on) may wake up and realize that their respective trade groups have become a liability.
The winds of change are upon us, and the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, SPA and other such groups are statists attempting to maintain the status-quo-ante. That hasn't worked in the past and I doubt it will work now. And that's fine
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
But somebody will soon do this right - sell car stereos with thousands of songs preloaded. "All the oldies, all the time". That may be the future of the music industry, as a branch of the auto accessory industry.
I can see music but not movies. The amount of data is just too large. With HD-DVD coming maybe 5 years or so from now unless internet to the home speeds increases dramatically in just that short of time movies will still be about 100% media only.
when cd's are compared to songs in ogg, mp3, wma or whatever comprimed music format, not only practical issues should be considered.
an album is more than a list of song on a physical medium, it is a concept.
it might be easier to download a song than go out and buy the cd, but by donwloading it you get less. an album is a concept that goes beyond a single song, or a collection of songs in a well chosen order. it consists of a box with a specific weight, texture, even smell. open the box and you find a booklet giving you images, texts and maybe other things, wich the artist wanted you to see before or while listening to the music.
a cd is not only a physical medium for the music, but for the whole concept that the artist created and gives context to the individual songs, wich helps the music to be understood or enjoyed in a more complete way.
to conclude: an album involves more senses than the hearing alone, a downloaded musicfile doesn't.
Neither.
I hope that clears things up.
Don't mean to be nitpicky, but it's really not the end of physical media as much as a change in media and transport methods. The physical media becomes the hard drives on the servers and user PCs and set tops. The biggest change is that the transport method shifts from a sneaker net based on optical discs and the postal system to a wired network, which is still "physical" in that packets of electrons through air and wire become the transport medium. Just more efficient.
pause/rewind/ff is available with on demand.
Technically, yes, you can. But *are* you?
Now go hang your head in shame.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
When desktop publishing become popular, pundits predicted that it would reduce the demand for paper since what you publish would be saved in soft form -- i. e. a digital file on a computer disk. The pundits said that, in the bad old days before personal computers, you were forced to type or write everything on paper, and of course, producing paper contaminates the environment and increases the rate of destroying trees. Unfortunately, the predictions about reducing paper consumption were wrong because people tended to print everything that they developed in their latest incarnation of Microsoft Word. Consumption of paper actually increased significantly after personal computers and desktop publishing came into vogue.
The problem was distribution. There really was no convenient way to distribute the digital file. When person A transferred a digital file to person B, a floppy disk containing the digital file is also transferred. If you transferred a floppy disk, you would think, "I might as well just print the document. It does not have many pages."
Then, came the Internet. It provides a convenient way to transfer the digital file. The transmission mechanism is also soft -- i. e. digital. The floppy disk is physical: you can touch it and feel it. In short, personal computers alone provide only the means to create soft media. Personal computers plus the Internet provide an end-to-end solution in which the creation and delivery of media is 100% soft -- i. e. 100% digital.
I'm so sick of Forrester research. They've been so pro-Internet for so long that every new wave is a realm of optimism for them. They're predictions are always 'out with the old, in with the new'.
I highly doubt that DVDs are going away any time soon. CDs may not be released as readily, but they thought CDs would die with the advent of the miniDisc. (Who uses that?) The increase in downloading of music has more to do with the paltry and rather pathetically released albums as of late combined with incredibly high prices that with people switching to broaddband for all delivery.
If the switch comes to broadband for delivery by the industry, chances are it will have more to do with corporate greed and the desire for increased control (see failure of DVD Regions to mean anything for more info) that it will with people not desiring physical media.
Today's thought.... Stop piracy and corporate greed. Set fair market prices and compete. Damn oligopolies!The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
" five years of tinny-sounding 128-kbps MP3s"
Now for the stupid comment that Apple's 128kb AAC's "are just as good as CD's".
"Music and studio executives are finally beginning to understand that they must create new media services through channels that consumers will pay for. Consumers have spoken - they are tired of paying the high cost of CDs and DVDs and prefer more flexible forms of on-demand media delivery," he said.
Hmm, according to this article over at azcentral , DVDs are "a freight train that can't be stopped".
