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.'"

Comments

whatever

[tfcdesign]

Seems a little hasty to make such a claim. VHS isnt dead yet. The only media I can think of that is dead is the 8-Track and 70 RPM.

Re:whatever

[LordSnooty]

VHS isnt dead yet.

Maybe so, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to purchase new mainstream titles on VHS. And as for the niche releases on a smaller scale, you've no chance.

I hope that this time, the average consumer rises up and says "no". I think the reason that everyone happily bought into DVD was that it was such a huge leap from VHS - so many more features to make the switchover worthwhile. It was maybe 15 years since VHS started to become popular. This time, less than 10 years since DVD hit the big-time, what are the big reasons to switch? Increased space (more naff behind-the-scenes docos and dull commentaries)? Hmm. High-def? That's probably the only decent advantage you could point at.

And strangely enough, what's the hardware industry currenly falling over themselves to sell us? HDTVs. I truly hope that this time, the average Joe sees what we have seen for many years, that is the content producers repeatedly selling us the same stuff on different media.

Re:whatever

[manavendra]

I think you raise an interesting and subtle point. Essentially, the hardware vendors (in collusion with the software creators - the hollywood studios, for one) are trying to put the high-turnaround consumer market spin on the entertainment media as well. So just buying the VHS tapes and the player isn't enough - as the new format guaranteed ease of use and better quality. The consumers then flocked to it, with a genuine alacrity since it was almost a quantum leap in quality.

Inspired with this success, however, I believe is the attempt to pull-back the expiry date for DVD and push *ANOTHER* media (and *ANOTHER* set of players to the market). Push it along with *ANOTHER* type of TV, and you have the two markets creating penetration for each other. In fact, this market is so lucrative the corporates are fighting over WHICH format to push. Sounds like a rip-off, if I ever saw one = just look at the faster, bigger computer we get thrust at us every few months, while the price of new-improved box stays roughly the same (after the initial, rationalising drop)

just like hdtv

[ronchie02]

DVD is dead just like we're being forced into HDTV in... oh wait, it's smoke. How many people do you know that just got a DVD player? It's hardly dead.

HD-DVD

[Manip]

If HD-DVD 'wins' the battle then current DVD isn't at all dead... HD-DVD is backwards compatible thus allowing companies to continue to produce old style DVDs on the cheap while also supplying higher quality content or longer (in video length) disks.

Article summary

[Anakron]

DVD is dead because device manufacturers say so.
Your options are

1. Blu-Ray
2. HD-DVD

Nobody wants a format war.

Fine.

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

if the entertainment industry says DVD is dead I won't buy any more.

what? you don't have the replacement out yet? well, you guys just fucked yourselves then didn't you.

Industry is in for a surprise...

[GeorgeMcBay]

The issue that is far, far bigger than HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray and yet the industry doesn't seem to understand is that a standard DVD is more than good enough for most people. As with the CD before it, the DVD hits a sweet spot where aficionados might want improvements but the average user just doesn't care enough (if he is even able to discern them). The industry is being lulled into a false sense that the masses want HD DVDs because of the success of HDTVs, but I believe that has more to do with people wanting larger screens that take up less real estate (LCD, Plasma), than it really does with the higher resolution (for the masses, not for everyone). Also, people expect to buy new TVs on a cyclical basis and it is much easier to get them to run through one purchase upgrade than to upgrade their entire old media collection.

Someday HD DVDs (of one format or the other) will be the norm, but I'm quite sure this is going to be a much slower process (far slower than VHS->DVD IMO) than the studios seem to realize and will be driven more via a trickle of sales as people replace old TVs and DVDs with new models (which support old and new formats). In the meantime, they better keep cranking out those Plain Old DVDs.

1. Exaggeration 2. ??? 3. Profit!

[ackthpt]

Seems a little hasty to make such a claim. VHS isnt dead yet. The only media I can think of that is dead is the 8-Track and 70 RPM.

