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Mark Cuban on the future of HD Media
kcmarshall writes "Mark Cuban's most recent blog post talks about what media will carry HD movies and content. The post makes it obvious that he's not a typical exec with a secretary who checks his email for him. He writes about ripping DVDs "that [he] had PURCHASED" to keychain drives and copying HD content to an external FireWire drive. He believes that the solution to movie piracy is bigger file formats."
I would like to think Marky is a really great Tech Leader after all, he did sell his company to Yahoo for more than I can remember making him several hundred million in the transaction purchasing the Dallas Mavericks to entertain him (living pretty good). But then you get to read his blog and he just now has discovered the compression algorithms everyone has been using to put DVD on CD (SVCD at 600 or so MB). He thinks that making larger formats is going to thwart piracy yet he didn't connect the dots where you can always take a higher format and compress it to a lower quality format of any size you want. Lets say that today we would have 50gb HD-DVDs what would prevent me from squeezing that file to 600mb know? Piracy isn't the problem, it the business model. People want to view a moving they OWN on whatever media they choose. In fact the best of all worlds would be to have a Google type service where you purchase a movie and it is stored online for you. You can watch it whenever, put it on whatever media and sell your rights after your done. The future of media is not Video On Demand (that was last year) it Video On Demand ownership over Wireless (well maybe not the ownership).
"He believes that the solution to movie piracy is bigger file formats."
That'll last for a few years. I remember the same argument for DVDs and CDs before them.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
I'll get more bandwidth.
A decade ago, downloading an mp3/ogg would've taken me a long while (that was probably 28.8 modem days.) Now it's done almost before I begin.
5 years ago, download a CD/movie would've taken me a long while. Today it's a reasonable period of time.
Today, a DVD takes me a while to download. Overnight usually. But you know what? With Verizon and other companies getting ready to offer services at up to 30 Mbps, I'm pretty sure my downloads are about to get faster again.
...will simply meet file translation and compression utilities.
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
Someone thinking of how to use technological innovations for profit instead of viewing them as Pure Evil(tm)?
Incredible. I love it.
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
Yeah, transfering 4.7GB of data across the internet was totally out of the question in 1997 (unless you were in college on ethernet), but now I could grab a 4.7GB image from a Torrent within a day with my cable modem connection. So what'll stop us from downloading 200GB super-HD movies across our mega-super-broadband in 2011? Didn't RFTA.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I agree that this is an obviously effective countermeasure to piracy since storage is so cheap (and getting cheaper). Shouldn't they be trying a little harder to maximize the potential of existing or near-future tech to fight piracy? I could use a 10,000 character password to keep you out of my account, but wouldn't a complex short password be a hell of a lot more practical? Seems wasteful and kind of a cop-out. A "the bad guys have already won" kind of attitude
Bigger files will prevent copywrite infringment for a short while, until computers advance a year or two, and can them easily handle more data.
When I bought a P90 in the 1990s, the idea that you could put an entire album of music on a drive was silly. Hard drives were 500mb to 800mb at the time, and 16 bit 44100 for two channels filled hundreds of megs in uncompressed format. Then MP3 compression appeared, along with Multi-gigabyte drives.
Go ahead, use larger file formats. The pirates of tomorrow will appreciate the extra quailty.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
People will always download anything at any size if they want it bad enough. People sleep and their computers don't.
Just like there was a conspiracy rumor about government preventing the 100mbps network deployment to people's home because it just promotes pirating even more. Bullshit? I dunno.
"I ask if anyone in the room has ever downloaded or uploaded a movie or TV show in HD quality to or from a P2P network. No one has ever raised their hand. That is in spite of the fact that HDTV has been in the clear, over the air since 1998."
/me raises hand a few hundred times... I realize I am in a small (but growing) group of people, but I download HD content on a regular basis. Not just DVD resolution HD transcodes, but full 720p and 1080i MPEG-2 transport streams, XviD rips, and WMV9. Mark is right that less people will download as files get bigger, but bandwidth is on the upswing again (6mbps seems to be becoming more widespread for cable modems), and more efficient codecs like h.264 will help bring down sizes again. Not to mention borrowing media from your friends. Size will only slow down, not stop piracy.
;)
Mark's assertion that by this time next year we'll be looking at 1TB drives for 25 cents per GB might be a bit optimistic as well.
I suspect the people still working in digital multimedia would be less interested in Mark's wisdom on technology than in his advice on the optimum time to sell their soon-to-be-worthless company to Yahoo and buy a basketball team...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
If that happens then the only people who can pirate movies will be people with a lot of bandwidth/high speed internet connections. Then you are going to see wacky legislation come into play where the Government will prosecute anybody who has anything more then a cable modem coming into his or her house. Good times.
