fundamental flaw in downloads as replacement of physical media

[tron3]

Ok, did a little math based on what I know and what I read here.

Firstly, I remember reading LONG AGO that HD DVD was actually a 720p format ONLY. Competition with blu-ray forced them to 1080p with higher compression.

Someone here mentioned that downloaded 10GB movies are packed with artifacts and generally of lesser quality than even HD DVD. Hence I conclude that digital download is like squeezing an 15 GB HD DVD movie onto a DVD9 disc.

Watch The Polar Express on blu-ray. It was ported over from the 15gb HD DVD and is barely better than the DVD counterpart. I am disgusted with that port.

I always said the HD DVD 30gb offerings were more acceptable, but 15gb quality is worth less than SD DVD in my opinion.

[Bobby Henderson]

Originally Posted by Aaron

Downloads will replace video rentals without a doubt, but will never replace physical media.

I'm not even sure downloads will ever replace the corner video rental store.

There is a fundamental weakness with movie download services. The companies running those services don't make any movies. Ultimately those services are 100% dependent on movie studios for a steady stream of content.

Frankly, movie studios can decide exactly how they want their content delivered and which platform they prefer the most to do that job. Apple and Microsoft really have no say in that. I think it's clear movie studios see Blu-ray as the eventual heir-apparent of DVD. They're going to put more of their home video marketing muscle behind that delivery platform. Pay per view services don't have the same level of quality or variety of what either Blu-ray or DVD offers.

One critical thing is clearly on the side of home video rental stores: when you rent a DVD or Blu-ray disc you are test driving the highest quality, sell-through product. If you really like the product there is a decent chance you may buy that same product at a later date. With pay per view services, either by cable, satellite or Internet delivery, you're not test driving that disc. The movie is not putting its best foot forward to entice you into buying a copy of it. If the people running Hollywood movie studios understand this fact, they may do more to give home video rental stores a continued advantage. They may keep the pay per view platforms hampered by limited variety and lower quality product.

[Excalibur-king]

Originally Posted by Achilles3

I like the shiny reflection of Bluray discs and I like to hold it and feel it

I like that Blu-ray has scratch proof technology unlike dvds.

[Aaron]

Originally Posted by Driver_King

What about physical movies, like VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray? I don't think downloads will replace rentals.

I prefer renting movies on iTunes rather than Blockbuster. It's like $4 for an HD iTunes rental, compared to $6 for a Blu-ray at Blockbuster. The iTunes downloads don't look that bad either, not as good as a BD, but not bad. It's easier, more convenient, and cheaper. I've got a crappy 3 meg rural DSL connection, and the movies seem to download pretty fast.

[Barnum]

Originally Posted by zor

There are about a dozen reasons why downloads will not work. But here's one that I can expand on that people often talk about. Hard drive crashes. Digitally storing all one's movies on a single hard drive (or, for the most part, an array), introduces a single point of failure for your entire movie collection. You could have a backup hard drive assuming any DRM would allow it, but even then you would just be having two single points of failure. Whereas, with BDs -- say you have a collection of 100 films -- if a failure occurs, it will be for a single disc, 99% of your collection will be safe and you just need to repurchase that single movie.

The only advantage is physical space, assuming you store backup hard drives raw. But once physical media evolves to things resembling tiny USB flash sticks, digital downloads would have lost all their appeal.

Poor choice RAID makes drive failure a non issue.

Downloads will be the way to go just not yet. Internet companies would rather limit your speed than actually make upgrades to the network.

[john_1958]

Originally Posted by zor

There are about a dozen reasons why downloads will not work. But here's one that I can expand on that people often talk about. Hard drive crashes. Digitally storing all one's movies on a single hard drive (or, for the most part, an array), introduces a single point of failure for your entire movie collection. You could have a backup hard drive assuming any DRM would allow it, but even then you would just be having two single points of failure. Whereas, with BDs -- say you have a collection of 100 films -- if a failure occurs, it will be for a single disc, 99% of your collection will be safe and you just need to repurchase that single movie.

The only advantage is physical space, assuming you store backup hard drives raw. But once physical media evolves to things resembling tiny USB flash sticks, digital downloads would have lost all their appeal.

more reason to buy discs because downloading is terrible
who wants to wait forever downloading

[Barnum]

Originally Posted by zor

Even allowing for redownloads does not eliminate fundamental flaw. First, I don't think any company will allow for unlimited redownloads. Second, even if they do, what happens if that company goes out of business! Third, even if they don't go out of business and somehow you just know they won't, what if your account gets hacked -- that is also a single point of failure. Instead of having it rest with a hd crash, it now rests with the security of your account. So at best it just adds one additional single pt of failure and with a backup (assuming you can make one) another additional one, for three total. All three could fail. Whereas with physical media, it is not possible for even 10% of a 400 movie collection to arbitrarily fail. For theft, you can get insurance whereas that doesn't exist for stolen/compromised accounts!

What about the dvd that you bought and is now out of print. You can't just run to store and buy it since it is out of print. Not a great comparison but still realistic.

[zor]

Originally Posted by Barnum

Poor choice RAID makes drive failure a non issue.

Downloads will be the way to go just not yet. Internet companies would rather limit your speed than actually make upgrades to the network.

You don't want to rely on RAID as a backup. It's not a substitutute for a proper backup. It's not "counted" as a backup at all. And everyone recommends having at least two backups with at least one stored at a different location. Google RAID and backup ASAP ... I don't want you to use RAID thinking it is a backup and end up regretting it (if you don't use RAID, then no worries).

The problem with speed is that in many countries the Internet provider and TV provider is the same company. That company doesn't want to give you so high a speed as to make internet TV and downloading movies possible. They don't want you drawn away from their own TV offerings or special TV options.

Also, and I am not an expert on this, but I always fear that downloading too much will cause premature death of your hard drive. So downloading has the costs of 1) Premature death of your hard drive and system 2) Need for at least two backups, ideally with one at another location (with physical media this is not necessary since you can have insurance cover it but no insurance covers data on a hard drive)

And the trend is not in increasing bandwith for the consumer, but restricting it. They already do it in some places and other companies have revealed they are considering it, testing it, or plan to implement it in the near future.

[Anthony P]

But they could. Hence not a fundamental flaw.

There's lots of things wrong with how downloads are commonly implemented today - not all of them are technical barriers, just poor/immature implementations.

the issue is that technically (everything is eventually possible), but at the end you need to live with reality. And that means content makers want to make sure they get paid for it. iPod is not not re DLable because politically it would be murder for them to do it. The more a system is open in one way the more it needs to be restrictive in the other.

Even if you forget that and we assume that the company allows you to reDL it, 300 songs is not a problem, one or two games, not an issue, but can you imagine if you have 200 titles with an average of 35GB* each? how will you reDL them? that would be 7TB,

* 200 could look like a lot, reDL for a renter is none issue, but for a buyer 200 is nothing, I am close to 300, I hope my HDD will last more then 1 year. I also used 35GB since some BDs are 25GB and others 50GB (and some 2 disks and some shows even more) but it was not about trying to make the number incredibly high but just to demonstrate how unnatural it is to assume ease of recreating a library.