Exaggerating death throes isn't meant to end sales, gods no. If that suddenly happened Bush would probably have to slash taxes and then tell everyone to take that $300 out and buy a stack of DVDs (except anything he finds morally repugnant, such as gay cowboys). The MPAA would have to suddenly circle the wagons, up-end the Bucket 'O Lawyers and proclaim the fall-off is the result of rampant piracy.

Nope, nothing like that.

What they mean to do is push the new HD-DVD or Blu Ray technology, even if it's not on the store shelves just yet. What's desired is to whip up a frenzy -- to make it a self fulfilling prophecy.

Anyone remember (the late) Richard Pryor as the Wiz, changing the colours? Red is dead, wouldn't be seen in green, etc.

DVD is dead, long live DVD!

[msauve]

They only want us to think it's dead for two reasons, first, content cannot be securely protected (like they hoped). Second, you can now get a player for twenty bucks (same as in town), so there's little profit left.

Indeed

[TheSpoom]

I'm in the technology industry, and I don't think the DVD is dead. Hell, we just got a new DVD player with our surround sound kit. Does anyone see Blockbuster renting out something more than DVD?

This guy is making stupid generalizations to draw attention.

DVD is going to stick around

[Schlemphfer]

>The only media I can think of that is dead is the 8-Track and 70 RPM.

I think for purposes of this argument, we can fairly say that if it's not given at least an aisle at Best Buy, it's dead. LP's are dead as a doornail. VHS tapes will be soon. But I can't imagine the DVD section at Best Buy going away within the next three years. Keep in mind it's in the interests of the electronics industry to have DVD die off as soon as possible. And despite the fact that the MPEG-2 encryption was a rush job and has long since been blown away by newer codecs, DVD's remain an outstanding technology.

Whatever the next standard is, it won't have the clear advantages over DVD that DVD had over VHS. The several hundred million consumers who already own DVD players and stacks of DVDs have no urgent reason to jump to the next standard -- not until most of these people own high-def Televisions. DVD will be with us for some time.

Re:DVD is going to stick around

[gwiner]

Vinyl LPs are not dead as a doornail - There's plenty of new vinyl being pressed up. Being a DJ is every kid's dream. Some "turntable-ists" are actual well-respected muscians. Records are a very much alive, albeit underground media. New albums by indie rock bands are often presseed in limited runs on vinyl and are treasured by record-player and music nuts everywhere. Believe it or not, many audiophiles consider records to still be the superior-sounding medium. And by the way, it was 78 RPM was the standard, not 70. Sorry - I know I'm off topic.

Re:DVD is going to stick around

[Psykus]

I think what they really mean when they say "DVD is dead", is that the DRM for DVD is dead, and that's why they want to move on to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, so they can have more control.

Re:DVD is going to stick around

[dpilot]

But my MPAA Media Overlords really WANT me to buy a new HD-DVD. They also WANT me to replace all of my equipment and media library. After all, they need to keep their revenue stream flowing. After all, if digital bits last forever, forced obsolescence is a necessity! Plus this gives them the opportunity to institute the DRM that they messed up, first time. THEY NEED THIS!

Who are we to refuse?

Re:DVD is going to stick around

[arminw]

.....it won't have the clear advantages over DVD that DVD had over VHS......

Indeed true. It is the convenience of random access that disks have over tapes that made most consumers switch to DVD and audio CDs. The lack of wear when played and the superior quality were bonuses, but not the driving points for consumers to re-buy all or at least much the old content over again. The old TV's used with VCRs worked and still do just fine with that new DVD player and the audio systems already in use were useable with the digital audio CDs.

The new formats will really only have better quality as the reason to switch to the new technology. If a customer does not also buy an expensive big screen HD TV, the new format will not do much more than the current DVDs do. Much of the material in the vaults of the movie companies would not benefit consumers in noticeable superior quality anyway.

