When Will DVD Die?

[Uniquely]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

and you can't get out of your frame of reference of someone that does not own many movies I have many hundreds of BDs and if we look at the DVDs that is several thousands. You can't scroll through the movies. If I had 10 or 20 or 30 movies then could be cool to have a friend over and scroll through them but but having a few friends over (we have already been more then 20 in the HT) and way too many movies make something like that completely 100% inconvenient.

Actually the more movies you have... the EASIER it would be to make a selection with a digital catalog. Once your catalog is digitized you could then sort it in any way you choose. By genre, actors, release date, MPAA ratings, your own personal ratings of enjoyment, keywords, etc.... any number of ways or combinations. All of which would be much easier than looking at 1,000 DVD spines on a shelf and trying to pick one. It would be like the difference between using an old index card look up at the public library or using Google or Bing.

[jadedeath]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

yes, most people don't want the hassle and it is way too complicated. Will a few do it? yes, but anything is interesting only if it can reach 50% of the pop and that has no chance. I have over 400 BDs (probably getting close to 500 with some being multi-disk, like the Star Trek 6 pack which would take up 1/3 of an HDD by itself), how much would a server which can have 25-30 1TB drives cost me? why would I waste that much money on something that brings me nothing? except for pirates, what does a server bring me (or anyone else) except for large cost and extra trouble/time (moving movies to HDD...)

I have to agree here, once you get into the 25-30 disks for Blu-Ray, let's even for arguments sake make them 25 gig single layer disks, That's 625-750 gigs worth of information.

Most people don't have TB drives, or hard drives, and if people were to add that to the price of a Blu-Ray player {they're *****ing about the prices now} that would further delay the mass market appeal of it.

Now if someone wanted to save in the 100's range of movies or Blu-Ray then you'd be running into adding thousands of dollars to a player.

Not to mention the fact that 4k televisions, and players are likely going to be showing up in the next 4-5 years.

Logan

[Uniquely]

Originally Posted by jadedeath

I have to agree here, once you get into the 25-30 disks for Blu-Ray, let's even for arguments sake make them 25 gig single layer disks, That's 625-750 gigs worth of information.

Most people don't have TB drives, or hard drives, and if people were to add that to the price of a Blu-Ray player {they're *****ing about the prices now} that would further delay the mass market appeal of it.

Now if someone wanted to save in the 100's range of movies or Blu-Ray then you'd be running into adding thousands of dollars to a player.

Not to mention the fact that 4k televisions, and players are likely going to be showing up in the next 4-5 years.

Logan

The average user doesn't buy 10k speakers either... but it's nice they have the option to. And of course... this like any other tech... like say Blu-Ray itself... would get cheaper and cheaper as more people adopt.

[U4K61]

Originally Posted by blu-mike

How Many Years Or Days Do U Think DVD Has?

Forever - or at least as long as we continue to enable the 12cm polycarbonate bit-bucket to satisfy our desire for ever higher resolutions. So, not surprisingly, the CD is still with us despite being a generation before DVD. Though I have to admit, it's giving up the ghost 'bit by bit' to MP3.

[jadedeath]

Originally Posted by robinandtami

The average user doesn't buy 10k speakers either... but it's nice they have the option to. And of course... this like any other tech... like say Blu-Ray itself... would get cheaper and cheaper as more people adopt.

And at the same time, the movies that you're uploading will become bigger and bigger.

It's the same debate as if games are going to be distributed digitally come the next generation.

If you make anything {and I mean anything} based on the fact that you download it to tech it'll become obsolete faster than the computer you're typing responses on.

IE: It'll have a 2-3 year shelf life and then you'll be buying the next thing, with a bigger hard drive for more and more money.

If you have a disk tech, the price will go down faster because there is a 10 year life {at least} and you won't have to keep going out to purchase a bigger external hard drive to keep all your movies loaded.

Then again, what happens when your hard drive breaks down? Right now it takes me about 20 minutes {or so} to burn a single layer Blu-Ray with video, so roughly speaking it'll take about 40{ish} minutes to do a dual layer {I haven't tested out the burner on duals yet} so you really want to sit there for hours and hours on end burning disk after disk to a hard drive connected to your television when you could just buy a Blu-Ray player and throw the disk in so it starts playing right away?