Full article text:
DVD sales up 57% in 1st half of 2003
Greg Hernandez
Los Angeles Daily News
Aug. 4, 2003 12:00 AM
LOS ANGELES - The DVD express continues to gather steam.
During the first six months of 2003, a phenomenal 427.2 million DVD units were shipped to retailers, representing a 57 percent leap compared with the same period a year ago, according to the DVD Entertainment Group, an industry trade association.
"This is a freight train that can't be stopped," DVD Entertainment Group President Bob Chapek said. "We are enjoying the momentum and looking to the future for continued growth with an eye toward what is next."
Fueling the growth in software sales are the 10.3 million DVD players that have already been sold so far this year, easily outpacing the first half of 2002 when 7.3 million players were sold.
There are now DVD players in close to 50 percent of all U.S. homes,with more than 66 million players sold in the past six years.
These robust hardware sales are connected to the soaring sales of DVD software.
Overall, the number of DVD units shipped in North America has reached nearly 1.8 billion since the format was launched in mid-1997, according to figures compiled by Ernst & Young for the trade association.
Now, back to the crappy article at hand...
According to Forrester, music sales are set to increase by more than half a billion dollars in 2004 thanks to online revenues.
Equally, on-demand movie distribution channels will generate $1.4 billion by 2005, while revenue from DVDs and tapes will decline 8 percent.
Yeah, they will be down from 100 gazillion dollars to 92 gazillion dollars.
What is this wild speculation garbage? Someone actually gets *paid* to think up this crap? The DVD industry is a huge part of the movie studios' revenue. Even if there were a way to deliver online movies, they would still be raking it in. And they aren't going to change their proven moneymaking business. Look at the record industry, and their unwillingness to change. Hell, they won't even consider change towards a *proven* market for their product. So you think the stakeholders in the DVD market will gladly switch away from their "free" money?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
There was an article at editfreedom.com that said similar things.
Click here to read it.
hrrm.
I'm afraid you're new here...
Disclaimer: If I disagree with you I'm probably trolling...
15 per cent of films will be viewed by "on-demand" services such as rather than by DVD or video by 2005.
***********
I get Time Warner Digital Cable. In the last 3 months I've tried to get 4 different movies. The first time worked great! The next 3 times sucked they were pixelated and audio was broken. I called and received refunds.
Thus, no more 'Video ON DEMAND' for me. Unless they fix whatever the cause for this problem.
Yeah, we're all supposed to be driving rocket cars by 2005 too, but I don't see that happening either.
The End of Physical Media?
Why would anyone want to end the use of Physical Media? Even if it were possible to instantly provide content on demand to the masses, would it still be worth it? So far there is a terrible trend going on, and people do not yet notice it. We pay for the use of Television (cable/Sat), radio (cable/Sat) and Internet use (in the form of ISP). Pretty soon TV and radio will be nothing more than advertisements with product placements, and the Internet nothing more than a catalog for ordering. If you don't believe me look closely at new shows and movies coming out lately. They eat/drink their sponsors food; wear their sponsors clothing line and use their sponsors products. While some of the products are useful and blend in with the story lines, a lot of it distracts viewers from the plot of the movie and changes the whole point of going to the movies in the first place. Example: Mike Myers movies (product placement everywhere).
If a world where corporate greed has taken full control of media exists, all we would look forward to is subscription after subscription for common things we now take for granted.
Note: Imagine a life where you have to pay for everything? Every device is hooked up to a card reader or other future method of payment. Driving your car is no longer a purchase, but a subscription, listening to your car radio can or not be part of that subscription or a separate subscription you have to keep track of. With computer components as they are today, an update is necessary for it's use, and if you don't pay your subscriptions??? They cut it off, take it away...
Your computer is no longer a purchase, but a subscription... Why bother learning how to fix it when you can call the subscriber to replace the unit when needed. Why bother collecting or saving anything useful, nothing will be useful in the future, because everything expires after a use period or because things must be upgraded for fear of becoming obsolete. Why bother after all that? I will keep my physical Media and archive my stuff, to hell with virtual media.
Sometimes posting a/c is a good thing.