The video equivalent of mp3, where a user an store a few thousand movies at today's DVD quality in a holographic chip the size of a compact flash card, storing about 100 terabyes or so, at about the current price of one might be a compelling reason to buy new movie storage equipment.

I should be so healthy...

[SpecBear]

The technology industry agrees that DVD is dead? Alrighty then...

How many companies have stopped producing DVD players?

How many stores have stopped selling DVDs?

How many DVD pressing factories have shut down?

Where can I buy a next-gen media player (HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, whatever)?

WTF do they mean when they say DVD is dead?

Ah, well, you misread the tone

[Julian Morrison]

Don't think: Bones with a tricorder in hand saying "he's dead, Jim". Do think: Al Capone gritting his teeth and snarling "That no-good punk is dead. Dead, ya hear me?".

The movie industry hates DVD for the same reason it hates unadulterated CD: the pirates have cracked it so thoroughly that the studios might as well post the disk images on mininova themselves.

Only to those who can't get enough $$$ out if it..

[Kazoo the Clown]

DVD is only dead to the greedy who aren't happy with the deflation in profit margins, due to the huge array of competition from everywhere, including scads of historical movies and TV programs and imported foreign content. They prefer to think it's not due to the competition but to piracy, but they're wrong. When you consider the time required to copy DVDs, its probably actually cheaper to just by a legit copy. Sure, there may be some bootleggers out there who are showing up with counterfits at flea markets, and a few downloaders who will D/L a movie to watch just because they can, not because it's convenient. But not enough to explain the hit big media is taking in the pocketbook, despite their claims.

Big media figures if they start up something newer and better they can get us all to transition to it and spend more $$$. However, while I think it could mean a short term windfall, I'm not convinced that HD gives you enough additional value to make it worth the transition-- most of what I like to watch already exists and isn't in HD format, I have no interest in spending extra $$$ just to see the modern crap that's mostly written by ad executives.

The DVD is not just going to go away, there's a huge amount of content out there that, even if the disks and the players start dying out, we'll be able to back them up on new storage mediums and still preserve them. And, much of the content remains worth watching, in fact, mostly more so than what's targeted for HD.

But let them pull out all the stops. And maybe there'll be suckers who will buy into it, but if I ever do I'll be about the last to do so, after the cost has dropped to about what DVDs are going for now...

They only wish it was dead because while it's alive it's a low-cost content rich alternative to the high-cost content poor HD market...

Re:hooray, DVD is dead!

[rworne]

Yes it's dead because the DRM has been cracked. If it weren't for DeCSS, there would not be so strong a push to get everyone switched over to Blu-ray or HD-DVD (which both are so far uncracked).

After getting screwed over because the industry decided they would not trust anyone with analog composite inputs, I'm not about to fork over more cash for new hardware just because my "HD Ready" TV was obsolete after less than one year when the industry decided they wanted to encrypt the signal to the TV.

Re:Unlikely

[Tim Browse]

Seriously, the upgrade from VHS to DVDs was only about a 2X improvement

More like 3X, really.

and people were constantly saying how much better DVDs looked.

But also people didn't have to buy a new TV to see the difference. They bought a DVD player - it looked better on their normal NTSC/PAL TV.

If they buy an HD-DVD or BluRay player, it's not really going to look any better unless they buy a new HD TV. And they're still pretty expensive. (Mind you, the player manufacturers seem to be solving this problem by making the players prohibitively expensive anyway.)

For me, a big difference with DVDs was the sound, too. Perhaps more so than the improved video. VHS sound is crap (inc. 'VHS HiFi') - I have pre-recorded VHS movies where I can barely make out the dialogue, and it's not like I've played those tapes to death. I'm talking about the first play through. DVD sound is great - and I have to ask, how much better can the sound actually get with HD-DVD? We're back into CD vs SACD territory there.