-Dipster
This has to be one of the most short sighted solutions I've heard. Firstly compression would always yield some content at current formats even if the source was larger. Even more predictably, after a few years the larger formats would easily fit on emerging media and devices as data density increases and costs continue to decline. Most obviously any larger format would require a media for public distribution, say HD-DVD and that format would almost immediately be adopted by the PC industry as a denser data format allowing unencrypted content of the equivalent size & quality to be ripped and burned after a quick visit to Fry's.
From the article: "The bigger question, the Billion Dollar question is how to deliver content on or to hard drives, regardless of size and capacity, in a way that consumers will enjoy it, and do it cost effectively today?"
That really is the big question...there are many people out there who enjoy DVDs that don't understand enough about computers to mess with hard drives. People generally don't seem to like change, and would probably rather stick with DVDs than switch to a new format. This is all idle speculation on my part though...
You should fight piracy by making what you sell higher quality, so that anything you could easily pirate would be a cheap knockoff of what you can give them for a fee. This would be almost a shareware-like system, where you could get a crippled version for free, and, if you like it, pay money for the high quality, full version.
This would make piracy tolerable, since it would be more of a "try-before-you-buy" sort of system.
Yeah, because compressing 1280 x "whatever" video is so much harder than standard NTSC. *cough drop every other line cough* seriously, people download 600 mb divx rips because the quality is "good enough", making a bigger, badder original file isn't going to change anything.
Compression is here now. It won't last a few years. CD-R and DVD-R sized rips will appear just like they do now. Perhaps the larger file format will slow down compression a bit but it won't be a real deterrent.
He believes that the solution to movie piracy is bigger file formats
He's obviously someone that just doesn't get it. He must of missed out on the whole MP3 thing. In his rant, he talks about how no one he's run into has ever uploaded or downloaded an HD movie from the net. He fails to ask, however, if anyone's ever uploaded or downloaded a movie that came from HDTV sources.
Sure, while bandwidth is low, people won't be downloading HDTV content, but once there's fiber to the door that will change.
There's an ISP in my area (Free) that I'm switching to when I change apartments in two months. They offer a combo TV/DSL package that's 5Mbps down normally, and 2Mbps down when you're watching TV. A friend has it, and he says you can't tell the difference. (This is on PAL, which has a higher resolution, but a slightly slower refresh rate than NTSC.)
If I can stream regular quality content at 3Mbps, by the time we get to 30Mbps and up to the home, this guy's entire premise will be destroyed. I hate to bust his bubble, but the media kiosk has been tried, and tried again. No one's been able to get it to work, and with good reason. There are no consumer electronics players that take a standard format external drive.
If we could see hard drives that fit the new slot based version of PCIe, this might change (assuming you could get disk-based players like PVRs that use those instead of an internal hard drive), then you could ramp into the market, by providing added functionality to those already in need of disk space (easy upgrades), and service after you had seeded the market.
if you're asking yourself that question, here's a partial answer:
He's the owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA basketball team. He's looks young, probably in his 30s or early 40s, has tons of money to his name, and is far from the typical millionaire/billionaire stereotype. He's not well liked by the upper NBA execs for frequent criticism of the referees, and has gotten himself fined on numerous occasions since taking ownership of the Mavs a few years ago. He once said he wouldnt trust one of them to operate a Dairy Queen (an ice cream shop in the US), to which DQ said come give it a try (Cuban did do a DQ Manager for a day). I dont think the guy has ever worn a suit in his life. He'll be hosting some reality-type TV show this fall that, from commercials, appears to be a knock off of The Apprentice.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
As someone who has worked in and observed the media industry for a while, I have to once again where a lot of these thoughts fall short
1) People like watching stuff on their television while sitting on their couch. I mean, it's great to talk about all sorts of computer tech being integrated into this and that but at the end of the day, I don't want my darn TV to bluescreen during the superbowl and i'm a heck of a lot more accepting and tolerant of this type of nonsense than most people are
2) Piracy is a massive issue and will continue to be so long as the studios follow the "ain't broke don't fix" attitude. The moment a tech window opens up, if media isn't delivered to the people in a reasonable format, people will make do. Ie., I won't pay $6 for a quality video on my PC, but if you can deliver me a watchable video on my PC right now for free, hrmmm....
3) There is a huge dilemma facing all the studios and tech companies as they contemplate the build out of structures to support these types of technologies. I hope Verizon picks up and does some crazy 30 mbps + connection, but at the end of the day, these things take YEARS and YEARS to recoup costs on and without sharing some of that cost with the studios (who benefit most from appropriately developed tech platforms), these rollouts will be MUCH slower than anticipated.
