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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.)
I still don't have it... The first question I think you should ask yourself is "Is there demand for such a technology", if not, ask yourself the following question "Can I create demand for such a technology". If both questions can be answered with a "No", which I think is the case for video on demand, then trash the idea... Nobody seems to want video on demand, and nobody managed to create a market for it.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
compact disk media is here to stay for a while because there is just no substitute for a media that cost cents.
That's not completely true. Higher quality will make another format more popular with users, and something that can't be copied easily will be popular with the MPAA. With DVD burners (even dual-layer and blu-ray) becoming available to the home user, DVDs are to easy to copy from the MPAA's view, and average consumers who don't burn dvd's and get told that a new format will look better on their new expensive HDTV will be tempted to switch over. I read a recent artical about a company that created a new video recording format that hold about 1GB/layer and can be layered 100 deep. It was some sort of "holographic" alternative that wrote the data onto what looked like a 1" square piece of glass. It even had it's own custom reader out that was rather small. Supposedly it's near impossible for a user to make a pirated copy of this movie, and something that small that can hold that much data would provide some incredible picture quality. Anything that can provide high image quality or is difficult to copy will catch on. Remember, the MPAA can shape the market, and if they like a new technology, they can put on the neccessary preasure to replace DVDs before their time. Of course such a move would motivate users to pirate movies online at the same scale they do music (which is becoming more possible with bigger HDs and highly available broadband). Well, in the end, nobody can predict the death of a technology, espeically somebody with a track record like Bill Gates.
Ok, I think I'm done now...
I dunno if I agree with Gates on this one. First, there is an awful lot of deployed hardware to handle DVDs. Second, media companies are pretty happy with the model of being able to sell a physical object. Microsoft, on the other hand, would love to become a service provider that everyone subscribes to. Third, the consumer benefits that Gates lists are pretty, well, unimpressive. The facial recognition is just fluff. The fragility of DVDs is true, but even an object that needs to be handled carefully is more substantial (and in my experience, trustworthy) than 100% reliable service. Having a personalized electronic video index instead of one general one might be somewhat nice, but it's not all that exciting. "Keeping the kids out" hasn't sold much of anything thus far, and I don't see it likely to start, especially not migrating everyone to a new format. The "know what we want to watch" thing was tried with the Tivo, and I expect that it will eventually be an interesting feature, but it's not a feature that neccessitates a format change -- an existing DVD player with some way of grabbing the latest "similar associations" database or phoning home could do it -- you don't need to blow away the entire DVD format for it.
No, if Gates is right, it will be for other reasons. If we can really get the bandwidth for it, video-on-demand is a neat idea. You pay a subscription fee, and get to watch all the movies you want, and the ones of your choice. There will probably be some kind of add-ins that publishers will come up with that don't exist on DVDs, and demand for the add-ins might produce enough consumer interest.
Other than that, I see DVD staying around for a while.
May we never see th
I believe the actual quote is supposed to have been:
.exe file is less than that.
640K should be enough for anybody.
However, Bill Gates does deny that he ever said that, or that it was taken out of context.
At the time, 640K was enough. Today, people are amazed to see anything application whose
T.
So true. Its the same thing with Audio CDs. There are numerous other formats of audio media avalable such as MiniDisc, DVDA, SACD yet the same ol classic 44.1khz sampling late 70's technology still exists to be the primal choice of audio medium. This also could be the same thing with DVD till HDTV actually becomes mainstream and affordable enough for people who wish keep their two kidneys.
VHS is still alive and kicking, sales may be down against DVD but the demand for VCRs and its cassets are still profitable enough to produce.
I've had this argument with an ardent tech evalgelist before. He argued that DVD,CDs and HDD are ridiculous, not only because they can be damaged easily, but beacause they are essentially mechanical devices. 5 microseconds was too slow for him. Radial latency was too much of a hang.
He figured that in 10 years time we'll all be using flash memory based devices capable of holding Gigabytes of data, instead of mechanical media.
I argued that while flash memory type devices would emerge, you can already get 1-2GB USB memory sticks, the CD/DVD format would also increase apace. Although I'd have to say DVD is lagging behind, but probobly only because, unlike USB flash, it required better hardware to use the higher storage. Blu-Ray discs should give us 50GB of portable storage, and Rockstar at least expects them for the next format of console.
I figured that in 10 years time 50GB DVDs will be the norm and perhaps as much as 200GB DVDs will be readily available. While at the same time flash memory might only get up to 10GB at an afforadble price. That was another argument I had in favour of DVD. Price. DVDs can be as cheap as $2, but even a 128MB USB stick will cost $50.
We will always have portable, hard media,(read only?) storage, simply because it will always be bigger cheaper but still slower than the alternatives. Having movies on HDD is nice, but how can we bring them over to a friends or with us on holidays? It's nice to have something you can hold in your hand and say, that's mine, rather than something 'somewhere' on hard disc that might expire, or delete itself by tomorrow.
May the Maths Be with you!
people like Gates think users do not want control. He thinks we just want to "work" or "have fun".
