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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. "
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.
I mean in the worst case scenario this will only mean pay-per-view and draconian DRM.
BOO! TERRO
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?
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.
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NSFWServices 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
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 think they just project the last five years onto the next five years, and if you do that then the findings aren't unreasonable. On the other hand you could point out that PDF has been around for ten years and grown explosively, but hasn't replaced printed media yet.
I think what these guys keep confusing is that CONSUMING and COLLECTING are two different mindsets, and physical media will always have a market for those of us who like to accumulate.
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.
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?
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.
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.
PDF is less convenient (to read) than physical media. But MP3s are more convenient (to listen to) than physical media. That's why people rip even CDs that they own into their MP3 players
People who collect MP3s are also collectors. I definately feel more like a collector when I occasionally log onto a P2P system then when I am in a CD store. While I am in the P2P system it is pure hunting and gathering with no concern about cost. When I am in the CD store it is about deciding which of the CDs are worthy my hard earned money (and let's not forget the space they take up in my CD rack).
On the one hand it is cool to look at my rack and see the stuff I own summarized nicely. But on the other hand, physical media is a pain in the ass. CDs and DVDs are really poorly designed media. Way too fragile. For DVDs: too many silly restraints about skipping FBI warnings and advertisments. For CDs: not enough information density.
If I could leave that all behind I probably would.
Somewhat different story for movies, of course. Sending the contents of a DVD at this rate would cost around $12 which is cost prohibitive.
"PDF has been around for ten years and grown explosively, but hasn't replaced printed media yet."
It hasn't completely replaced printed media, or replaced it everywhere, but it has replaced printed media to an extent. I routinely receive products with no printed manual, but either a PDF on a CD or else just on a website somewhere.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
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
While I am in the P2P system it is pure hunting and gathering with no concern about cost. When I am in the CD store it is about deciding which of the CDs are worthy my hard earned money (and let's not forget the space they take up in my CD rack).
Would that have anything to do with whether or not you pay for P2P-source MP3s? If you're ripping your own stuff, cool. It seems to drive RIAA nuts, but I think that case falls into fair use. If you're talking about a pay service like Apple's iTunes, that's fine too. You're still paying for what you use. If you're grabbing copyrighted MP3s without paying for the artist's work in some fashion, then your argument doesn't work. It's like saying "I like stealing cars to joy ride rather than having to take the bus".
Five years ago the MegaCorp I worked for at the time was just beginning a merger with another MegaCorp. At that time we had almost completed our Win3.11->Win NT4 migration. The other company had gone from Netware/Win3.11 to Netware/Win95.
The PHB's at the other company spent a large amount of time and energy lobbying our CIO to go with Netware for everyone. One of their key points was the fact that Gartner had stated in several research papers about that time that Netware was going to be around for quite sometime and was a viable long term technology strategy for the corporate IT environment.
Riiiiight.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - BF
Sounds more like a hardware problem than a XP problem.
I'm not sure actually. I can boot Knoppix on it fine, and it runs for as long as I tested it without panicking or anything, which means that if it's a hardware problem, it's probably the hard drive. The hard drive scans fine with CHKDISK, but that doesn't mean it's not occasionally encountering failures. Right now, it usually either bluescreens on boot with a "can't page in" type error, or else it gives "No bootable media found", which certainly hints that it could be the HD. Sometimes it boots fine, but usually crashes pretty quick.
OTOH, she was hit by blaster, and probably installed several trojans (she sometimes gets popup ads on the desktop), and generally does not run a tight ship, so the system could just be h0sed.
I suggested that she either take it into the shop, or else back it up (this would be via ethernet to someone else's computer, as she has no CDR), wipe the hard drive, and reinstall.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
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
I probably have watched every movie I own at least 3 or 4 times. That barely makes the cost of buying them worthwile. However, I have also loaned each movie to a friend or family memeber on average 3 or 4 times. You may think it doesn't help me to do that. I'm saving them the rental cost, not myself. But then, they're willing to loan me their movies which I may want to see.
Of course I have a few movies that I've watched many more than 3 or 4 times... bottle rocket, rushmore, the big lebowski...
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
No more money going over there. All my fuel money stays in the USA.
Biodiesel : domestic, renewable, clean, and in the fuel tank of my bone stock 2002 New Beetle TDI
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!