I think high definition DVDs will take over eventually, but not at the speed the industry thinks, especially while they're still dicking around with competing formats. Until one HD format is settled on, I think most people will steer clear (esp. when the people who actually bought 'HD Ready' TVs find out it won't work due to no HDMI connector, etc).

DVD was miles ahead of VHS; HD is barely a leap

[DECS]

I agree: DVD and VHS were very different "new" things, and DVD is hardly in need of replacement.

VHS wasn't commonly in homes until the mid 80s. Being tape, it required long winding time to find content, and had an inherently limited lifespan. Being analog, it could not be copied or duplicated more than a generation or two. Videotape in general was introduced with less than broadcast audio and video quality, and as better technology came out, VHS slowly progressed toward being near broadcast.

DVD was introduced with CD quality sound and digital video significantly better than standard broadcast. DVD's are more convenient, durable and smaller than VHS tapes. DVD also offers perfect copies across generations.

DVD was also quickly integrated into computers; playing DVD's from a PC or laptop using VGA or DVI to a computer display offers a very high quality video, competitive with HDTV. Since common DVDs are better than commonly broadcast video quality, and since little HD content available, and since HD displays are not commonplace, there's hardly demand for a new HD media.

Satellite providers have had the capacity to deliver HD for some time now, and have instead chosen to deliver more content at standard resolution. If, as that suggests, there is scant market for HD video, why do we need an HD media disc to suddenly replace DVDs?

The only real benefit HD-DVD and BlueRay offer over DVD is in data storage capacity and in DRM, and consumers don't look particularly needy for either. They already have hard drive storage in excess of HD-DVD's (recall than when CD-ROM arrived, it offered FAR more storage than hard disks of the day).

CD's certainly didn't disapear for SACD, and in fact most consumers have never seen or heard of SACD. And remember when Phillips (and others) were presenting the "future of audio cassette," which was suposed to replace audio tapes the way that CD had replaced records? Those products bombed.

If anything, I think there is more growth potential in HardDrive based DVRs to replace and expand upon the functions of VCRs, a job that DVD isn't very well equiped to perform given its slow and finicky write technology.

New iterations of the iPod, as a DVR, have the potential to serve new markets better than bigger DVDs. And as broadband becomes more commonplace, and faster bandwidth arrives, larger discs may not be that necessary after all.

I can already:

-get iPod sized movies on demand (via iTMS)
-get DVD quality movies on demand (via NetFlix)
-get TV style episodes and shorts on demand (via Tivo)

I can see those services migrate toward HD slowly without any need for HD discs along the way. Think of NetFlix using downloads and hard disks instead of discs and postage, and its hard to imagine what problem a HD-DVD standard would solve.

Re:Only to those who can't get enough $$$ out if i

[ivan256]

I agree that Hollywood is losing money because what they create is junk

Excuse me? Just because they call making less money than they though they would, and making less money than some other year "losing" money doesn't mean you have to help spread the lie.

HD is coming, and once your TV size goes to 42", you are going to want to have it.

My TV is going to grow? Amazing. Especially considering that it's just the right size for the spot it's in. I wonder how it will fit... Seriously though, we're a minimum of 5 years away from widespread HD adoption. It will probably be longer, since most people replace their TV after 10 years on average, but not everybody buying new TVs today are buying HD sets. Actually not even a majority are buying HD sets. 32" SD is the norm. The only reason the masses will buy HD media in that time frame is if it's the only media available. It won't be though, because all the HD players will be DVD compatable, and all the non-cartel members will keep publishing on DVD to maximize the potential market. The early push to HD media with extra DRM is going to open the door for "independant" creators and publishers, and the *IAA member companies are going to see their market share decrease more and more.

DVD is not dead.

