Broadband to Kill Off DVD?

Elteto writes "Just when we thought the DVD could not be any more ubiquitous, Serge Tchuruk at the Alcatel Forum in Paris announces that the days of the rapidly adopted medium are nearing their end. The increasing availability, affordability, and speed of broadband will contribute to a more efficient delivery method of media content. Will DVD join LaserDisc in obscurity?"

Comments

Physicality

[useosx]

Yeah, when people stop being interested in physical objects.

Re:Physicality

[jarich]

Yup... DVDs will be gone right after the books!

Re:Physicality

[RootsLINUX]

Reminds me I saw/heard something on Dr. Phil the other day about a guy who's relationship with his wife was failing because he turned to pr0n for pleasure instead of her. Is this the beginning of the end? Will all boobies get digitized and become virtual entities for our pleasure? Only time will tell...

Re:Physicality

[DustyShadow]

How often do you buy CDs? Since mp3's got popular, I barely buy any physical CDs anymore. I think last year I bought maybe 5. Once DVD's are able to be downloaded quickly and easily, I probably won't purchase very many, though I already don't these days because of my netflix subscription.

Re:Physicality

[ratsnapple tea]

Well, not necessarily. The problem is that physical media are going to be much better as delivery mechanisms for video than broadband, for the foreseeable future. I'll let Steve Jobs explain, for you Apple fans out there. :P

People are much more attuned to visual quality than audio quality. This is the most amazing thing that happened in the music industry to me: We had the cassettes and then the CD, which raised the quality supposedly, right? The next format after the CD should have been a higher-quality format just like we got television going to high-def, but it wasn't. SAP and DVD audio have totally failed.

What was the successor to the CD format? MP3, a lower-quality format, but one that provided a convenience of being able to transmit music over the Internet that no other format had. So convenience won out and people settled for lower quality. The first time I've ever seen that in my life.

But that's not going to be the case with video. No one is going to go back to VHS quality just because they can download it faster over the Internet. It ain't going to happen. The download of DVD-quality movies takes hours over most people's broadband connections, and we're going to high-def in 2007, let's say. That's going to add bandwidth and get even slower as we go to high-def. To download a high-def movie is going to take you half a day if the bandwidth increases. Is that instant gratification like a song that takes just a minute to download? No.

Therefore, the threat to Hollywood--of which we're a small member at Pixar--is very different than the threat to the music industry. Actually, the biggest threat to Hollywood isn't the Internet; the biggest threat to Hollywood is DVD burners.

Re:Physicality

[sTalking_Goat]

I'm the exact opposite. I stopped buying CD's years ago. I stopped burning my MP3s to CD when I bought my Rio Karma. I don't buy DVDs either. Thats what DVD mail rental is for. I do buy books though, so I do agree with you. Why would I pay 8.00 for a paperback I know I'll probably only read once and then stick on a shelf or on a pile, when I can probably borrow the book for free from the Library? Psychology is fascinating...

Re:Physicality

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing DVDs to books doesn't quite work... People buy books because they'd rather read from paper than a screen. People don't buy DVDs because they'd rather watch movies directly off a plastic disc than from a screen.

Re:Physicality

[malkavian]

Nah..
People buy DVDs because:

1: They hve pretty covers (and usually extra bits on the DVD).

2: They're viewable in guaranteed high quality on a cheap piece of hardware.

3: You don't have to be connected to the net to watch a DVD.

4: You don't have noisy cooling fans in the background when watching a DVD.

5: If you hate the movie, at least you get a great coaster for your money.

A competing format may well help lower the cost of the disks though, which would be a great boon to us all.

Re:Physicality

[mrak and swepe]

And with a physical disk, at least you have some control over how much advertising you have to watch before the movie starts (although analogue tape wins hands-down on this issue).

Call me cynical, but I can't help but believe that streamed movies will be prefixed with 20 minutes of un-skippable ads.

Re:Physicality

[Dan East]

6: I have the right to watch that movie as many times as I want, for as long as the DVD exists (decades).

7: I can watch the movie without some 3rd party knowing I'm watching the movie.

8: I can resell the movie if I don't like it or if I grow tired of it.

9: I can lend the movie to my friends.

10: We can watch 3 different movies in 3 different rooms at the same time without fear of running out of bandwidth.

11: It is easier for my 2-year-old to choose a movie by looking at physical cases than by browsing things virtually in a computer.

12: The movies are explicitly protected by my home-owner's insurance from theft or wholesale damage, because it is tangible. What happens when some .com that you purchases online movie rights through disappears? Who knows.

13: The movie is protected from editing (including censorship, for countries like China). Imagine if the only versions of Star Wars (original trilogy) you could access were the "special editions", because that is the only thing Lucas wants you to see.

Dan East

Laserdiscs

[TWX]

I still collect Laserdiscs you insensitive clod!

TV noobs

[crypto55]

People will never be able to figure out how to run a VoD file on their TV...
"Honey, why won't the ethernet cable fit in the coaxial input?"
Wait, that would be MPEG, not NTSC streams...

HA!

[yuriismaster]

I don't even need to RTFA for this one...

Broadband cannot replace DVD's. I don't see a day where accessing large amounts of data is as guaranteed as having a disc with everything accessible right then and there. I know I would rather have my DVD available than rely on some server that may or may not go down when they feel like it.

I also enjoy being able to boot a device not connected to the intarweb with a DVD. I don't see DVD's going anywhere, unless Blu-Ray/HD-DVD manage to oust it (this will still take many a year for the prices to even out)

This guy is an idiot.

[bburton]

Will broadband kill off the DVD?
Short answer: No.

The DVD format will be nothing more than a flash in the pan, according to the chief executive of Alcatel.

Come on people. This article is just plain stupid. I can see the DVD being upgraded, for more storage capacity (see blue-ray), I can see the DVD fading away gradually (like VHS); but saying that Joe Sixpack will suddenly stop buying DVDs and use, say a broadband connected Tivo-like-device, is ludicrous. Technology lingers. That's why Microsoft has to build in special modes in their OS to run older programs. People still use legacy technology! Hell, I still have a tape player in my car. :-)

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The article doesn't talk about Tivos, Internet TV streams, or some new emerging technology. In fact, it doesn't really mention anything!

I'm not sure how articles like this end up on slashdot. I should write an article: New Power Source will replace Gasoline!

Hey, put me on slashdot!

Yes and...

[mbrewthx]

Video killed the radio star!!!!

Uhhh, Consider the Source

[bacon55]

http://www.alcatel.com/ http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_02 /b3865705.htm *ahem* I don't think this really needs discussing any further. People have interests, these interests are financial - people will say things to support these financial interests. Obviously the CEO of a NETWORK company would like to convince people that physical storage of data is a thing of the past.