Oh noes teh sky is falling!

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by MrFattBill

I agree that I don't think physical media is going any where soon but I'm just going to point out that if the HD is hooked to a network via a NAS or PC then anyone one can watch any movie in any room at anytime so long as they have the supporting hardware....we have this already, it's called Netflix

Bill

I agree whole home distribution might be a solution to one aspect of the problem but even then it will depend how it works, you used to be able to output BD through component to a home A/V distribution solution but now the component connection (on new BD player models for 2011) won’t output HD (just 480i). But what I raised does not only apply internally on a network. I don't know about you but when I was a teen in the 80's I would sometimes bring a movie to my friends home to watch. My friends wife got promoted and now she has to work 3 days a week in Toronto and the other two from home (in Montreal), it is easy for her to bring a few films for the two nights in Toronto when they are all separate disks. One of my sisters does not work and spends a lot of time with the kids at the cottage in the summer (practically every day), many days my BIL goes back and forth but sometimes one (or more) kids might have an activity, and other times he has real early or late meetings/flights so it does not make sense to have an extra 1.5h commute when he stay at home. I had a co-worker that always had a case with several DVDs every time he would go on a business trip, he would sit on a plane and then just slip in a movie in his laptop.

For me it is not even a DL vs disk argument. In the end there are several solutions where you can transfer movies to a media server from disk (like someone else pointed out, look at kalaidascape, it is exactly what it does). I know some people like the idea, but for me it is limiting, with something disk based one can argue the best of both worlds, but even then I see it as useless.

PS as for Netflix mywhitenoise’s proposition was one based on purchase, yes Netflix can stream to several devices (assuming they have an internet connection) but it was not what he was talking about

[Petey2133]

Originally Posted by mywhitenoise

By the end of this decade, it will be gone.

I loved my physical media, but you have to admit...it's pretty cool owning a digital library on one hard drive/device. It's similar to having your entire music library on your iPod.

After buying over 150 blu-rays, I think I'm going to stop (unless it's a must own movie) and just start running everything through a Media Hub.

Digital library is cool, but I want to OWN that library. I do not want to sign on to a server every time to watch a movie. I want to be able to pack up my drive and take it to my family members home and watch it the same as my house.. But we are talking 10+ terabyte drives here. maybe even more!!! Then you have to be worried about malfunctioning HD's as well. Almost like you need a 20 TB SSD to be safe... I mean BD's are 25/50 gig to begin with...

[richieb1971]

The reason why digital numbers are low is because nobody is buying what you can get for free by typing a different URL.

As for the 2TB drive argument, again its another illegal vs legal argument.

I don't know why this thread is still moving its a pointless exercise. Its like saying you earn more because you have a money printing machine.

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by Petey2133

Digital library is cool, but I want to OWN that library. I do not want to sign on to a server every time to watch a movie. I want to be able to pack up my drive and take it to my family members home and watch it the same as my house.. But we are talking 10+ terabyte drives here. maybe even more!!! Then you have to be worried about malfunctioning HD's as well. Almost like you need a 20 TB SSD to be safe... I mean BD's are 25/50 gig to begin with...

Agree, some of us would need a lot of storage in order to put all of our physical media on a drive/system. If I were to put my entire DVD and BD collection in the digital realm I'd need atleast 100TB. That's really including redundancy and a small amount of spare space. Not to mention, there are several disadvantages right now: (1) we only have 2 TB drives available at the moment (3-4 TB in the works), (2) the amount of time it would take to transfer a collection of this size to disc, (3) standard mechanical drives are sensitive (SSDs currently are more expensive and don't have the equivalent capacity when compared to mechanical drives).

[Mr.Poindexter]

Originally Posted by rdodolak

Agree, some of us would need a lot of storage in order to put all of our physical media on a drive/system. If I were to put my entire DVD and BD collection in the digital realm I'd need atleast 100TB. That's really including redundancy and a small amount of spare space. Not to mention, there are several disadvantages right now: (1) we only have 2 TB drives available at the moment (3-4 TB in the works), (2) the amount of time it would take to transfer a collection of this size to disc, (3) standard mechanical drives are sensitive (SSDs currently are more expensive and don't have the equivalent capacity when compared to mechanical drives).