The average consumer wouldn't have the patience to wait for *1* disk to burn to this imaginary hard drive, most hardcore consumers {like the folks you describe that would pick this up} would probably lose patience at about the 100 disk mark.

And if the hard drive goes down, you'd have to do it ALL over again.

Logan

[PH3AR]

When blu-rays are $18 for new releases

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by robinandtami

Actually the more movies you have... the EASIER it would be to make a selection with a digital catalog. Once your catalog is digitized you could then sort it in any way you choose. By genre, actors, release date, MPAA ratings, your own personal ratings of enjoyment, keywords, etc.... any number of ways or combinations. All of which would be much easier than looking at 1,000 DVD spines on a shelf and trying to pick one. It would be like the difference between using an old index card look up at the public library or using Google or Bing.

I disagree, maybe you just don't know how to organize movies, but if I want a movie (unless, it is lent out to family and friends) then I know where it is and can find it easily. Three things could happen
"I just want to relax" then I go to my unseen collection and see what is there and what aI feel like, ordered by play length, like the other day when I had 3h to kill and so I watched watchmen, the time before I only had 2h so I saw return to witch mountain


" I am in the mood for a .... " if it is horror, comedy, child friendly animation, childe live action, sci-fi, period pieces, war movie, drama ... I go to that particular sections

"I want to watch....." then I know the genre/sub genre and I go to that section and get it.

I will never be interested in a movie based on an actor or release date or all that other crap, I want a story I don't care about the rest of it. Type of story, yes but the rest is not that interesting and so you don't need to be able to re-categorize stuff. Now I am not saying everyone should do it that way at home, maybe for someone else they are more interested in lead character then anything else, maybe they don't have moods (or just buy one type of movie) and just want a movie to watch, but most people are most likely pretty consistent in how they pick what they want to watch and could use that order/distinction on their collections.


On the other hand if that did interest someone, then they could just use the catalogue feature on this site (or any other similar movie DB), that way it could even be viewed by their friends (instead of wasting 3 hours at your place and in the end not getting toi watch a movie, they could go through the list at their own home and maybe having a limited number to choose from for the final decision- i.e. everyone picks 2 movies they would like and then the list is narrowed down to 1 or 2 based on the more popular and less hated one), you don't need a movie server in order to have that option.

Except for a lot of useless nonsense you have yet to post one response to the simple question of any benefits of having a home server let alone pointing out to something that outways the wasted time (need to take the time to transfer the contents), the great cost (server that has many HDD connectors many HDDs needed) the upgrade issue (unless you think BD capabilities are the be all and end all of possibilities, your processor, your HDDs, your graphics card.... will eventualy be useless), and the many possible issues (crash HDD, running out of disk space, not being able to add a drive to continue with the growing collection, needing to replace drives with bigger ones…)

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by robinandtami

The average user doesn't buy 10k speakers either... but it's nice they have the option to. And of course... this like any other tech... like say Blu-Ray itself... would get cheaper and cheaper as more people adopt.

no one here said you should not have the choice. People had the choice to spend a lot of money on LD players and LD disks if they where willing to spend the large amount of $ needed for the better quality and conveninece. The issue at hand is you said

I think that DVD will be around until both DVD and Blu-Ray are replaced by some format that will allow us to store our catalogs digitally. The ability to show our entire catalog up on the big screen.... complete with covers and descriptions is something the market really needs

for the vast majority of people it is too complicated and expensive (you can talk about 100$ for 20 movies and how it is 5$ a movie but that is beyond the cost of the movie and neglects many of the costs and technical difficulties which go beyond what most people can handle) let’s face it, people could have had movie servers many years ago, I had friends that used to do the rent & rip of DVD almost 10 years ago. And with DVDs being 1/5 the size a 200GB HDD would be the equivalent of a 1TB with BD (and when you add that many of them did not care and compressed them even more, a 100GB could do the same job.

[Uniquely]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

I had friends that used to do the rent & rip of DVD almost 10 years ago. And with DVDs being 1/5 the size a 200GB HDD would be the equivalent of a 1TB with BD (and when you add that many of them did not care and compressed them even more, a 100GB could do the same job.

