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If DVD Is Dead, What's Next?

uglysad writes "The Age has a piece discussing the fact that, from the home entertainment industry's standpoint, the DVD is dead. So what is next? From the article 'It will come as a shock to film fans who have spent their Christmases stocking up on their movie collections, but the technology industry is in agreement: the DVD is dead. Consumer electronics companies have begun to show off what they believe will be the next generation of home video technologies. But despite the common belief that the DVD is history, the industry is split over what the next step should be.'"

2 of 652 comments (clear)

  1. Re:HD-DVD by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Informative

    If HD-DVD 'wins' the battle then current DVD isn't at all dead... HD-DVD is backwards compatible

    Blu-Ray drives will most likely be backwards compatible as well. From the Wikipedia article:

    While it is not compulsory for manufacturers, the Blu-ray Disc Association recommends that Blu-ray drives should be capable of reading DVDs, ensuring backward compatibility.

    The whole "DVD" on the end of the name is just a ruse to get people to buy into the standard. There really isn't anything I can think of that makes HD-DVD superior to Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray, OTOH, has many positive features including the ability to wipe the disk without scratching it, and larger data capacities.

  2. Re:DVD is going to stick around by slashdot.org · · Score: 4, Informative

    And despite the fact that the MPEG-2 encryption was a rush job and has long since been blown away by newer codecs

    I'm sure you meant MPEG-2 compression, not encryption. MPEG-2 compression was certainly NOT a rush job. I agree that there are better codecs now. MPEG-2 has simply been one step in the evolution, and a significant amount of effort went into the development.

    Or maybe you are confusing CSS encryption that is used on DVDs with MPEG-2. CSS encryption was evidently a rush job. Which is probably more of a reason than anything else why the movie industry wants to see it dead. Video quality isn't really the issue yet (even today very few TVs display native 1080p movies to begin with).