Your collection is listed as 781 BluRays. I don't know the size of your DVD collection, but I seriously doubt you would need 100 TB of storage for your collection.

Your BluRay collection could be stored on about 16 drives with 2 more for RAID (spreading your collection across 2 arrays) and 2 more drives for hot spares. I have a single 3U server (5.25" tall) that can hold 3000 DVD's on 12 data drives with another drive for RAID parity and a hot spare. That is substantially less space than it takes to hold the actual DVD discs even if they are spindled and you throw the cases away. This same server can hold 600 BDs without recompression.

You don't need to back up each hard drive. Keep them in a RAID array and one drive can act as a parity backup for the remaining drives in the array. My server holds 14 drives - 12 for data and one for parity plus a hot spare should a drive fail.

Originally Posted by rdodolak

The other problem at the moment is how many movies can you fit on a single 2TB drive? Roughly 20 ... that won't cut it and it will be awhile before we see PB, EB, ZB, or YB drives.

A 2TB drive will hold about 50 BluRay discs without recompressing the data or stripping out the extras off the title, as my experience is 40GB per disc is a good average. 6.7GB per disc is the average for DVD.

Originally Posted by mywhitenoise

This is how I know you have no idea what you're talking about. A good 1080 rip can range anywhere from 4GBs, to 15GBs. For simplicity, let's say the average 1080p file is 10GBs....that's 200 movies on a 2TB drive.

If a good 1080p film could have been put on 4GB, then why not just run them on DVD that had a capacity of 4.7GB on single layer and 8.4GB on dual layer? Even formatted, they are easily capable of that capacity. The fact is, if you are running 10GB for a 1080p file, you are probably looking at a single TV show episode or you have recompressed the file.

Originally Posted by Anthony P

If some people want to watch one movie and others a different one then they will be on different BDs and they can be watch in different rooms, on the other hand with an HDD device that has both those movies on it, it cannot be done.

A single HDD can stream about 22 DVDs or 5 individual BD films. That would be rips that were not recompressed to make the files smaller. I have run multiple streams through my house off my Kaleidescape for many years and have run 3 simultaneous BD streams without any issues. (I only have 3 BD playback devices connected in my house, but the system will stream 5 without any issues).

[Mr.Poindexter]

Originally Posted by rdodolak

Not to mention, there are several disadvantages right now: (2) the amount of time it would take to transfer a collection of this size to disc, (3) standard mechanical drives are sensitive (SSDs currently are more expensive and don't have the equivalent capacity when compared to mechanical drives).

The time isn't that long, really. I don't know about what capabilities others have, but in my experience, loading a 780 BluRay collection is about 16 days onto a single server. If one is using two servers, that time would be cut down to 8 days. I can bulk load about 400 DVDs in one day onto a single server if I really push it. CDs are even faster. Honestly, that isn't that much time to load a collection and even then, most of that time it is just the bulk loading machines working. Filling them, unloading them, unboxing the collection, packing it back up and checking for errors takes less time than the actual physical loading.

Granted, not everybody has the hardware for bulk loading, but if somebody has that large a collection and values their time, they often just sub that work out to a professional loading service.

As for the mechanical drives, RAID covers you on the mechanical failure and even physical media is vulnerable. I have broken, cracked and scratched discs from the old days to prove it. I am also old enough to remember when CD's were touted as virtually indestructible.

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by Mr.Poindexter

Your collection is listed as 781 BluRays. I don't know the size of your DVD collection, but I seriously doubt you would need 100 TB of storage for your collection.

Your BluRay collection could be stored on about 16 drives with 2 more for RAID (spreading your collection across 2 arrays) and 2 more drives for hot spares. I have a single 3U server (5.25" tall) that can hold 3000 DVD's on 12 data drives with another drive for RAID parity and a hot spare. That is substantially less space than it takes to hold the actual DVD discs even if they are spindled and you throw the cases away. This same server can hold 600 BDs without recompression.

You don't need to back up each hard drive. Keep them in a RAID array and one drive can act as a parity backup for the remaining drives in the array. My server holds 14 drives - 12 for data and one for parity plus a hot spare should a drive fail.

The calculation wasn't a scientific one but was rather a quick and dirty rough estimate based on a worst case scenario. The 781 BD number though doesn't take into account multiple discs for a given title plus I have many more DVDs (including TV series) than I do BDs.