I thought security by obscurity was the weakest form of digital protection... now I know one worse: Security by Obesity.
Anyone want to rename some 2 year old DVD-SVCD code to the "fen-fen" algorithm?
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
...and marked "Cuban" on my DVDs. Now what? Do I wait for the next article for more instructions?
Is this some quest?
[sig]darkfus[/sig]
Does this mean I will be able to buy the whole season of Bikini Destinations in uncompressed HD quality?
"He believes that the solution to movie piracy is bigger file formats."
Umm no.
1.) Bigger files can be shrunk down. See how an 8 gig DVD gets knocked down to 700 megs.
2.) This doesn't solve the problem of piracy. It's barely a hurdle. The solution to piracy is making money, not stopping it from happening. There are lots of ways to do that, most of them involve making the product better. I'm perfectly saavy when it comes to watching movies without paying for them. I don't. Why? Because I'm a good honest person? Nah. It's because going to the store and plunking down a few bucks is better than downloading it over a period of several days. Plus I like commentaries etc.
Don't close doors, open new ones.
"Derp de derp."
It doesn't matter if you release everyting in 1080p 90FPS DV files, all it takes is Discreet Media Cleaner and suddenly it's 480p at 30FPS MPEG2. Or VirtualDub with ffmpeg/xvid/theora or whatever.
It's the classic ratio of disk space versus processor power. The more processor power you have the less disk space you need (As you get better compression with compute-intensive algorithms)
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
or at least the sharing part..
They do make it easy to download the movies by giving out 3Mb/s, but they do hinder the sharing of the content by capping ups at 128Kb/s.
Sure, with the advent of distributed downloads, bit torrent, etc, the bandwidth hit itsn't that big, but its certainly become a hassle to share those 4.7 GB files if it takes you 8 hours to get it and 150 hours to share it.
While this person might be on to something (keep the file too large to be convienently pirated through digital means), it seems counterintiutive to the whole smaller-faster-better-cheaper paradigm that we usually ascribe to technology in general and computers specifically. Furthermore, you'd have to increase quality with that size, or the people will rebel against much larger material costs, not to mention the difficulty of putting such a movie on a removeable medium.
Basically, the idea is sound, but it probably won't fly without better storage mechanisms.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
The original content producer is the only one who can legally crank out billions of copies of his work.
So, flood the marketing channels, and make it so easy to buy his work that its not worth the trouble to make one for yourself.
Kinda like nails. Who would think of trying to make their own, despite any patent protection that might be involved in making nails?
For most things I buy, the people in the marketing channels have made damn sure its in my best interests to buy the product, even if I could make my own... as they have the tremendous advantage of economy of scale, that by the very laws of nature, I will never have.
In economics parlance, this is called a "natural monopoly", and does quite well, even without any intervention of rights protection groups.
We already have laws in place to go after anyone else trying to replicate oopyrighted works on such a scale to make the economics of mass production profitable.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
what will eventually limit people from downloading media is the free time they'll have to play/listen/watch it.
Basically, he's talking about a content distributer using hard drives instead of dvd's to send the content to a customer. Think of this another way - it is a network connection, much like ethernet, where packets of data get sent to customers.
The comments that I have read seem to be missing his main thrust - why keep to a static transport layer (dvd's) when instead you can have that layer improve in bandwidth as time goes on. While there are some issues with content control, I think he is completely right - dvd's are placing themselves out of the market cost at 20 bucks a pop. 2 years from now, why buy a 5 gb dvd for 20 bucks when you can buy a 20 gb usb keychain drive for the same? This is about flexibility and scalability, something that the current dvd (and the earlier vhs) distribution model do not have. This guy is a genius, and he's got the money to use his idea effectively.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
DVDs cost the industry less than a buck a pop. For the ammount of storage it's dirt cheap. They like it that way, it's like printing money, they're not gonna go for a small electronic gizmo that costs more to manufacture no matter how nifty it is. Ramp up time is important too, as is the time to burn during manufacturing. Have you seen a DVD getting made? It's *fast*, a system to make flashes then write to it would have to be way more parallel to make them in the volumes optical media are. Maybe it's doable but I've got a hunch that it's just more expensive than a stamped plastic sandwitch.
Read the F'n Blog
His whole point is that compact flash drives and hard drive technology is booming right now. More storage in a smaller footprint for a cheaper price. It's far outpacing DVD (the media not the format). His point is that content delivery in the next couple years is going to hard drives (in some form) not to DVDs. At least, that's what he thinks...I agree with him.