Exactly... people STILL do that today (even with their blu's) because this is a feature that some people DO want. External HDD's and RAID's and media servers do not have to be upgraded everytime you want to upgrade your PC. I don't know many people that do keep their media (photos, music, etc) on their OS drive.

Again, it's all about CHOICE. We have people on this very site with HT's that range from a couple of thousand into the tens and tens of thousands. Many people will not want to do this... but there are certainly some that will. Technology is not the hold up in making this possible. It's already here. Concerns about DRM is the hold up... just as that is what delayed digitization of music. But who do you know today that ONLY listens to music from the physical CD it was purchased on? In fact.. who do you know that ONLY purchases music on physical CD's? Fifteen years ago.. it would not have been possible to keep your entire music catalogue on a PC.... now you can keep it on a tiny ipod.

I still stand by the opinion that when a format arrives that allows us the choice to have a digital catalogue... it will hasten the death of both DVD and Blu-Ray. I also feel that DVD will be here side by side with Blu-Ray until that day comes.

[jadedeath]

Originally Posted by robinandtami

Exactly... people STILL do that today (even with their blu's) because this is a feature that some people DO want.

I think you'll find that those that DO want that feature are in the slimmest of minorities.

External HDD's and RAID's and media servers do not have to be upgraded everytime you want to upgrade your PC. I don't know many people that do keep their media (photos, music, etc) on their OS drive.

Yes, but as he and I have been trying to tell you, you load up a 2 TB drive with as many Blu's as you can get your hands on, and what happens when that drive goes down?

As I have mentioned it takes me 20 minutes {or so} to get on Blu-Ray burned {single layer} with Data. That's per 25 Gigs.

Multiply that by the amount of time it would take you to fill up one TB external hard drive.

I know folks that wouldn't have the patience to do even 10 of them, let alone the amount of time required to fill up an external hard drive.

Now, what happens if that Hard Drive fails? You're SoL for having to re-load everything yourself. That's why I have 3 backups of everything that I do in video, One Hard drive, one bit of info on Blu-Ray and the original tape that I loaded it from.

Again, it's all about CHOICE. We have people on this very site with HT's that range from a couple of thousand into the tens and tens of thousands.

That's not choice, that's budget, subtle but important difference. I'm sure if most of us here had the choice to do so, we'd want to have the HT in the 10's of thousands instead of what our budget allows.

Many people will not want to do this... but there are certainly some that will.

And it's the many people in that equation is what the Home Theater tech folks will cater to. It's just that simple. It's a business, go with whatever sells more as opposed to what you THINK will sell more.

Technology is not the hold up in making this possible. It's already here. Concerns about DRM is the hold up... just as that is what delayed digitization of music. But who do you know today that ONLY listens to music from the physical CD it was purchased on? In fact.. who do you know that ONLY purchases music on physical CD's? Fifteen years ago.. it would not have been possible to keep your entire music catalogue on a PC.... now you can keep it on a tiny ipod.

I may load the CD onto my hard drive, but I only purchase music on physical CDs.

For starters, I don't trust digital copy. The book fiasco recently where they deleted copies of said book without the owners permission is all the evidence I need there.

Then there's the hard-drive crashes, or computer problems that might result in losing your entire music collection. It's a pain in the ass to re-load everything, but at least I have that option when the time comes and it's fool-proof in that regard.

Not to mention the fact that this kind of argument is kinda silly when you think about it. It's like when you were back in grade school and people told you that the South American Rain Forest was disappearing at an acre per hour. It's been a LONG time since I was in grade school, and there aren't that many acres of forest on the entire planet.

Same too with the CD industry, if CD sales have gone down THAT much, why am I still able to talk a walk down Yonge St here in Toronto and see any number of 100's of CD stores?

I still stand by the opinion that when a format arrives that allows us the choice to have a digital catalogue... it will hasten the death of both DVD and Blu-Ray. I also feel that DVD will be here side by side with Blu-Ray until that day comes.

You're free to stand by that opinion, and I'm free to stand by my opinion that you're wrong.