Originally Posted by Mr.Poindexter

A 2TB drive will hold about 50 BluRay discs without recompressing the data or stripping out the extras off the title, as my experience is 40GB per disc is a good average. 6.7GB per disc is the average for DVD.

Again my calculation was a rough estimate based on the worst case scenario (assuming a full 50GB BD). I know that's not the case but your post did make me realize I made a typo in my original post; meant to say roughly 20 BD per TB (40 for 2 TB) based on 50GB BD discs. Of course not all discs are 50GB so you'd be able to store more than that on a single 2TB drive.

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by Mr.Poindexter

The time isn't that long, really. I don't know about what capabilities others have, but in my experience, loading a 780 BluRay collection is about 16 days onto a single server. If one is using two servers, that time would be cut down to 8 days. I can bulk load about 400 DVDs in one day onto a single server if I really push it. CDs are even faster. Honestly, that isn't that much time to load a collection and even then, most of that time it is just the bulk loading machines working. Filling them, unloading them, unboxing the collection, packing it back up and checking for errors takes less time than the actual physical loading.

Granted, not everybody has the hardware for bulk loading, but if somebody has that large a collection and values their time, they often just sub that work out to a professional loading service.

As for the mechanical drives, RAID covers you on the mechanical failure and even physical media is vulnerable. I have broken, cracked and scratched discs from the old days to prove it. I am also old enough to remember when CD's were touted as virtually indestructible.

If I remember correctly, you actually own a Kaleidescape system. Since it's a turnkey solution they actually make it relatively painless. However, if you don't own such a system you'd have to manually burn copies to BD .iso's or the like (which also would involve breaking the encryption). As far as I'm aware there is no good solution for the manual scenario in which case it could take much much longer. Please correct me if I'm mistaken.

I'd love to have a Kaleidescape system but right now I don't have that kind of money to throw at a single system. I slowly built my physical move collection over time but I don't have the estimated 30-40K to drop on a single purchase that would be required to be able to put all of my movies on a Kaleidescape system.

I know we'll eventually have larger TB drives, the same thing happened with GB drives in the early 2000s, but it will take some time before we get to that point in time. Just wish I could afford that K* system. Too bad they've kept the prices high to maintain the prestige. Wish more companies would come out with such a nice turnkey solution but I'm afraid the studios would prevent that from happening.

[Truewitt]

Originally Posted by mywhitenoise

A hard drive is no different than owning a blu-ray. The difference is that (like you said) you can easily clone your drive. A 2TB drive costs $80 right now, storage is only going to get bigger, and prices are only going to go lower. I'd rather pay $80 to back up 200 movies, than spend $20 on one blu-ray.

First of all, CDs still outsell any form of download, so how can they be dead? And if your satisfied with 4-15GB rips of movies, why are you even on Blu-ray.com where it's about quality of presentation?

[Mr.Poindexter]

Originally Posted by rdodolak

If I remember correctly, you actually own a Kaleidescape system. Since it's a turnkey solution they actually make it relatively painless. However, if you don't own such a system you'd have to manually burn copies to BD .iso's or the like (which also would involve breaking the encryption). As far as I'm aware there is no good solution for the manual scenario in which case it could take much much longer. Please correct me if I'm mistaken.

I'd love to have a Kaleidescape system but right now I don't have that kind of money to throw at a single system. I slowly built my physical move collection over time but I don't have the estimated 30-40K to drop on a single purchase that would be required to be able to put all of my movies on a Kaleidescape system.

I know we'll eventually have larger TB drives, the same thing happened with GB drives in the early 2000s, but it will take some time before we get to that point in time. Just wish I could afford that K* system. Too bad they've kept the prices high to maintain the prestige. Wish more companies would come out with such a nice turnkey solution but I'm afraid the studios would prevent that from happening.

Yes, I do own a Kaleidescape and it is the undisputed king in terms of reliability and ease of use.

Kaleidescape hasn't really worked on keeping prices high for prestige. They actually introduced a 225 DVD server at $5k, which while it might be high dollar for the average J6P, it is a substantial price drop from the $22k or so when they first came out.