As a SIDENOTE, he mentions the benefit of delivering "really big movies" on "really small hard drives" via mail or rental or whatever is that it's a natural deterrant to internet based file sharing. He thinks buying these really big movie files on really small hard drives will be more cost effective and less of a hassle than creating the infrastructure for a 10x (or 30x) faster internet. Again, over the next 5 years I think he's right.
It won't stop people from getting pirated content, and he doesn't claim that in his blog.
I wonder how long until the record and film industries resign themselves to the fact they will never stop piracy. Sure, they may put on a public front, but they will have to accept that it is now too imbedded in internet culture to stop. They can sue, but it's only a matter of time until a secure p2p network becomes the standard.
I have no sympathy for the record companies - they were far too slow off the blocks with paid-for downloads and have been fleecing consumers for years. I have different feelings about the film studios - apart from DVD region encoding, at least they're trying to give consumers better value for money with extras etc, and DVDs don't feel over-priced. Unfortunately for them, if their product is in a digital format, it will always get shared.
Lets say, I hypothetically download a movie to watch, and it takes all day to download this movie. It is made from someone sitting in a theater and filming it with Digital Camera in hand....but it was released the same day I am downloading it. Am I going to complain "Damn, the quality of this is poor....and I can hear whomever crunching popcorn in the background....and why is everyone laughing so loud at the screen?" OR am I going to happily watch a new release in the comfort of my PC chair / Home theater system and say "Wow, good movie...have to buy the DVD in 6 months when it gets released" or maybe "Boy...glad I did not waste money on that BOMB".
If I am going to take the time to download a movie (which in this day and age I can start the d/l and do something else for XX:XX time while it downloads) I am going to be savvy enough to realize compression was used....that its not the same experience as going into a theater, and the quality could be really bad...but at least I won't have to shell out $9.00, fight with the crowds of people, pay exhorbitant prices for popcorn just to watch a movie, AND I can take it wherever I go and watch it whenever I want to. I would be smart enough to realize the trade-off for convenience is compression (Which can result in GOOD quality and bad quality) and use, rather than worry about how the HiDef quality is degraded (hell, I would be watching it on a notebook, home PC, or maybe even a Big Screen if I wanted to burn a disc) and how big the file size is.
Compression has come a long way, and will continue to be used because IT WORKS 'good enough" for 90% of the population. Especially if the choice is Pay for real or D/L for FREE.
Heck, he used compression to copy movies to his Flash Drive and enjoyed it so much it sparked this whole essay and erroneous conclusion. Convenience will win over Quality. It has so far....and there are too many examples to site....You keep going until you die..."Me".
Is if the Dallas Mavericks can make it past the second round of the playoffs next season. Without Nash it could be a problem.
I'll tell you why the movie industry doesn't need to panic. There's value in a DVD. I've got no problem plopping down $20 - $25 for a DVD. I get a lot of value for the money. You've got the movie itself which is in a format that looks great on my big screen TV. You get the surround sound mix. You usually get a ton of extras. All in all, I think it's worth the money.
CD's on the other hand are a total rip off. You pay $12 - $18 bucks for about an hour of music, most of which is filler for the 1 - 4 good songs on the CD. There's very little value there and hence you've got more people who are willing to pirate music because they recognize they are being ripped off.
I don't think DVD piracy will ever be as much of a problem as music piracy because the movie industry generally provides some real value for the money that your spending.
The music industry should take a hint. Offer singles and albumns on the internet for people who don't want all of the frills (which is finally starting to happen). Produce a CD / DVD package for customers in the $20 - $25 dollar value range. The CD would, obviously containt he music. The DVD would contain all of the music mixed in surround sound, plus music videos and other extras like interviews with the band, etc. Something like that would be worth the money. Continue offering just the CD for those that don't want the extra's and price it in the $7 - $11 dollar range. CD sales would go up instantly.
There have been a lot of posts so far about how dumb Mark Cuban is because he thinks the solution to piracy is to release content at extremely high bitrates. While it is true that you could transcode HD content to manageable bitrates, you would surely need to decimate the frame size to do so, and when you do that, you're not talking about HD any more. Sure you're still talking about piracy, but once you lose the high definition, Mr. Cuban doesn't worry about it anymore, since the concept of "low resolution" isn't vibrating on his wavelength.
The main thrust of this blog is talking about how the heck we're going to deliver HD to the home. I think it's laughable that he would consider delivering content on hard disks instead of DVDs... um let's see, the hard disk costs at least 500x to manufacture and is full of moving parts that are likely to fail the more the device is moved around. Oh, and it doesn't slip into a thin envelope like a DVD a la Netflix. Considering flash drives is at least technically feasible, but there, the manufacture cost multiple is even higher and it will be quite a number of years before we have something big enough for an HD TV show, let alone a movie.