Forrester is essentially wrong about everything because it only looks at the highest of the high end. There will always be pre-adopters to these things. There are already and for people who buy music online they buy 100% of their music online. But when the other 90% of the population tries to do this you can expect your cable bill to quintuple and that is not something anyone will accept.
I doubt we'll see the end of pressed DVD's anytime soon.
Just an hour ago, I discovered a couple of the CDRW's in my backup rotation that are now dead to the world. Not encouraging for the world of online distribution. I suppose people could keep stuff on hard drives and flash, but those are not uniformly long-lived either.
So I suspect DVD's will be around for quite a while, if not them, then some higher-density format. Maybe something that is HDTV quality...
Let's see...another "in-the-know" flake is clueing us in on what our future will be like. The chance of probably is about 10%. At least, that's my prediction. JAV
If you are an artist and think your album stands up as a whole unit, do this: release your whole album as one track. On iTunes have it downloadable as one huge 40 minute song. Problem solved.
The simple fact is that if you had some kind of device with a closed hardware platform, some kind of DRM crap, which I am not advocating putting in PCs but which would be fine in devices, and then just send people only so many blocks (KB? MB?) at once. People can pay for service levels which imply so many blocks or whatever, and when they have verifiably deleted a block they can have another one. Then you can send them MPEG frames and they can have control over seeking. Seek outside the downloaded blocks, and you have to retire some old blocks to get the stuff you're looking for. If you pay enough, you can store whole movies. If you don't, you have to stream them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well, I guess they assume that the content industry is one that follws changes in markets. Obviously though it isn't like that. Music and movie companies are much happier sueing peoples behinds off or lobbying new laws to operate the same way as ever than emerging into new markets. If they actually will offer digital music in the far future, I guess it will be extremely consumer limiting upto complete uselessness, extremely expensive and of course windows only.
No, I really don't have much hope those idiots will get a usable service with reasonable prices and a decent catalogue going any time soon but I'd love to be proven wrong. I think it's more probable that someone external like Apple for Mac users steps in with a working service.
If FR is saying this because they have their fingers in online music and movie business?
Nah, couldn't be. Just like they said everything, not just tech, would be outsourced by 2002. Then people realized FR owns outsourcing companies.
Obviously, if it were the end of all physicial media, that would also mean the end of data.
Offtopic? Not at all.
The story has to do with the future of media delivery. Some people do not care for this proposed method of "on demand".
Some of us want to purchase a permanent copy to view/listen to as we please, not as THEY please.
And for the rude dude with the "shut your piehole" comment, who died and assigned you GOD??
I think you must be a RIAA/MPAA shill..
Remember these are the same sorts who told us everyone would have broadband by 1998 and that there'd be a web server in every home and how super terrif the Internet was and how it would change absolutely every aspect of our lives.
These people are boneheaded morons and cannot be trusted to give an even slightly accurate prediction for what the future holds.
What's life going to be like in 2007?
Here's MY guess:
Computers will be faster and have more RAM and larger hard drives. People will still buy them claiming they're going to use them to edit their home movies and keep their books, but will still use them instead to download porn.
Movies will continue to be sold on DVD, the older VHS format having been completely abandoned around 2005. DVDs will continue to have heavy copy protection and will probably go up to $30 each to offset claimed piracy losses.
CDs may lose ground to SACD and DVD-A, but most people still won't care or even notice the difference in sound quality. They will notice the difference in price, however, and the utter lack of SACD support in portable and computer players will limit its adoption. DVD-A will remain a niche audiophile option for the same reasons.
Cars will continue to run on gasoline, which will continue to become more expensive. Cars, too, will contiune to be increasingly expensive, and by 2007 you won't be able to buy a new one for less than $12,000-and that will be stripped down to nothing. Fuel efficiency will remain where it is, in spite of any advances in technology.
People will continue to make stupid and grandiose predictions about the future, none of which are based even slightly in reality. For some reason, these predictions will be taken seriously.
So, pretty much, status quo.
It's not misleading.