Not only is there a problem with getting a format like that out there {it'd be a NEW format war btw} but there's also the legal issues that are involved and most consumer manufacturers wouldn't touch that with a 10 foot poll.

DVD is slowly dying. I give it about 3 years before Blu-Ray is regularly selling at 60{ish} percent, and the year after that DVD will stop being produced. Much in the same way with VHS, when DVD hits the 20% range, the major studios will just stop producing them.

Logan

[Uniquely]

Every arguement you make was also presented against digital music... yet it is steadily progressing and so too will digital films. It is only a matter of when, and who gives it to us first. My only point was the Blu could be the one... and if they chose to be the one... I feel it could expand their lifespan well into the pure digital era.

[phantompwr]

I just wanted to say three things:

1) I have a server for all my DVDs and I love it, I can browse through the covers and I can search by director, actor, genre, and title to find the movie I want, and it does this for me, without me having to rearrange cases whenever I get new movies. I would need a lot of room to do this with Blu-ray, but hard drives are getting bigger all the time and eventually they will catch up. There are already companies that make movie servers that use RAID technology to make sure you won't lose data, they are very expensive, but I think it was already said that these kind of things are for people that can afford them.

2) DVD is not going to die completely any time soon. VHS only stopped being released a couple years ago, and I know plenty of people that still have their VCRs. In some countries, Laserdiscs were still being used by more than just collectors.

3)The forests in Brazil alone are still being cut down at the rate of about 140 acres every day. They are replanting them now at almost that rate. My wife was just there doing field research on trying to regrow the forests.

[jadedeath]

Originally Posted by robinandtami

Every arguement you make was also presented against digital music... yet it is steadily progressing and so too will digital films. It is only a matter of when, and who gives it to us first. My only point was the Blu could be the one... and if they chose to be the one... I feel it could expand their lifespan well into the pure digital era.

Digital music was also based around portability.

Noone wanted to carry around a binder of CD's or a giant cassette tape box {or to have to keep moving both back and forth from their cars}

There's little {to no} reason why 1080p movies would need to be played in a car, there isn't any difference on a screen that size. Same too with portable DVD players.

You also don't address the point that right now, very few people have the capability {even on their PC's} to store many movies that are in the BD size.

Your argument that the more people that buy into it, the cheaper it'll get is also flawed, because the number of people that would have to buy into it in order to make it make money at the size that it'll become, is enormous.

Plus, what happens when 4k movies come out? If you think it takes long to download a 25gig movie now, it'll take a massive amount of time to download a movie that's in the TB range.

Logan

[jadedeath]

Originally Posted by phantompwr

I just wanted to say three things:

1) I have a server for all my DVDs and I love it, I can browse through the covers and I can search by director, actor, genre, and title to find the movie I want, and it does this for me, without me having to rearrange cases whenever I get new movies. I would need a lot of room to do this with Blu-ray, but hard drives are getting bigger all the time and eventually they will catch up. There are already companies that make movie servers that use RAID technology to make sure you won't lose data, they are very expensive, but I think it was already said that these kind of things are for people that can afford them.

Do you have a server for your Blu-Rays?

If not, why?

Even in 5 years time, you won't find too many people able to backup their entire BD libraries on their hard drives.

2) DVD is not going to die completely any time soon. VHS only stopped being released a couple years ago, and I know plenty of people that still have their VCRs. In some countries, Laserdiscs were still being used by more than just collectors.

If by 'a couple' you mean 6+, then yes, you're correct.

I was working in the video industry at the time, and the second that VHS was down to being 20% of the market, every major studio {but Disney and one other I think} pulled the plug. And those that didn't, scrapped VHS soon after.

If you think in the business of making money that the same thing won't happen to DVD, you're wrong.

3)The forests in Brazil alone are still being cut down at the rate of about 140 acres every day. They are replanting them now at almost that rate. My wife was just there doing field research on trying to regrow the forests.

yay sustainable resources.

Logan

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by robinandtami

Exactly... people STILL do that today (even with their blu's) because this is a feature that some people DO want.

