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Gates Predicts DVD Obsolete In 10 Years
An anonymous reader writes "Not to say that Mr. Gates has been wrong before (sarcasm), but now he is claiming that DVDs will be obsolete in 10 years. As this post claims, I would have to disagree with the world's richest man and say that compact disk media is here to stay for a while because there is just no substitute for a media that cost cents." (And since SMH is going registration only, thanks to the anonymous reader who points out two non-registration sites -- FlexBeta and Yahoo! -- to read the same wire story, and for the observation that not all of Gates' predictions pan out.)
DVDs will be as obselete as PlaystationOne games are now, in that the PS2 will still play the PS1 games, and you can still purchase a PS1 to play these games.
There will be new formats available, so I'm sure in 10 years time we'll all be watching HDVD, or some other similar but greatly enhanced format, but the players will still play DVDs (in the same way that DVD players today still play VideoCD).
The physical format won't change (210mm diameter, 21mm diameter hole, 2.1mm thick), but what can be held on a disk that size will change. DVD is 2 layers, but we have already seen that someone has managed to get 15 layers, and that was 2 years ago.
So, we will have something better, but we will still be able to use our DVDs for a long time yet.
T.
From this article:
Here the crystal ball clouded over due to a blue screen of death. Bill's predictions and his crystal balls can be a little inaccurate. He once said that there was no future in that little networking novelty called the Internet.
Yeah, and he also said we wouldn't need more than 640k but in this case I believe he is at least partially correct. It may not be in 10 years or less but scratchable media needs to go away. We need something that can handle a large amount of data and remain nearly indestructible.
I have probably screwed up 90% of my CD collection over the years. I now just keep most of the music that I really want to save as SHN's on my computer. At least that way I can recreate the CDs as necessary. While I take very good care of my DVD collection (burned or otherwise) I can still see problems occurring due to drops, accidental scratching, etc. I moved most of my music collection to CD in the late 90s and gave away my tape entire tape collection in 2002. What happens when that media goes south (and we have had how many stories predicting that it won't last forever)? I'm screwed basically.
Gates' idea, while nice for corporations that would control the media, wouldn't be so great for the consumers. The RIAA/MPAA would just LOVE to control and watch how many times you watch/listen to something and charge you accordingly. I don't think that the people would though. While he might be talking about a more local storage location I doubt it. Sad but true...
Let's try and develop nearly indestructible media and keep the storage local and out of corporation control. When he says the "TV" will be able to tell if we can watch the content or not I am fearful that he is less concerned with our children's virgin eyes and more concerned with whether our bank accounts can afford it.
He envisons a Microsoft DRM WMA future with Janus and its ilk. That's what he wants anyway, but he won't get it.
It will know what we want to watch
That's funny, usually I don't even know what I want to watch. If I feel like watching something, I like to flip open the DVD binder and start browsing.
DVDs/CDs won't go away until there is ubiquitous broadband, including in the mountains, in the car, out on a boat, and everyone has terabytes of crash-protected (RAID or whatever) storage (I don't want $8000 worth of movie purchases depending on a hard drive not crashing).
Heck, broadband isn't even available everywhere in major cities right now, contrary to what the pundits say, let alone in your car where the kids want to watch a movie. Sure there are a few mobile broadband pilots starting out, but how long will it be before Verizon/whoever can take 100,000 peole simultaneously streaming movies from their home server to the back seat of their minivans in the middle of the drive across Kansas, and do it for pennies an hour?
For once I agree with Gates. Who wants to muck about with discs? I am already making plans to build a large disc array to store my entire DVD collection.
On the other hand, as a delivery medium DVD is pretty cheap and efficient, I just think that DVDs should be like other software, you buy the disc and then install it on your movie server and put the disc away as your backup.
As for video on demand, TiVo certainly shows the possibilities and I think that going to a situation where we can select video material from an enormous library where we pay for each piece of material and don't have to sit through adverts and other crap, well, that would be heaven frankly
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Admittedly the 5.25" is gone, but seriously, installed user base and legacy uses make ubiquitous media types hard to get rid of. The day Dell stops selling new towers with floppy drives and Blockbuster stops renting VHS is the day that, well, we've probably only got another decade before the CD-ROM gives out. I imagine DVDs will continue just a little while after that.
To sum: "Gates is likely off by at least five years," says the 200,000,000th richest man in the world.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Isn't it obvious that DVDs won't be the primary distribution medium in 2014? Gates isn't saying we'll all have tablet PC's (or flying cars). He's saying that the CD format, now widely available for 20+ years, won't last another 10.