DVDs (and optical media in general) are extremely cheap to manufacture, and very robust. They will last until something even cheaper and more robust comes along, or in the case of IP delivery, the convenience factor is good enough that you can charge the consumer enough to cover the transmission cost and still make a profit.
Mr. Cuban is foolish to discount VOD. There is no doubt in my mind that by the end of the decade, most people will get their media fix (even HDTV) the instant gratification way, pulling it off the network. Some companies are already providing VOD movies to the PC... see starz.com. PVR and US Postal Service (Netflix) are working as a stopgap until the bandwidth is in place. Nobody wants to piddle around with discs and drives when we can just push a button on our remote.
Made billions... Owns the Mavericks, two television stations (HDNet, and HDNet movies), and is a regular on AVS Forum.
When I saw him at CES two years ago, talking to his camera crew, because that's what he does, I listened to VPs from major companies just watch him talk and talk to each other about how he is the best thing that ever happened to their industry.
He has a FORTUNE. He likes HDTV. He bought a local station (so HDNet is available OTA in Dallas), hooked up with DirecTV, and when they had more bandwidth, rolled out HDNet Movies.
Unfortunately, not all of my HD tastes are the same as his, as HDNet is "whatever Cuban wants to watch."
This man made a fortune, and is singlehandedly pushing more HD Content than anyone else, because he likes it.
I'd say he's a good person to recognize.
Alex
To me the most interesting thing about this articale is the fact that when you give people a choice of a thousand movies, they will tend to get the more obscure things. I know I do. When I look for music on-line, It's not Britney, it's things that I don't hear on the radio or things that are not popular enough for record stores to carry. Same with Movies, I bought one of those 14.99 unlimited things at BlockBuster's and quickly ran thriough all of the new releases, I then found myself renting an obscent amount of foreign films and other things that I would normally waste the moeny one ( as if most new (Big Name) releases are a waste to being with).
Most of the comments are about the p2p angle, which was hardly the point. The main point of the article was that the DVD format and storage size can only change on rare occassions, whereas flash and hard disk storage sizes are doubling every year. This contrast allows a more flexible business model than sellers of a traditional product like a DVD player can keep up with. Following, he sees a huge market for introducing hard and flash drives, things like vending machines for movies with usb ports.
Requantization != recompression.
Requantization requires that the input and output video are of the same resolution and framerate. (Requant operates at the stream level, on data that has already been DCTed and does not touch the motion vectors at all.)
Requant works well for DVDShrink because you rarely shrink a DVD (after stripping out extra features, etc.) to less than 80% or so of its original size.
To go from 8+ GB/hour (typical ATSC HD bitrate) down to only 2 GB/hour or so will make MPEG-2 video unwatchable unless you reduce the resolution. Which requires a full re-encode rather than simply requantization. (You MIGHT be able to take a shortcut by reusing the motion vectors, but that's about it.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
This guy is NOT stupid or clueless. He sold broadcast.com to Yahoo for cold hard cash and became a billionaire in the process. He is STILL a billionaire. How many other dot commers can claim that?
He does what he wants. He has a passion for basketball so he bought the Dallas Mavericks. He takes care of his players (they have an awesome arena to play in that is decked out in technology to include individual DVD players in the locker rooms for each player). He doesn't take crap off the refs or the NBA, and has been fined enough to show it. I respect him for that. He doesn't whine about it.
While we can nit all day long about what he said in his blog, the upshot is that storage media and capacity are in a high rate of change right now. He is not advocating the status quo, but doing something different. That is his trademark. Discount him at your peril.
"I ask if anyone in the room has ever downloaded or uploaded a movie or TV show in HD quality to or from a P2P network. No one has ever raised their hand."
That's because they're not downloading HD off a p2p network, they're using alt.binaries.hdtv on usenet.
There are very few movies which I consider as valuable as a quality CD. Maybe if movies were half the price of CDs I'd buy them, but in general a movie is good for 1.5-2 hours of enjoyment, or in exceptional cases maybe I can watch it 3-5 times and get up to 10 hours of enjoyment out of it. Compare to a CD, which can provide hundreds of hours of enjoyment.
This isn't to say that there isn't a lot of music being produced that is a ripoff at $12-$18 per CD, because there is. But for some good music, that often took a year or so of the artist's time to write and record, it's not a bad price at all. Especially with lesser-known artists, who might be extremely lucky if they sell 5,000 copies of their CD, the $12-$18 isn't really enough to even support them without a day job.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10