We are creatures of hard media by habit.

[tron3]

Why did Vaudeville die? Face it, it was a starving medium from the start. How many jugglers, dog acts, and skits can you watch before you get tired of the same thing? Did movies really kill Vaudeville? Probably. Why pay a few dozen people to perform each night when you can get the movie from the studio, entertain the people for 30 minutes and then get a fresh round of spenders within minutes - ALL DAY LONG.

Vaudeville died from a lack of evolution in a changing entertainment industry. It couldn't compete nor could it keep up. Lack of change killed Vaudville. With the advent of the Internet why are libraries still open? For the same reason you see people drinking coffee and buying donuts at Barnes & Nobels. Because those are social places. Book stores have a quality mankind has desired since he was made self aware. A sense of ownership. Something tangible you can touch and keep. The sometimes seedy social aspect of Vaudeville was replaced with a more family friendly theater experience. Thus, much more profitable as Walt Disney has proven.

Back in the day people played music from hardened wax cylinders on a Victrolla. While the medium was very fragile and soon replaced with a harder substance, it was clear people want to OWN music. Even records were fragile glass which shattered on impact. Yet they remained a staple of audio entertainment for decades before vynil records were stamped. It didn't matter the glass disc was prone to disaster, people wanted to own music. Radio didn't kill off the music industry. It just made people want to own music they were hearing on the radio.

Even today with our massive HDTV screens and blu-ray the vast majority of people still go out and watch a movie. Why? To get out of the house. To be social. To enjoy life with loved ones. TV of today has done more to hurt the theater business than the decades prior to it. But it still thrives because theaters offer you something you CAN'T watch on TV. At least not right now.

Before TV, movies could play for weeks or months and people would return again and again to watch it. Why? Well, they had no choice. But once you could OWN the darned thing people were less prone to repay to see a movie. I'm sure plenty of you saw Star Wars in the theater and went back over and over again because you "knew" once it left theaters it would never return. You took some solace in hoping it would come to TV. But you knew the big screen experience would forever be lost. You wanted to own that experience, even if just as a memory.

Much of our old media has been lost. Victrolla's sit mostly in storage or in museums, and many households probably own a broken record player they "want to fix one day". Even home movie film is a lost art. All replaced in the 80's and 90's with the inferior resolution of VHS tape and betamax. Your priceless memories forever recorded at substandard resolutions. But you still OWN them.

All this talk of Digital Download taking over is just spill over from the HD DVD camp. Even Toshiba took parting shots at blu-ray when they "graciously" bowed out. Claiming that upconverters and flashram were the new targets to unseat blu-ray. Sure Toshiba, "The look and sound of perfect" couldn't beat blu-ray so now two lesser technologies will.

History is clear. We are creatures of hard media by habit. Even DVD will continue to thrive compared to Digital Downloads. They serve two distinct markets. Those who just want the experience, and those who want the experience of owning. Blu-ray is not going anywhere for the time being.

Yes, one day SOMETHING will replace blu-ray. Maybe flashcards, maybe 3" holographic disc, but SOMETHING will replace it. Hopefully not for decades to come. The industry understands the importantance of supporting a standard to achieve massmarket penetration. VHS was still a spry 21 year old when DVD appeared. After 30 years of VHS everyone had one. Market saturation had virtually occured. A remarkable feat as most new consumer technologies take 50 years to fully intergrate into society. But DVD was a stella improvement.

Even flashcard movies will not be the giant leap in technology as DVD was to video tape. The benefits of disc are unchanged. Random access, clean freeze frame, super high speed search, and extras. It is most compelling for having virtually no moving parts. But again, people buy it because they want to OWN it, not "own to rent" like Div-X. Even the future of movie flashcard is uncertain because of the HD DVD fallout. Studios will not line up to support this thing. Now that we have HDM, anything that follows is just "repackaged blu-ray".

Perhaps one day free broadcast TV will be a thing of the past. Perhaps all new mediums will become pay-per-view and the consumer left with no choice. Then our choice will be to hold on to the media we have because we can play it any time we desire. Why? Because we OWN it.

Marketing will never unprogram that desire to own. Demanding that we no longer own the free playing media is not poor marketing, it is revived communism. Long live hard media!