I don't know if for some it is because they want it, but for them it was a matter of cost, it was cheaper to rent and then burn then to buy. Most of them moved on to illegal DL because that is cheaper then renting


also I never disput6ed that some people might want it, my issue is that you assume everyone (or most) want it. Go look back at MC talks, I think it could be good and cool but in the end I think most people don't care and studios are going to be reluctant

External HDD's and RAID's and media servers do not have to be upgraded everytime you want to upgrade your PC. I don't know many people that do keep their media (photos, music, etc) on their OS drive.

I did not say they did. But any DRM (and there needs to be some) will need to lock the content to something. You are starting with illegal ripping in mind ands assume that studios will want to push that. If there is a burn to drive, the content will need to be locked to something and then upgrading won't be as easy. Also let's face it, except for a few geeks, most people don't want a PC they want a player, that is why HTPCs where never popular, But even if we assume they are PCs in fancy cases, in the general population, how many do you think take their PCs apart and change drives, graphic cards, mother boards..... if the world goes from 1080p to 2160p chances are the current machine he owns won't be powerful enough and he would need to upgrade most stuff under the hood.

Again, it's all about CHOICE. We have people on this very site with HT's that range from a couple of thousand into the tens and tens of thousands. Many people will not want to do this... but there are certainly some that will. Technology is not the hold up in making this possible. It's already here. Concerns about DRM is the hold up

agree 100% , neither choice nor feasibility are an issue, DRM is and that is not going to go away unless there is some real draconian DRM (for instance needing to call home every time you watch a movie to make sure there are not 2-3 places watching that same copy or not being able to transfer/stream to make sure a second copy can't be made...)

... just as that is what delayed digitization of music.

come on, digital music has been legit for nearly 10 years and CD still outsells it, people still prefer to buy the CDs even if they listen to them on the ipod because most that still buy feel safer with the hard copy

But who do you know today that ONLY listens to music from the physical CD it was purchased on? In fact.. who do you know that ONLY purchases music on physical CD's? Fifteen years ago.. it would not have been possible to keep your entire music catalogue on a PC.... now you can keep it on a tiny ipod.

true, but music and movies are not the same thing. music is much more personal (I like Heavy metal and rock, someone else likes pop), it needs to be portable (I want to listen to my song in the car, in the bus, outside, while walking....) and is small (an 80 gB ipod can hold anyone’s collection ) and does not need to be shared (the other day I was in my sisters car with her family we had our music on the car radio and each of her three sons where wearing their ipod and listening tio what they want), that is not true for films.
- where do I listen to my music? 90% on the go, I don't have a music room, so even when in the home it could be in different rooms, luckily most rooms are connected so not much of an issue
- where do I watch my movies? 90% in the HT (probably more, but sometimes I watch in the BR and put something for my nieces and nephews in the FR).
- how do I choose what I listen to? I do it on the fly so if I am in the car for an hour I need a big selection
- how do I pick a movie? well if it is in the HT they are all in front of me and I pick one and then i just watch that one for the next 2h and don't think of it any more on rare occasions I might have time for a second one, so then I just go back and choose an other one and then spend several more hours watching that one
- How much capacity do I need for my music? well my 80GB ipod is no where near full
- for movies? I need more then 20TB (easily calculated and under estimating) and that is only for the collection I have now.
-portability? ipod is extremely portable and I need to have a good chunk of my collection. For movies, a 20TB server is no where near portable and won't be for the foreseeable future, also I don't really need portability of my whole collection, but sometimes, like two weeks ago when I was on vacation it was nice to be able to pack 30 movies in a nice small box to bring with me even though we only ended up seeing 2-3 of them.

I still stand by the opinion that when a format arrives that allows us the choice to have a digital catalogue... it will hasten the death of both DVD and Blu-Ray. I also feel that DVD will be here side by side with Blu-Ray until that day comes.

you are allowed to have a wrong opinion and we are allowed to point out why it is wrong.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by jadedeath

If by 'a couple' you mean 6+, then yes, you're correct.