[Kaldaien]

Hell, VHS still is not dead, so there is no way DVD is "dead." Even with the introduction of HD-DVD and BluRay, non-HD content will continue to be released on less expensive, more compatible, MPEG2 DVD discs. It would be folly for a company such as ADV, whose content base is almost exclusively standard definition Anime to start releasing HD-DVD or BluRay discs simply because DVD is no longer the latest and greatest. HD-DVD / BluRay will come at a premium initially (and honestly, that premium may eventually become the standard price point :-\); consumers will not pay that premium unless they have something tangible to show for their investment. Only movies and recent seasons of more popular television shows are available in HD. Granted, a season of the average NTSC television show rarely fits on one or two DVDs, but that is not reason enough to insist on moving to HD-DVD or BluRay. Most people who buy television shows on DVD are content to swap discs, and those that are not are always welcome to do as I have and buy a 400 DVD Mega changer. On a side note, It is frustrating when studios think they have a clever solution to the problem and release double-sided DVDs (i.e. Quantum Leap) - because even with a DVD changer, you have to flip the disc manually. :)

I own two HDTV sets and I am not fanatical about the transition to HD-DVD / BluRay. It is going to happen eventually, but considering the crap that has graced the big screen in the past 5 years I would rather just wait until a movie is on Showtime HD, HBO HD, INHD, etc... than pay $5+ extra for a movie that was not even worth seeing in the theatre. Movie studios will not begin to reauthor the good, but older, movies until there is a sufficient player base and there will not be a sufficient player base until there is content worth investing in a new player / TV (for some) to watch.

That said, there are a couple of people who actually buy UMDs and actually I know one of them. Despite the lackluster demand, movie studios continue to publish UMD videos. Which leads me to believe that HD-DVD and BluRay will be a similar boat, it will take studios years to figure out which format the consumer actually prefers. In that time, I am sure we will see hybrid HD-DVD / BluRay players enter the market to fill the gap that SONY and Toshiba could have easily filled before costing the consumer. BluRay discs may be more expensive to produce for the publisher, which is partly why Toshiba was such a ... about merging HD-DVD and BluRay, but the consumer is the one who ultimately pays when two very similar but very incompatible formats are allowed to linger.

DVD is good enough

[metamatic]

Absolutely. I knew DVD was going to catch on as soon as all the movie companies got behind it. That was when I got a player. VHS was dead from that moment.

DVD won't die and be replaced by HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. They were predicting that CD would die and be replaced with SACD or DVD-Audio, and that didn't happen.

Even though my DVD player supports DVD-Audio, I don't have a single DVD-Audio disc. I don't even have the player hooked up to support it. Why not? Because the DRM is so cripplingly inconvenient, it's not worth it. With a CD I can listen on my iPod, stream over my home network and listen at any computer, listen on my PDA, play the CD in the car, make mix CDs for the car, and so on. With DVD-Audio, they won't even allow digital feed from the player to the amp, so I'd need to buy a set of extra analog cables, I'd get lower quality (my amp has much better D to A than my player), and I wouldn't be able to rip the audio conveniently. And though some 'goldenears' folks will disagree, CD is basically good enough.

Similarly, DVD is good enough for the vast majority of people. I actually have an HDTV, and with a well-encoded DVD and a player with a good upconverter, the limiting factor on the image quality is either the source material or my eyesight. When I can see the fingerprints on the glass pane used for the 'floating pen' effect in "2001"--and that's a famously poorly encoded DVD--I know that there's really no great need for finer resolution. I can see the film grain on "Lawrence of Arabia" already, I don't need to see it any better. I can read the paperwork on Sam Lowry's desk in "Brazil". The resolution is just fine. Now, let's have more good movies...

Re:Read only movie chips-flash card sized=landfill

[mnemotronic]

What happens when those hundreds or thousands or millions of ROM chips (and handy plastic packaging) become "last week's movie"? You would need a major recycling & remanufacturing operation to prevent landfill. We already have a plastic recycling industry, but can chips be ground up & recycled? There's a lot of energy and resources that go into distilling a bucket of sand down to an integrated circuit, and it would be a shame to not recover some of that....