Of course he's wrong on this point: true OSS fanatics will still be using Linux on bootable DVDs on their obsolete hardware. And I still have some cassette tapes floating around.
But really, who cares? Gates isn't in the business of making predictions. And the people who are in that business, like Cringely make equally stupid predictions such as "IPv6 will be popular" and "Wal-Mart will take over the online music market". Who cares?
Any display system for which DVD is not "good enough" (in terms of image/sound quality) isn't going to deliver much added value if it's just plunked into the corner of Joe Sixpack's living room. To get an experience that significantly improves upon existing high-end TV sets, you need a room specifically designed as a home theater. That sets a very high barrier to adoption.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Isn't the link in the article presuming the tablet PC was a failed prediction a little premature? Maybe Mr.Gates just has a longer time horizon than you. The thing only launched a year or two ago. Linux has been around... what... 10 years? OH NO! Linux on the desktop is a failure!
Patience.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
Okay, I'm risking burning some karma here, but I had a post modded +5 funny this morning, so I have a bit to burn. ;-)
Have you ever considered that they couldn't care less about DRM on the media?
What possible reason would Microsoft, or more personally Bill Gates care about it? Seriously. They don't produce movies. They don't produce music.
The demand for it comes from the producers of content. They're a business and provide it. If they push to have their DRM standardized in commercial media systems, thats what they have to do... to provide that service to the content producers, it necessarily has to be pervasive.
If you want to Microsoft bash, I'm sure there'll be an IE security hole article today, but this doesn't seem like a supportable reason to.
With the DVD's copy protection / region monopoly features so thoroughly cracked, the makers are anxiously looking for a replacement.
The replacement may have the exact same physical characteristics but be incompatible with exiting DVD standards. Once something catches on there's no benefit to maintaining DVD as as standard (even a backwards compatible one).
I'd be suprised if it in fact takes 10 years for this to happen with as much consolidation as there has been among the media companies.
1980's
Bill G: 640k ought to be enough for anybody.
2004:
Bill G: In 10 years, 4.7 GB won't be enough for anybody.
Thing is, this time around I think he's more likely to be right.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
DVDs (in one format or another) aren't gonna go away anytime soon.
Not everyone has or can get broadband. There's no chance of broadband at the summer cottage. There's no broadband available in my car as I'm driving cross country. Yet, at the cottage, I can have a TV and DVD player, and in the car I can get an LCD/DVD player to occupy the kids as I'm driving.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
I don't think it's entirely out of line to expect DVD to be obsolete in 10 years - at least in its current form. There are two issues - #1) the studios are afraid of piracy, especially with some of the very high speed networking that is just around the corner, and #2) the media is becoming far more compact both in data storage technology and in compression technology.
From Bill's point of view, I think he sees the studio's desire for Digital Rights Management as a way to plan the death of the DVD as it now is (which has a form of DRM, but it's been cracked). I also have a feeling that he sees high speed downloads and/or wireless as an alternate distribution means, but again, only with built-in DRM. This would probably be desirable, as if the DRM was cracked, some new form could be used on newer media. Some people will never give up on physical media, though, so there probably will be a "new DVD" format, maybe with a writable area that can manage rights management (probably tied to hardware like DIVX [Digital Video Express, not the codec] was, with some way to view like video stores do, and also probably the thing I dread most).
Bill is wishing for digital "On-Demand" video.
He's a scratcher.
You know the type.
You pick up a CD/DVD of theirs off of the stack on top of their TV and notice that every single damn disc has a scratch on it.
You put it in to play/listen - it starts to skip and they're like, "Oh weird, how'd that happen?"
The worst is the scratcher-friends who craftily ask to borrow your favorite CD/DVD. (Because all of theirs are unwatch/unlistenable)
So, you're all like "sure!"
You get it back after 2 months after bugging them for weeks about it and you open up the case to find . . . SCRATCHES ALL OVER THE DAMN DISC.
And you call them on it - and they say "What? I didn't put those there! It must've been like that when you gave it to me."
Even if you obsessively carefully handle your discs, put them away when you're done and never abentmind-edly store stacks of them on sandpaper.
THEY get offended?!
Do these people have no respect for personal property?
The secret, Bill, is to just put things away when you're done with them.
Either that, or someone will invent un-scratchable coatings, which I find far more likely in the next 10 years.