Ten Reasons Why DISC won't die

[bhuyanp]

Ten Reasons why HD downloads won't be adopted by the masses

1. Consumers aren't ready for it. Look at it this way: next year is the conversion to digital television, and the industry and the government are printing out 35 million coupons for the people who still use rabbit ears or a rooftop antenna to get their TV signals. How many consumers, other than the leading edge, are going to have the type of hardware and software that will allow them to rely solely on streaming video?

2. Sites aren't ready for it. Even now, when there's big events like Cyber Monday, Web sites can't handle it, and that's just for shopping. How much of a load is streaming video going to be? A good test will be to see what happens with the Summer Olympics this year. NBC and Microsoft announced plans to stream 3000 hours of coverage for every sport. www.nbcolympics.com has streaming video with good performance now, but let's see what happens during the gymnastics finals.

3. Infrastructure isn't ready for it. How many consumers have enough bandwidth to support it? How many consumers even have access to that much bandwidth? According to the National Association of State CIOs, you need 12 Mbps to even start getting IPTV, and what you really need is 24 Mbps to 100 Mbps. I have the fastest consumer Internet service possible in my area, and it clocks at 214 Kb. I downloaded the Microsoft Silverlight software that will be used for the Olympics, and tried to check out the CES coverage on Microsoft's site, and it paused every few seconds.

4. Providers aren't ready for it. Comcast has already taken heat for what's called bandwidth throttling, or cutting consumers off when they download "too much" data (and the "too much" isn't defined), but surely many other providers are doing it as well. How quickly are they going to be able to handle it when everyone is doing it?

5. With all the talk of on-demand video, do we really believe that we will be able to see any video at any time? I happen to be fond of the Icelandic film director Hrafn Gunnlaugsson; am I going to be able to find his more recent movies?

6. How's the pricing going to work? Wal-Mart (which, incidentally, discontinued its movie download service) charged $12.88 to $19.88 for a movie and $1.96 for a TV episode. If my daughter wants to watch Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer five times in a row (in July - and am I going to be able to download it in July?), how much is that going to cost me? Am I really going to pay $10 for every night when I flop in front of the tube after dinner and manage to stay up for Jay Leno?

7. There are some movies, that, ahem, we'd just as soon people not know that we like to watch and that we might like to have on disc so we can hide them. Yes, it's true that such content is available and popular on the Internet now but if all the video coverage is coming from the same provider, how does one maintain one's discretion?

8. Owning a disc is just simpler. There's plenty of Disney channels, but every parent I know has a rack full of Disney videos anyway, which they pass around among themselves, send with their kids to overnights, etc.

9. Let's say that there's a way for consumers to keep the content they get through streaming media. How are they going to manage it? Everyone I know with a TiVo has it full of stuff they never get around to watching and then it fills up and they can't record any more. What happens if a power failure or disk problem zaps the library?

10. Megatrends author John Naisbitt postulated the concept of "high tech, high touch," which stated that with increasing technology, people feel the need to increase the human response. They want something tangible they can hold and touch. People still buy vinyl records, for heaven's sake. Heck, they still buy books.

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