Today you have a choice, choose now to fight for fair use or lose all rights to your Consumer electronics. Today's consumer electronics is setting the stage for the future now, how? With comparability issues. Regional DVD's, and encrypted music CD force consumers to buy better equipment that neither last nor extend the life of their current equipment... With advancements like these everyday, purchases must be made to keep up with technology. Think about it, how long will it be before companies figure out that all consumer electronics is disposable, and that content/stuff is the important factor? The companies that produce Xbox, Playstation and Game cube know that the machines/consoles are made at a lost, and profit is made up during sales of game content.
How long before all consumer electronics are just as disposable? How many versions of a game you purchased is ported and resold under a new device, because those old devices either expire or become obsolete to the point that it pays to upgrade. And worst yet is devices that promise better or continued content... These will force people to subscribe to their services (cable, Satellite, ISP, etc.) for longer periods of time.
Note: Look at the cost of having an Internet connection. With ISP's upgrading their software to offer more content, users are forced to purchase faster PC's, with faster PC's Operating Systems need to be upgraded and so on. Visa versa works as well.
Just be careful of the day you have to subscribe to a service just to get your money. Oops, ATM's Ahhh.
Sounds like MSBlaster.
Once you've cleaned out her machine, get the ZoneAlarm firewall on it, this came in via Windoze Messaging on port 135.
usual disclaimers
Tech Public Policy stuff
and saw them dropping down to 1/3 their size you might be predicting the end of Forrester within five years.
And a whole bunch of primo Cambridge real-estate coming up for lease.
You must be a woman then... which is why you posted as anonymous... you are afraid every other slashdotter will figure this out and mail bomb you with requests for dates. ;)
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Rental prices are dramatically low. Its $2 or less at Blockbuster and mom-and-pop rental stores were driven out of business because they could hardly compete on price. Chains are the only ones staying afloat due to lower costs. Most stores compete on service and selection, and supplementals.
For example, blockbuster lets you keep older rentals for a week. New rentals for several days. Most local shops let me only rent for 2 days. Blockbuster has a wide selection. The only local place that I've seen that beats their selection is a chain in Philadelphia called TLA. They have a mammoth collection that would make any movie buff cry tears of joy.
And finally, for the impulse buyers, they have new titles on sales as well as for rent, and they have previously viewed titles for the price conscious consumer.
Ondemand is about the price of old rentals, but that's because you are "paying for convenience." The prices used to be in the $10 range for PPV movies and events. That price continues to drop so I bet PPV will drop to $2 soon. If rentals can't continue to lower costs, that's when they'll be in trouble.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Dish Network has a few hybrids (e.g. all day dish ticket), but I don't know if their PVR works with them or how. If it does you would have the pause/ff/rew, etc.
Anyone remember Circuit City and their pushing DIVX - the watch for only 24 hour DVDish format (you could "silver" the disk though). It died. I don't think it was ever cracked (I don't think anyone bothered).
Apple has the only thing close to working - they allow burning CDs and downloading to their iPod and even sharing with a few computers. (I have one of those Panasonic "media devices" SD-MPEG4-JPEG-Voice recorder/players which works well but the DRM is so bad I can't even put an MP3 broadcast on it and listen to it - fortunately that is the only DRM it has).
Here's what I'm aiming/waiting for: 1) Never buy music on some physical media again. 2) Never walk to Blockbuster again. 3) Never print photo en-masse again 4) Never receive paper invoice again. 5) Never archive my paper invoice again. 6) Newspaper? Books? When will get decent device to view them instead of wasting perfectly good trees?
Number 1) will require that the labels understand that. And they'll have to share the savings. $.99 a tune won't cut it. I won't pay more than $.50/tune. You cut the middleman, that's saving #1. No brick-and-mortar store, that's saving #2. No distribution infrastructure, that's saving #3. And we could go on. So come on labels, shares the savings and you'll see the average Joe like me won't stop at a typical collection of 200-300 CDs. You'll still make plenty of money. Also required is decent DARs (digital audio receiver) that don't impose their UI and don't store music locally. sO FAR http://www.prismiq.com/products/index.asp looks the closest to what I have in mind...
#2 requires video-on-demand. Pay-per-view probably already dented the video/DVD industry somewhat. I don't know how much. Someone on this thread said he prefers buying CD over using v-o-d. How many people want to see how many movie twice? Very few to both answers is my guess. So I won't pay more for a permanent copy. v-o-d is coming. We just need the bandwidth to come along. Oh and good software.