It is the primary reason why Windows sucks too: its all good and well to abstract the machine from the user using eye-candy and whatnot. It is a stupendously Big Mistake to abstract the machine from the -admins-.
He reminds me of that IBM guy: all the world needs is 5 computers...
And its true, at that time, 5 * IBM-CPU was enough for all computational requirements of the time.
However, the PC revolution was so succesful, because people -want- control, not just "work" or "fun", people want -information-, especially the dangerous kind, so we can avoid -being- in danger.
Thats also why fire's, and car-wrecks fascinate us. We like to avoid becoming one, it is a good strategy to survive as a human.
"/Dread"
Its not really a question of DVD's. Of course DVD's will be obsolete but if you read the article he's actually claiming that the idea of local portable storage will be dead. That everything will be networked and centralised. He makes the point that why would we carry around some fragile copy of the data when we can just have it delivered across the network to whichever device requires it. This is the microsoft vision now, computers+network access in everything. It's an interesting idea but local portable media has so many uses that I doubt it will disappear. Especially given that it is so cheap to make that it is disposible. Already blank DVD prices are cheap enough to make DVD's disposable and Sony et al are talking about making discs out of cardboard.
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I read the article and it seemed to me the quotes of a man who has lost contact to reality.
Sure if I have a billion dollars in the bank can I have information whenever, where ever I want it. However, I am about a billion dollars short and as such have to stick to cheaper things. Namely DVD's on special or the Movie Channels.
Also what Mr Gates is forgetting YET AGAIN, is that I like to own my own data or movies.
I am also amazed at his prediction that TV's and computer's will know what I want to see. Especially since often I have no idea what I want to watch and make a habit of channel surfing.
An individual who has too much money and time on his hands....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I doubt DVD's will become obsolete, but they will probably not be the medium of choice in the future. I could easily see in 10 years more emphasis on things like Video On Demand in the form of and legal, controlled online storefronts. With broadband pipes becoming more prolific and bandwidth speeds ever increasing, the availability of immediadly selectable, downloadable, and viewable content from a variety of sources seems very likely and doable.
In addition, we're soon approaching a point where specific media types could become a moot point. As things like memory cards and various portable and online storage capabilities become cheaper and have significantly larger capacities, the very notion of a specific media type will fade. As long as you can store, access, and transfer the content, the medium really will become irrelevent. And there's really no reason that this could not be done (reletivly) securely in a way that could probably satisfy the various "media organizations". It just requires some innovation to make the "playing" of the content controllable.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
I'm sure Mr. Gates' point is that since high-bandwidth network connectivity will be ubiquitous, there will be no point in *any* physical media. I mean, in normal circumstances, you wouldn't even think of saving a web site to a disk to show it to someone on another computer with internet access. So, assuming that network storage is fast and 'net access pervasive in 10 years, isn't it reasonable to assume that people will choose the path of least resistance, and store their items in such a way that they can be accessed from anywhere? This is certainly an idea that people have been talking about forever, and that we are starting to see now.
For example:
http://del.icio.us/ is a site dedicated to storing bookmarks
and there is iDisk, and all sorts of photo sites.
I don't think the article says anything new, the author just tries to make it sound controversial.
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Because setting up a suitable server and network connection is beyond the capabilities of the average person, and will still be so in ten years; and because the smart early adopter knows better than to trust his entire digital life to a single corporation.
I've seen multiple ISPs go under, and they would have taken my e-mail with them if I'd been dumb enough to trust that my mail would always be available to be delivered across the network from their servers. Joe Sixpack is starting to learn that lesson with his "free web mail" service that seemed like such a good idea at the time. Think he wants to put his entire music, movie and book collections on the same system?
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Of course, it makes perfect sense, they built a timer into all the DVD players that expires in about 10 years! The scary thing is i wouldnt put it past them to do that. He might not be too far off on this one. He could be talking about two things: DRM or internet storage. DVD used to be a locked down format, but thanks to some people who risked their own freedom to get us some, we have a pretty free format. Obviously this cant be allowed to continue so DVD must be retired and replaced with something more DRM'd.
On the other hand an hour ago I was about to get a big pack of CDRs and was thinking about a DVD burner and then it struck me, why not just by a new hard-drive? its not that much more expensive per GB, its more reliable (aslong as its not an IBM) and much faster especially considering you dont have to look for a disk. I used to burn lots of CDs just to carry work around, but these days i just store things online, CDs have replaced floppies but now they're starting to seem just as crap (with some going bad after just a year or two) DVDs are still not a perfect CD replacement because there are plenty of computers at uni's and work places etc that are stuck with CD drives and with fast internet access getting more popular i can just email myself files or leave my PC running and ftp to it from anywhere. We're going towards everything being networked and online, I havnt used a computer that wasnt on the net for some time now.