More companies have come out with turnkey systems to compete with Kaleidescape. I can think of 4 different ones, although none of them are still around. Xperinet's Mirv and Axonix's MediaMax are two of the more spectacular flameouts. AMX's MAX-HT is no longer being made.

Many people expect the media server to be close to the cost of a hard drive. There is not enough money to provide support for such systems. For systems that are more in line with the higher costs, their client base has to choose between them and Kaleidescape and so far, Kaleidescape has been winning the vast majority of those showdowns. On top of that, the companies have to have the funding and will to go toe-to-toe with the Hollywood copyright and control forces. Good luck finding somebody willing to step in and try that right now, especially in this economy added to "physical media will disappear" hype and nipping at the heels from Nexflix streaming and iTunes.

[GreatWhite83]

"I cant see 4k becoming the norm in the home for a really long time.... would you notice the difference between 1080 and 4k on a 42" screen?"

This is a silly theory. Thats like saying how can 1080p be much better than 576i. The difference between 1080 to 4000 is greater than 576i to 1080p in terms of resolution.

I believe 4k will take over blu ray one day, or 4k may actually be on blu ray (quad 200gb discs) as 4k tvs are soon to be on the way. However Blu ray will not disappear anytime soon it has great potential. People could just upscale their blu rays onto a 4k tv.

That said 4k could then be surpassed by 6k, 8k etc. HDTVs are becoming bigger 110", the need for higher resolution will be there. Maybe one day cinemas wont exist because of the home theatre experience.

HDTV = Blu ray. This is very important, people who buy a HDTV, I presume is so they can watch 1080p blu ray. It makes me laugh when people say they downloaded a 1080p (compressed 15gb file) movie and dont even watch it via a HDMI cable.

As mentioned before if a 4k format media disc is released, internet downloading will be knocked back further, I'd like to see the people waiting hours to download a 4k movie. In fact downloading will have to keep pace with new media technology. Not to mention you cant even get lossless audio via downloading.

[brettallica]

It's been said a few times in this thread already, but physical media will never go away for a very simple reason: hard drives go corrupt far more frequently than discs do. When your drive goes, it is über-costly to get your files back, as it often requires a professional service. I mean for the average person, of course. Some of us have tools to get files back from dead hard drives, but this is not the norm; most people don't know what to do when their computer craps out and their hard drive is toast, hence the need for businesses that specialize in data recovery (and charge a buttload for it).

Granted, there is a point at which a disc will pit or degrade and eventually render some, if not all, of its files useless, but that period of time is generally a lot longer than the life of a hard drive. How many hard drives do you have that are five years old? How about 10 years old? How about 20 years old? My guess is not many, if any at all. How many CDs do you have that are older than that? Most of my CDs were purchased 10-15 years ago, and they all still play perfectly — especially commercial ones (sometimes burned CDs will not last as long; this I will admit, but it's always longer than ANY hard drive). I've seen tons of 20+ year-old CDs that still play like the day they were taken from their shrink wrap, but never a hard drive that performs the way it did when it was new 20 years ago. Most hard drives like this won't even power on anymore.

I'm speaking in very general terms here. Being a computer nut, I am all for intangible file storage and usage, but anything that is important to me gets put on to physical media — usually DVDs, but eventually that will move to Blu-ray once the cost of the discs and drives come down a bit (not to mention when operating systems support them a little more natively than they currently do). When it comes to backing things up, it is something I do to the extent of about three levels. It's absurd, but that's how little I trust digital files. I'm not just talking about music and movies; I'm talking about family pictures and videos, important documents, art/design stuff I've done (I do a lot of art — many different forms — with a computer), and so on. I've got my main design computer, one server in which one of its hard drives is specifically for backing-up files, and then an external drive attached to that server whose sole purpose is to back-up the backups. Then I have those DVDs with all my data on them, too!

I am an exception to the rule, but most people that have data on a computer (read: everyone) don't have any real backup plan. If a power spike occurs or you simply have the misfortune of purchasing a defective hard drive, you're screwed. With bandwidth and media licensing being where they are in terms of the average population, that poses quite a problem with those who may have downloaded hundreds of movies and relied on a hard drive for their movie storage. Imagine having to download all of those again — and imagine downloading them again AND PAYING for them again in the instances where the original retailer doesn't allow unlimited downloads. It's just all kinds of wrong.