I was working in the video industry at the time, and the second that VHS was down to being 20% of the market, every major studio {but Disney and one other I think} pulled the plug. And those that didn't, scrapped VHS soon after.

no, in 2005 all the major studios decided it was the last year, with Jan 2006 no more new content (at least any content worth buying) was released on VHS. Obviously even before that VHS was harder to find since many stores did not buy and those that did bought little, but the official death bell for VHS movies is Jan 2006.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by jadedeath

Digital music was also based around portability.

portability is big and that is one reason digital works well with music, but it did not create it, in high school everyone was there with their walkman and tapes. Music is also extremely different, for the most part albums come in single artist and have some good and some ok songs, so what did everyone do since tapes came out? you bought the record (I liked records more then tapes) then you created a mix tape using other records you had and then used the tape. Who wants to listen to 10 songs from the same artist one after the other. You put Bark at the moon, followed by stairway to heaven, continued with hot for teacher, back to Ozzy with iron man....you kept the records in the closet or on some shelves and you played those mixed tapes when you wanted music., eventually when CD burners came out, it moved to CD, buy the CDs mix a few together burn and play the mix CD. Large capacity ipods or mp3 made that normal behaviour easier. why mix 10 songs together when I can have a few hundreds and thousands and mix them on the fly?

on the other hand in all my life (and I am guess it is true for everyone else) I have never been tempted to do something like put scene three of x-men, followed by scene 7 of Click, continued with the last scene of superbad, back to x-men but this time scene 5 of x-men 3

(note: random scenes of random movies, I have no idea what those scenes are)

[Uniquely]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

you are allowed to have a wrong opinion and we are allowed to point out why it is wrong.

No such thing as a wrong opinion... especially when it comes to predictions. But I would bet my whole HT that within 10-15 years at the very latest; something VERY similar to what I am describing becomes a very competitive market player. I would also bet that many of you who nay say it right now will be among the early adopters. It probably will not be the whole ripping from blu-ray part.... because I really don't think they are smart enough to think outside that DRM box to imagine the possibilities. Most likely it will come in the form of choice between downloadable media, and flash media one can purchase at the local brick and mortar. And of course let's not forget streaming media. I've been pleasantly surprised at how quickly it is improving even for my lousy 6mb DSL. It is sure to become a viable player as network inrastructures continue to improve.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by robinandtami

No such thing as a wrong opinion

depends, if it is a real opinion, "that is a funny joke", "that is an ugly colour".... then you are right, but if someone is of the opinion the earth is flat or has the opinion that tomorrow all the governments will pass a law that by the end of the month we all need to get rid of our cars and if we want buy flying electric cars so that we are in the age of the Jetsons, then that is wrong. The facts completely dismiss those two opinions.

It probably will not be the whole ripping from blu-ray part.... because I really don't think they are smart enough to think outside that DRM box to imagine the possibilities.

lol, so it won't be CEs nor studios since they make up the BDA so who will offer us this Utopia you describe? and what will we get?

. Most likely it will come in the form of choice between downloadable media, and flash media one can purchase at the local brick and mortar. And of course let's not forget streaming media. I've been pleasantly surprised at how quickly it is improving even for my lousy 6mb DSL. It is sure to become a viable player as network inrastructures continue to improve.

I am not saying you are completely wrong and it will always be disk based with put disk in, press play, watch movie. It could eventually move (maybe 10-15 years like you said) to something digital only (no media) but my guess if it does (and I don't think in 10 or 15 years the infrastructure will be there depending on trust and model) it also won't be anything like you describe, something much more 1984ish and I am not too sure people won't be against it.

[phantompwr]

I'm sure when DVD first came out nobody ever considered that people could, or would want to, load them onto hard drives. I love having my DVDs loaded onto the server, and if I had more money I might have one of the many systems that you can buy specifically for this, which are simple to use, do not involve an HTPC, and are not illegal. The biggest thing holding Blu-ray servers back now is that fact that it isn't legal yet to make a copy of a blu-ray disc, but I know the company I work with, Kaleidescape, is just about ready to implement Blu-ray ripping when it does.
My system using XBMC is much cheaper and I love being able to put all the cases away, and sort the movies in a much easier way. I can understand that some people like having their movie cases out on display, or maybe like the tangiblity, but if you like having the physical medium that's fine, it doesn't mean that there aren't people out there that would want to browse their movies on the TV, or that they are wrong for wanting that.