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But this really has little to do with the topic, which is about DVDs becoming obsolete. Consider this: 802.11x in my area is nearly useless as a community service because there are so many trees and such high humidity. And we STILL have no cable and likely never will, and even if they put a dslam in the local phone box most of the "town" is still too far away to make use of it. But the FCC is plodding ahead with plans to usurp the vhf analog tv band and are talking very seriously about giving some of that bandwidth over to local wireless services. That means even out here in nowhereland wireless media distribution becomes practical. All we need are devices to make VOD as easy to sue as the present day tv remotes and most of the community will never worry about those oddball services like netflix (which will evolve their marketing to providing quality rather than just selection) - because everyone will have "on demand" braindead action movies and tv sitcoms and all the crap they have now. Granted it'll be compressed to hell but, given the zeal of directv viewers who insist their picture is "just as good as dvd," most don't seem to have a problem with that now.
I would say that, if the FCC moves ahead with providing more lower frequency bandwidth to "wireless broadband" then predictions of DVD obsolescence are pretty much spot-on. In ten years "DVDs" won't be "DVDs" anymore they'll probably be some god forsaken "Windows Media" formatted disc (aka "WMDs") and most of us will have available to our homes "VOD" of the (shit) quality now enjoyed by all those digital cable and directv subscribers.
Have you seen this?
It's the modern equivalent of flipping through the CD binder, only much more convenient. As soon as I got it, I got RID of my CD binders.
When somebody invents an inexpensive video on demand system with an easy interface like that, I guarantee you'll be using it more often than your DVD binder. Even, occasionally, to watch movies you have on DVD! Shit, I watched the birdcage on TV last week, and I've owned that movie for 5 years!
As for broadband availability: do you think there's a chance that, over the next ten years, speed and availability issues might clear up? I mean, let's see: I got my RR line in a beta program in 1995, that's only 9 years ago. Twenty years ago, I was using a 300 baud coupler modem and the average cat didn't know what a modem was. Computers generally didn't have operating systems, they had bootstrap loaders and BASIC interpretters. It's called progress.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Since it has been done before, it can easily be done again.
Phase I - Introduce new technology. Market it as superior. Include DRM with better images, features, etc. This will be too expensive for most people. But it will be touted as the next thing you wish you could have.
Phase II - Cut prices. Offer deals with the new hardware. When CDs came out, you could often get deals for 6-10 CDs with purchase of a CD player. Taking that into account, CD players seemed reasonable.
Phase III - Force old media out of the market. No longer agree to buy back unsold media from retailers (except with the new format). Most retailers will not take the chance on unsold merchandise, and will start cutting back their catalog in the old format.
This is how CDs were brought to the market in such a short time and why LPs lost favor. Once that critical market mass is reached, the old technology will be obsolete (in retail). Video casettes are dead - not in the sense that you cannot find them anywhere - but in the sense that they are becoming much harder to find since retailers are dropping it as a format.
A few things to consider are the vast sweeping changes that can happen in 10 years. Personal Computers, nay, computers at all, are very little like what they were ten years ago. The two things that will decide if this prediction is correct will be the way we store things, and the things we store.
Looking at the time, 10 years doesn't seem too long to expect a shift in technology. Consider the floppy. Very popular 10 years ago. Hell, 10 years ago CD-ROM drives weren't even guaranteed in most systems, so floppies were the assumed portable storage. Currently CD-ROM is assumed, and DVD is becoming so. I find it easy to purchase systems without floppies. To speclate that the DVD may be replaced in 10 years is not so far fetched.
The acceleration of advancing technology will probably decide whether the media of DVD is sound enough technology. The write-once, or at least write-more-finite-times-than-magnetic-media aspects of any optical media will lead to their demise before their size, is my personal prediction. Scratching, warping, and other physical weakness of the media seem to be pretty reasonable reasons to not use them forever. While I don't think they'll go away in ten years (my computer store still sells 3.5-inch floppies), they won't last forever (I cannot, however purchase a 5.25-inch floppy off the shelf).
The size of the things we store continues to grow, but that doesn't seem to be growing as fast. The sampling of sound hasn't increased the size of storage required since the introduction of the CD (in fact, thanks to compression like MP3, it's smaller), but higher-quality video has become common. What you type will rarely fill the media, but what data you generate probably can. For example, backing up other media (like your HDD) onto inexpensive optical is very common, so this might drive a larger solution. Like CDs can store multiple tunes or albums(heck, to the hundreds of tunes and many albums with MP3 compression), video storage of the future may store much more than we live with now; entire seasons or runs of television, all of the series of movies or actor's lines, every home video you've ever produced...
Not that you care, but personally, I use flash media now for most of my portable storage. It's virtually indestructable (in everyday, carry it in my pocket use). It's pretty spacious; my current 256MB USB drive is capable of holding practically my entire working environment (OS not included, but data and editors are), and larger drives are available when this no longer suffices. They're not as cheap, I'll grant you, but I got it on sale for less than a stack of CDRWs, and I've written to it more times than I could have a similar priced stack of DVD write-onces. While not replacing DVDs yet, I'll argue that these flash media are reasonable replacements for CDs; it's conceivable that a small shift in the technology or manufacture and this could replace DVDs in size, too.
I use an external HDD for the backup of my main system's HDD. Well, in reality, I typically back up all important data across multiple HDDs--either on drive sets in RAID, separate systems or servers, or both. Again, not as cheap, but faster and rewritable to a much larger degree (lots of billions of rewrites versus thousands or millions).
End the FUD