This kind of touches on why the whole "cloud" thing trips me out and why I'll never fully trust or support it, but that's a different topic for a different thread.

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by Mr.Poindexter

Yes, I do own a Kaleidescape and it is the undisputed king in terms of reliability and ease of use.

Kaleidescape hasn't really worked on keeping prices high for prestige. They actually introduced a 225 DVD server at $5k, which while it might be high dollar for the average J6P, it is a substantial price drop from the $22k or so when they first came out.

Kaleidescape is a beautiful solution and your home theatre is even more gorgeous.

I believe you're referring to the Cinema One system which replaced the Mini system. I'd admit it's nice to see more and lower priced options. However, the Cinema One uses 4 500GB 2.5" HDDs; wished it would use regular 3.5" drives so that you could have 8TB vs. the 2TB. $5k is a lot for a system which only stores up to 225 movies and I believe that "up to" is based on if you were to load all 4.7GB DVDs although I may be wrong. That would only start to scratch the surface for my media library. With the Cinema One (CO) you can add additional COs or servers. For the moment let's assume you add more COs, then if you wanted close to 1000 DVDs it would cost $20K. The servers are probably a cheaper route for additional storage. I don't know what the current going rate for K system HDDs but the last I looked they were many times the cost of a standard 2TB drive. I realize that you get additional suppport added in at that cost but when you need many HDDs it all adds up real quickly. Maybe a used system will be the way to go down the road.

Either way for the standard user, the prices will have to be much cheaper with similar functionality and ease. I'm sure we'll get there one day but it won't be in the next several years.

[Mr.Poindexter]

Originally Posted by brettallica

How many hard drives do you have that are five years old? How about 10 years old? How about 20 years old? My guess is not many, if any at all.

Well, 20 years ago I bought the largest 3.5" hard drive in the world. It was made by Rodime and it was 210 MB. What would be the point in keeping that thing around even it it were to still work? Aside from the fact it was hooked up to an Apple IIgs computer that has been abandoned as a platform, it wouldn't hold 36 still photos from my current dSLR camera.

For hard drives, one would expect that every 6 years or so you build a new array and migrate your data over the the new RAID array, which given the historical rate of increase it would be 8 times as large.

[Mr.Poindexter]

Originally Posted by rdodolak

Kaleidescape is a beautiful solution and your home theatre is even more gorgeous.

I believe you're referring to the Cinema One system which replaced the Mini system. I'd admit it's nice to see more and lower priced options. However, the Cinema One uses 4 500GB 2.5" HDDs; wished it would use regular 3.5" drives so that you could have 8TB vs. the 2TB. $5k is a lot for a system which only stores up to 225 movies and I believe that "up to" is based on if you were to load all 4.7GB DVDs although I may be wrong. That would only start to scratch the surface for my media library. With the Cinema One (CO) you can add additional COs or servers. For the moment let's assume you add more COs, then if you wanted close to 1000 DVDs it would cost $20K. The servers are probably a cheaper route for additional storage. I don't know what the current going rate for K system HDDs but the last I looked they were many times the cost of a standard 2TB drive. I realize that you get additional suppport added in at that cost but when you need many HDDs it all adds up real quickly. Maybe a used system will be the way to go down the road.

Either way for the standard user, the prices will have to be much cheaper with similar functionality and ease. I'm sure we'll get there one day but it won't be in the next several years.

Thanks for the kind words.

Yes, the Cinema One server uses 2.5" drives. They do have a server that has four 3.5" drives and takes 1U of rack space. You can add an M-500 player to is and it will hold 4 times as much data, will work with BluRay and takes the same rack space as the Cinema One but it would cost more. Still, the 1U server can hold about 900 DVDs with the current hard drive capacities.

I would like it if the Cinema One used 1TB 2.5" drives but I don't think they have an enterprise class 1TB 2.5" drive yet, or at least Kaleidescape hasn't had one pass their internal QC testing yet.

The 225 movie capacity is based on the aforementioned 6.7GB per DVD, not single layer titles. You could probably put a hell of a lot more of those on and children's titles often are single layer DVDs.

