Oh noes teh sky is falling!

[Steedeel]

We will probably end up with subscriptions for films. Itunes, Zune, SEN, VUDU, Acetrax, CinemaNow, Lovefilm, Amazon, BSkyB, and all the American ones i don't know of. Ultraviolet will fail and that will be the next logical step. Maybe tiered pricing for ten, twenty or unlimited films per month. If people are not buying enough films now in perfect clarity and superb sound why would they buy in the future with crappy digital downloads/streaming. I suspect if Apple go that route the rest will follow.
Me, i will just stack up those discs and hope a bluray player will see me through those times.

[Terjyn]

The claim that TV might go away is kinda odd to me.

Do you really see a family sitting around an iPhone watching a movie?

Or do you really think that watching things as a group is going to go away?

Hell, the Superbowl alone would make me believe TVs aren't going anywhere any time soon.

[partridge]

Originally Posted by Flatnate

I will believe the end of physical media is only near when this country makes serious strides in upgrading the high speed internet infrastructure and increases bandwidth to more areas. As a whole we are behind South Korea in terms of speed!

This is what I've previously believed, but the fact is that even with the average global speed being "slow", online movie viewing has moved ahead of disc sales. So as speeds increase, that will only help to boost On Demand movie and tv viewing, leaving disc sales trailing until at some point the disc becomes the secondary format behind the Internet version.

Convenience over quality; I hate it!

[Terjyn]

Originally Posted by partridge

This is what I've previously believed, but the fact is that even with the average global speed being "slow", online movie viewing has moved ahead of disc sales. So as speeds increase, that will only help to boost On Demand movie and tv viewing, leaving disc sales trailing until at some point the disc becomes the secondary format behind the Internet version.

Convenience over quality; I hate it!

Uses(viewings) vs. sales is a nonsensical comparison.

There were more bus rides taken than vehicles sold. Is the car going away?

[Blu-dock Saint]

Originally Posted by Terjyn

Uses(viewings) vs. sales is a nonsensical comparison.

There were more bus rides taken than vehicles sold. Is the car going away?

Precisely, more viewings isn't giving the companies more money than disc sales, its actually giving them a lot less.

[Blu-dock Saint]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

We will probably end up with subscriptions for films. Itunes, Zune, SEN, VUDU, Acetrax, CinemaNow, Lovefilm, Amazon, BSkyB, and all the American ones i don't know of. Ultraviolet will fail and that will be the next logical step. Maybe tiered pricing for ten, twenty or unlimited films per month. If people are not buying enough films now in perfect clarity and superb sound why would they buy in the future with crappy digital downloads/streaming. I suspect if Apple go that route the rest will follow.
Me, i will just stack up those discs and hope a bluray player will see me through those times.

Where do you get not enough people are buying films now in perfect clarity? All the articles say is that more people are "viewing" online streaming content. This includes tv episodes which I'm sure are viewed more than movies. Once again streaming content is not bringing in the big bucks like physical media sales are for the companies. Blu-ray spending alone is reportedly on a steady rise from week to week. There is more than $10 billion in physical media spending alone. Digital is still in the single digits. As long as there is billions being made and blu-ray sales still on the rise, physical media will still go another decade before we start seeing drops to where digital media will start to become preferrable. Hollywood companies will still push for physical purchases by removing content from streaming sites, such as what happend to netflix with starz/disney/sony films.

[Teazle]

Streaming seems to be growing at the expense of DVD rentals, not disc sales. (Think of all the people who used to visit Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.)

Last time I checked BD growth rate was around triple the growth rate of ALL digital incl VOD (sporting events and the like) and other irrelevant digital product.

[Teazle]

Originally Posted by Cevolution

As long as I purchase the 40-50 movies currently available on Blu-ray that I want, plus the other 60 movies that I want get released on blu-ray (which they will as they are all quite popular films), so I can complete my collection, and new release films still get released in physical form, regardless of whether they eventually become a niche product, then I personally couldn't give a sh*t what happens in the future. As I'll all ready own all the movies I want in my collection, and won't have to pay a monthly service charge to be able to watch and access all of them when I want to.

Maybe you'll be lucky and the studios will release just the movies you personally want.

[Teazle]

Originally Posted by Terjyn

The claim that TV might go away is kinda odd to me.

Do you really see a family sitting around an iPhone watching a movie?

Or do you really think that watching things as a group is going to go away?

Hell, the Superbowl alone would make me believe TVs aren't going anywhere any time soon.

I think living rooms would have to disappear for people to shift their viewing habits onto phones and tablets.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

Why? How many hifi systems do you see in stores now.

That's an excellent point and certainly, the demise of hi-fi can be largely attributed to the increase in personal listening systems and computer-driven listening with desktop speaker systems, which is indeed somewhat of a parallel to what's starting to happen with video. I also think it has to do with the decline in the market of what used to be called "MOR", Jazz, Show Tunes and Classical music listening, which some would argue required better sound reproduction than the mass-produced commercial rock, country and urban/hip-hop recordings of today.

And I do agree that more and more people will watch TV on portable devices, especially younger people who are always on the go.

