Steve Crook

Maybe for the disposable films like the ones churned out by Hollywood at the moment where even one viewing is probably more than you really need.

But what about the old classics where you want to watch them time after time?
I've already worn out a few video tapes, and even a DVD of my favourite films.

Until someone can get the download bandwidth up high enough so that you can download a complete film in just a few minutes, I think that some sort of home-player will be with us for some time.

Steve

aaron

I think it unlikely that we will ever move away from a 'packaged domestic film product' of some description.
Sure, like music, there will be a number of films that consumers would be happy to simply have access to. But there will also always be passionate film/music collectors, who want to own a legitimate packaged version of their favourite film or artist.
Whether or not television will become integrated to the internet in a viable and economic way, remains to be seen.
Certainly for now, the level of investment neccessary to achieve the infrastructure, seems unlikely.
What Steve says regarding bandwidth is certainly true at the moment.
And if one does attempt to download a film file of any sort, the current super-compression neccessary to make it viable, often makes it a less than satisfactory viewing experience.

'He who is not one up...Is one down'

Steve Crook

It's enough for most recent Hollywood films, where quality isn't as much of an issue as lots of explosions

Especially when it's just viewed on the small window that a media player (WiMP, Real or any other) uses by default. Most people don't know that they can be made full screen - and they don't have very large screens anyway.

Steve

Johnny Rico

If the technology advances as it has been doing , then before long films kept on individual storage media will be a thing of the past. Instead you will have a "Juke Box" which can be updated through whatever download method is then operating.

As I can now shoehorn multiple CDs into MP3 format and play then in the Car , then the Home Media Centre or JukeBox is really only a matter of time.

I imagine that you will have a customised "front end" to suit your own requirements . As you sit down in the evening , you can select your favourite film or series and go straight to it. They may even be held on a central server ( per Internet Photo Directories ) .

Then someone will invent a proper holographic format and off we will Go again :)

Couldn't You just try acting , Old Boy...It's so much easier

Steve Crook

You've been watching those old "How we'll all live in the future" promotional films by people like the Electricity Board where they claim we'll all be living in fully automated houses - by 1980!

Steve

Johnny Rico

LOL! With a voice over by Mr Cholmondley-Warner!

You'll have to excuse me as i'm just off for a spin in my flying car and I need to get fitted for my new Bacofoil Suit.

Couldn't You just try acting , Old Boy...It's so much easier

Steve Crook

Whereas in reality, the future will probably be more like the cities in the films Blade Runner, Brazil or even Total Recall

Steve

samkydd

I'd agree with your sentiments. I've got a load of vids and vinyl albums that I've no intention of replacing with DVD or CD versions, it's a nonsense. IMWO vinyl albums and 45s sound better, I don't know why but they do, and re-issued "special edition" CDs of famous albums are a bit of a con. They often include "bonus tracks" which were left off the original album mainly because they were crap, but now they've decided to squeeze them on as an afterthought which makes this edition of the album so "special"!

You also need a scanning electron microscope to read the CD sleeve notes and the original artwork was designed for a 12" record sleeve not something to fit an area the size of two fag packets! Pre-recorded cassette tape albums were even smaller, but I always felt cheated by them at the time and rarely bought any because the vinyl version always felt more like a "proper" album and cassettes were prone to wear and tear.

I've picked up some good classic films on VHS very cheaply, and you look on Amazon or Play.com and the DVD versions are often too expensive and for what? So you can get a few extras like film stills, an occassional documentary about the film, a director's commentary? Personally I just want to watch the film!

Advances in technology recreate new markets for the same things over and over again and people who can't resist the desire to keep up with the game ultimately pay the price. It's the way of the world and fashion conscious folk will always spend their disposable on things that they don't really need, but can't seem to help getting conned by a cynical marketing industry that perpetuates the myth that you have to be leading edge all the time.

It's not just the format either, you had record cabinets and cassette racks, then CD holders, then Beta video tape racks which you couldn't use for VHS so you had to buy VHS sized ones, then DVD covers were a different size to CDs so your CD racks were no good for holding minidiscs or DVDs and so you buy DVD holders.......etc etc when all you really need is a set of soddin' bookshelves!

When Bontempi brought out their lightweight plastic "Quando, Quando, Quando" type home electric organ I don't remember people desperately trying to offload their Steinway pianos at the nearest car boot sale!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

Mr Pastry Time

Better off buying a Sinclair C5 !

Mr Pastry Time

No it aint! Its a ZX81

Famous Mortimer

It's the big companies unable to come up with anything decent and new, so trying to make us buy something we already own, just packed in a different way.

Look at how much quicker / cheaper the internet has become in the last five years. Hell, the last two years. Now, on a good day with a fast connection, I could download a film in under a day- a proper 4gig DVD file. Two years in the future, it'll be 6 hours. Leave your PC on overnight, have a nice new film in the morning. Burn it onto a DVD, ten minutes.

Technology is advancing too fast. I guarantee you that these companies already have what they're going to sell us in three years when they've squeezed all the HDTV money out of us.

ChristineCB

Last week of May, 2006, Pioneer announced they will discontinue manufacturing today's standard DVD parts (called "red ray") and will move to Blu-Ray parts exclusively by the end of 2006.

Pioneer is the 3rd or 4th largest supplier of parts for the rest of the "assemblers' industry".

This news is supposedly a stake in the heart of the HD-DVD format.

Too bad we can't adopt the EVD standard like China wants. 27+Gb (the original optical disk standard, before the Sony-Ph folks dissected it and realized they could build in parts obsolecense and increase landfill volumes).

Mark L

Blah blah blah. It's the last gasp of an industry that knows it can't hold on to the huge monstrously inflated profits it's been making for much longer. By the time DVD is fazed out, something will have replaced Blu-Ray. Notice how the gaps between these technological breakthroughs are getting smaller and smaller?

I reckon we'll have TV through the internet soon enough, and a billion channels. When that happens, the DVD industry is going down the toilet. Already on dual-layer discs, they struggle to put any extras of any decency on most discs, so what are they going to do with 30GB worth of space?

Tony Pendrey

That's dead right. And the worrying thing is that they probably have the new technologies planned for some years to come.

I know that they have been working on storage formats which are up in the terabyte region.

The only real advantage I can see is the possibility of buying one disk with a whole collection of films on it. But are we likely to get that ? Probably not.

Anyway, for a tight little git like me, it's real nice to visit my local boot fayre where folk are unloading VHS tapes for as little as 10p !

I just don't know what they feel is the great advantage in owning the DVD as opposed to the tape. Like many others, all I want to do is watch the film.

Ah Yes, the Soviet Union. All them wheatfields and ballet in the evenings

sippog

As an aficionado of great throw-away lines, I love that scene in "Men In Black" where Tommy Lee Jones learns of an amazing new media format introduced to earth by aliens:
TOMMY LEE: (resignedly) "Guess I'll have to buy the White Album again. . ."

(Fillm geek warning: from memory, so probably not verbatim .but you get the idea)