[brettallica]

Originally Posted by Mr.Poindexter

Well, 20 years ago I bought the largest 3.5" hard drive in the world. It was made by Rodime and it was 210 MB. What would be the point in keeping that thing around even it it were to still work? Aside from the fact it was hooked up to an Apple IIgs computer that has been abandoned as a platform, it wouldn't hold 36 still photos from my current dSLR camera.

For hard drives, one would expect that every 6 years or so you build a new array and migrate your data over the the new RAID array, which given the historical rate of increase it would be 8 times as large.

I'm assuming that one or both of us is misinterpreting what the other is saying. What I meant was if you have a ton of important information on your hard drive (in this case, movies), and the hard drive craps out on you, you're screwed and you lose all your data. In terms of **most** users, this would be the scenario they face in a hard drive failure. My main point was that most people don't understand data backups, migration to new technologies, et al. You and I do, so this won't be a problem for us. For the common user, though, hard drives as an end-all solution for data backup will never really be the answer because they fail far too frequently to be reliable as such a device. Data stored on discs lasts much longer, at least at this point in technology; ergo (yeah, I said "ergo"), physical media will remain a strong contender and be around for a while — until a proven reliable alternate method arises.

That's all I meant. I am actually a big fan of data storage and access on a hard drive (read/write is WAY faster than disc, storage capacity is greater per physical size so on and so on). I can't even tell you how many hard drives I've seen fail in my years of computer geekery, though — and I haven't even been at it that long. I mean it's been in the tens of drives easily, meaning thousands of GB of data down the drain. I can only recall a handful of corrupted discs, and these weren't even true corruptions; they were more of a "can't read the disc because it's too scratched" situation.

[Mr.Poindexter]

I agree hard drives have a failure rate that can be a problem. If all media servers used a RAID system then perhaps 99% of drive failures would result in zero data loss. I have had maybe 4-5 drive failures in my media servers that didn't result in anything but the need to replace the drive and no data was lost. It shouldn't be up to user savvy but should just be the way all media servers operate.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by mywhitenoise

Yeah, but look at how "bad" those sales are in comparison to 10 years ago. Lady Gaga only at 2 million physical albums sold!? That surprises the hell out of me.
I can't stand her music, but she is the biggest pop star in the world right now. If that was released in the 90's, it would have sold 10 million.

::EDIT:: Just realized those stats are from late 2009, she's probably sold a lot more in the last year.

You're talking about different issues. The overall size of the music business (both physical and digital) has declined and continues to decline dramatically. Several times in the past few months an artist had made the #1 position by selling the LEAST amount of albums ever sold and still make #1. In 2009 (2010 figures aren't out yet), the U.S. music business was $7.778 billion (at list price). That compares with $14.585 billion in 1999, the peak year for the business. If you compare accounting for inflation, the decline is even worse.

In 2009, digital singles (1.13 billion units) comprised 77% of the singles business but digital albums comprised only 19% of long-form sales. About 293 million CDs were sold, but that compares with 943 million units in 2000. Only 76.4 million digital albums were sold in 2009.

The biggest problem is that the music business has returned to being a singles business, but the economics of the business doesn't support that. For all practical purposes, based on current trends, in spite of the supposed success of digital music, there won't be a music business to speak of in another five years. The business declined 12% in 2007, 15% in 2008 and 11% in 2009. That's simply not sustainable. And so far, the independent labels haven't shown much sign of producing anything better than the big labels.

[ariakon]

Noooo...we only have multiple years to go! Better start stocking up now as if a blizzard's coming. Who knows what the future holds? There are some experts saying that bandwidth is going to decrease as world usage goes up, and claiming that movies and music are identical is problematic. I can download a song in a few seconds, while movies can take hours, and streaming (in hi-def) requires internet speeds that not everyone can afford. Best Buy also is losing marketshare big-time to Amazon, Wal-mart and Target, so a shift in their media section isn't surprising. You guys also need to realize that you're bigger tech heads than most, my brother would have no idea how to download movies, and he's an intelligent guy in his early 30s.

[bandit29]

Well if physical media ever stops being made I could only imagine the catastrophic loss of jobs it would cause. Not just at the stores but to the people who handle it before it gets to Best Buy or Walmart: the truck drivers, storage warehouses, advertising companies etc.

There are two companies in my building who ship store displays/advertising for movies (Disney and Paramount usually) and video games...without the need for physical media... they'd be out of business.