But there are several factors working against that:
- Bandwidth limitations and capped data plans in the U.S. are going to prevent people from watching a lot of video/movies on their personal devices.

- at some point, those younger people become older people, many will have kids and they'll spend far more time at home. And those people will still want to watch TV, movies and other media on a large screen TV. Whether that's 37" or 120" is an open question and largely driven by location and size of their living quarters, but I believe that they'll still want to watch without holding a device in their laps.

One other factor that will affect this is whether people are living together and having kids or not. There has been a big decline in marriage in the U.S. and even those who do get married are getting married at ever-older ages. The birth rate has actually been pretty stable at slightly over the replacement rate. However, if Republicans win the next election and follow-through on their promise/threat to stop illegal immigration, overall birth rates will decline, since recent immigrants tend to have larger families.

And in spite of all the movement of TV watching to portable devices, Americans still watch an average of five hours of TV a day, which I personally find hard to believe, but it's what the research claims.

I think TV hardware sales will pick up again in a few years when people start replacing their current HDTVs or after we see the next big leap in new screen display technology (and after it has some time to come down in price.)

One additional factor is that all of the big TV manufacturers are losing money. Some could simply say "the hell with it" and stop making TVs or we could be left with just a few companies in the marketplace. That would change the dynamics of the business and push consumers towards moving more TV watching to personal and computer devices.

[Steedeel]

Over to you Apple! Just give us a HDMI for our bluray players though!

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Terjyn

The claim that TV might go away is kinda odd to me.

Do you really see a family sitting around an iPhone watching a movie?

Or do you really think that watching things as a group is going to go away?

Hell, the Superbowl alone would make me believe TVs aren't going anywhere any time soon.

agree, I always get the feeling that people that think such nonsense are either in high school (where they watch their parents TV but only count their tablet cell phone) or college/university (small apartment/dorm where they don't entertain). I can't imagine anyone once they have started real liofe and settled down and started a family believing such nonsense. Yes there are times when you want to see something different (a show no one else likes) or something portable (like traveling) but there will always be also time that you want to share with family and friends.

This easter we will go to one of my sisters for supper, but I am sure my other sister and her family will stay at my place and that means 5 extra people watching a movie with possibly popcorn and smoothies and I am sure happy we won’t all be crammed around a tablet to see it.

[evoxturbo]

http://news.moviefone.com/2012/04/03...9.html?_r=true

Give me a break, this is so ridiculous. I will never store any movies into a website or property I do not own. Who wants to take the chance. Look what happened to all the Megaupload people. Plus internet connection could be a major problem for sites such as Ultraviolet, whether it be their problem or the ISP's problem. I think this article is extremely inaccurate.

[Jerrin]

I agree. The whole idea is ridiculous at this point.

In my state, and many others, a large % of the population do not have access to fast internet speeds. Moreover, let us not forget the data caps. How long would it take for you to break your cap while streaming 45 GB movies?

This stuff always seems like it is written by a person who lives in a large city, is blessed with readily available fast internet speeds, and doesn't realize that most of the US does not have the same level of access.

For instance, I am very fortunate in my state; I have access to a blistering maximum speed of 1.5.

[Majin Blu]

Hey, thanks for posting this article.

I think it's ridiculous as well because I'll always support Home Video format and whatnot, but deep in my heart (the way the majority of the world is becoming), it will probably happen one day (no day soon though). Blu-ray is the new format and will be around for quite some time and DVDs aren't going anywhere for a while because it's still a valid format.

[Kryptonic]

No.

[HD Goofnut]

The funniest thing is that the studios actually expect consumers to lay down $10-20 for new release titles that you can stream anytime. Please. No one is going to lay down that kind of money for something you can't resell or lend out, and is dependent on a high speed internet connection. Optical disc (BD and DVD) is a nearly $12 billion a year industry (2011 numbers) and there is no way that's going extinct anytime in the near future.

[pro-bassoonist]

The Internet is full with these so called 'experts' who love to write sensationalistic articles and make predictions that do not take into consideration hard and cold facts. A great number of them, for instance, write for PCWorld and have predicting the end of physical media since the boom days of DVD. Not surprisingly, a great number of them were also hardcore HDDVD supporters (a quick search reveals a list of very telling writings).

As far as this 'expert' is concerned, let's ignore DVD/Blu-ray for a moment and consider this:

"The number of consumers buying music CDs increased 2% to 78 million in 2011".

And...

"Indeed, there are nearly twice as many consumers of music CDs than there are of music download services such as Apple iTunes, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2013, said Russ Crupnick, SVP of industry analysis at NPD."

Source:
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/mus...npd-says-26599

Neither Blu-ray nor DVD, the physical market, are going anywhere any time soon. In fact, more than likely not even during my lifetime.

Pro-B

[Farid]

Ah man! Now I have to buy my films again!

NOT!!!!

[xxBachelor1981xx]

This must be a joke because Bluray will not be replaced anytime soon. First of all for people with surround sound systems you can’t get DTS-HD sound or Dolby True HD with streaming. Not only that but the quality is not as good as bluray for video and for someone like me a lot of my collection is digibooks and I like the special packaging so I will continue to build my collection as long as I can still buy what I want.