#3 starts with digital camera. My Canon S40 does wonder. Took 3K pictures while on the road for 6 months earlier this year. You need a good tool to manage all this however. What's your preferred one? I tried Adobe's, Jasc's, Apple's and ACDSystem's solutions. Adobe won't let me try with more than 250 pictures. Dang! Ruled out, since it's doesn't allow for a realistic test. Jasc Photo Album is sluggish when there's a lot of pix. Also too buggy. iPhoto? C'mon, give me a break. I just bought a Powerbook. Love the Mac but only Apple bigots can pretend iPhoto rules. In fact, it sucks (ask me why?). Best of show goes to ACDSee. It does _nearly_ everything I'd like and with just a little more work, it would manage any kind of document, not just photos, with flying-colors.
#4 Service providers are picking up on that one. At least some. Schwabs, Etrade, the banks (Wells Fargo finally got that) all give a choice to opt-out of paper delivery. Not so with PAcbell, Verizon, PG&E (at least last I checked).
As for 5) The ones I still get on paper, I will start scanning. But I need a good filing management system.
#6 One edition of your preferred newspaper requires that someone cut down all the trees on an area roughly the size of a football (american or european, you pick) field. I haven't tried the tablet PCs yet but anyway, before they're any use they need to be more mainstream. What's the screen luminosity like? Anyone tried those? Are you getting headaches after a while? Eye fatigue? Are they light enough to take out anywhere (or nearly)?
What do you think?
Yes, Yes, Yes, and we'll all have microchips in our brains, etc. Nicholas Negroponte lives..
Having recently put some thought into this I have come to the following conclusion: There is a market for Release Date PPV movies. What I mean by this is that while some movies are worth going to the theater to see "on the big screen", many movies I am waiting for "to come out on video" simply because of the inconvenience of movie theaters.
To see a movie in a theater I must not only pay more, but deal with crowds, lines (whether or not I buy tickets online), discomfort (compared to my home), high food and drink prices, increasing amounts of paid advertising, unruly people/kids making various noise, etc. For some movies that I do not feel need a "big screen" (Star Wars does, Serendipity does not) I would gladly pay a higher price to see in the comfort of my own home a la Pay Per View (PPV).
Now, you must contend with the facts... I can have many people in my home versus a ticket each at the theater. I can tape whatever is on my TV versus the difficulty of doing so in the theater. Thus you must make the price comparatively high and install a degree of tamper-resistant (nothing is tamper-proof) technology to facilitate the transaction and discourage casual misuse.
Of course money (ticket sales) would be lost by the theaters. However, there are many movies I have never seen due to theater inconvenience. By the time it is out on video the marketing dollars generated hype has worn off and I don't care anymore. The movie companies ARE losing money on me in this case... I'm sure many of you can cite cases where you thought "I'll wait till its out on video" and then NEVER saw the movie.
Thoughts?
Come play Moral Decay!
Wow, they must be fucking geniuses. Good work gentlemen.
Bah, wont happen anytime soon.
There are too many people (myself included) that live in areas not served by ANY form of broadband. Until net services are seen as a necessity to everyday life, the media companies wont alienate a HUGE portion of their audience.
Kevin
Not only am I absolutely positive that music CDs will continue to be sold for as long as I'm interested in buying them, but I'm seriously considered purchasing only secondhand CDs from now on anyway. There's heaps of cool stuff I never got the first time around. I can finally finish my Mike Oldfield collection, or Jarre, or Vangelis. And the dance stuff I quite enjoy is dirt cheap a couple of seasons later.
Why would PDF replace anything? It is useless! The best one can do is extract the text and put it into plain text. PDF is terrible for screenreading. The formating is all predetermined. The text _"*NEVER*"_ to the size of the window. If the text is an inconvient size -- tough.
XHTML on the other hand is prefect for screenreading. Allow me to illustrate:
Let us suppose that your friend in another country wrote a book and wants you to read it. Would your friend to email it to you as PDF or XHTML?Impeach Bush
I hate the tinny quality on MP3's and prefer real music off a cdrom or vinyl.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Do people not know that DVD includes "video"?