I doubt very much that we will see another physical format. Though perhaps the 1440p format which is going to hit in 2010 might make it to disk. If it does, it will probably use the physical layer of BR, as BR has the space for the data, where HD-DVD didn't. Not on a single layer, at least, and just barely on two. It could be a firmware upgrade, or so people in the industry I know tell me.
So what about solid-state media? My Sony PMW-EX1 uses (currently very expensive) ExpressCard 34 media rather than tape for HDV recording. I would think something similar in solid-state media --when in large enough capacities for average film (2hr+) content and affordable for mass public consumption --would make a convenient delivery mechanism that didn't have to deal with spinning disks and optical lasers. Although the bus and video playback mechanism required might cost a lot more than a disc-based player connected to a monitor.
I guess it might even be a viable mechanism for in-store kiosk delivery to a reusable read/write "media card" for HD content rentals, since you could conceivably write to the media card a lot faster than you can download, and I would imagine copy-protection and time-limit locks wouldn't be that difficult to implement.
Granted, I can't envision too many well-heeled content buyers standing in line with their card at a McDonalds RedBox for a HiDef fix for the night, but technology has a way of heightening people's expectations of what's tolerable (I have little interest in watching anything that isn't delivered in cable HD anymore).
And as you said, the costs always keep coming down. An over-the-counter 2gb iPod shuffle now sells for 10% of what I paid for my first mail-order discount 60 megabyte external hard drive.
So what about solid-state media? My Sony PMW-EX1 uses (currently very expensive) ExpressCard 34 media rather than tape for HDV recording. I would think something similar in solid-state media --when in large enough capacities for average film (2hr+) content and affordable for mass public consumption --would make a convenient delivery mechanism that didn't have to deal with spinning disks and optical lasers. Although the bus and video playback mechanism required might cost a lot more than a disc-based player connected to a monitor.
I guess it might even be a viable mechanism for in-store kiosk delivery to a reusable read/write "media card" for HD content rentals, since you could conceivably write to the media card a lot faster than you can download, and I would imagine copy-protection and time-limit locks wouldn't be that difficult to implement.
Granted, I can't envision too many well-heeled content buyers standing in line with their card at a McDonalds RedBox for a HiDef fix for the night, but technology has a way of heightening people's expectations of what's tolerable (I have little interest in watching anything that isn't delivered in cable HD anymore).
And as you said, the costs always keep coming down. An over-the-counter 2gb iPod shuffle now sells for 10% of what I paid for my first mail-order discount 60 megabyte external hard drive.
I'm not sure if they will ever sell content on SS media. I believe that downloads will take over from there, though it will be some years yet before it becomes totally seamless.
You know, I find that many people who should know better simply don't take advances in technology into account. Whenever something new comes out, and it's expensive, or doesn't work well, they dismiss it.
When Quicktime first came out, and all it could do was 240 x 160 with 8 bit color at 15 fps with 8 bit mono audio, many people laughed at it. I insisted that it would be the most important computer development in 40 years, but I was told that I was nuts, and that it would never amount to much. We see what happened.
When Real came out with streaming audio over the net at a max of 64kbs, it was miraculous! Even though it stuttered and dropped out. I was using ISDN at the time, at the amazing speed of 128kbs.
The same thing is true of downloads and streaming video. When I started out with Compuserve, at 300 baud, it was an amazing thing. I could actually watch each letter come on the screen, one at a time, at about the speed I could read! Who would have thought that we would have 6mbs downloads? But, we do.
Even 52kbs dial-up was a major leap from that, and broadband is another major leap. People are too much in a hurry these days. If it doesn't do what I want NOW, then it's no good.
Verison is planning FIOS to move to 150Mbs in a few short years, and later, 1Gbs!
Ten years from now, we will all be downloading 1080p with little or no extra compression over what it has now on disk. No one will think about the fights people are having now about it.
iPods will have a half terabyte of memory, if people really want it, and computers will be at least 100 times more powerful than they are today.
I'm saying all this because we have to think ahead, not a year or two, but five or more years out. Things will be very different from what they are today.
I think there's the possibility that what's called ubiquitous computing, and ubiquitous networks will be here in a decade or so.
We'll walk down the street, and want to listen to a song, and we will just ask for the song, and it will be there. We'll pay a few cents, and not think about it.
If we're sitting in our doctors office (or just about anywhere), and we're bored, we'll just call for a Tv show, and it will appear, instantly. We'll watch it, and again be charged a few cents.
That's the way it will be. We don't really need to own any of this stuff. At some point, the pricing will be pennies per listen, or view. People will call up entertainment, or information, wherever they are, and whenever they want it.
The only time they might want something on a memory card is if they have to go off network.
Sorry I went on so long about what was a perfectly straightforward question, but I feel strongly about this.
I have to laugh when I think about the people who said nobody cared about the HD disc war. There are now what, four separate threads here in AI alone? Including one in Future Hardware, which is interesting considering HD DVD is now effectively past hardware.
I have to laugh when I think about the people who said nobody cared about the HD disc war. There are now what, four separate threads here in AI alone? Including one in Future Hardware, which is interesting considering HD DVD is now effectively past hardware.
And about eight people are generating most of the posts.
And about eight people are generating most of the posts.
There was about $270 million worth of BR disks sold in 2007. An estimate is now that HD-DVD is gone, there will be about $1 billion worth of BR disks sold in 2008, and the number has already picked up considerably.
Don't be so smug. It'll be good riddance Blu-ray sooner than you think. Now that Apple has downloadable HD movies , this is only the beginning. There should be a total convergence of HD over the internet in five years at which time the general public will finally have HDTVs and skip Blu-ray enitirely. People are not going to double dip their collections for yet another format that will eventually loose to downloads.
That is a nice dream you have. Too bad it won't come true. I don't think people are going to favor 720p movie downloads over a 1080p BluRay Disc. People that like movies want to own them. DVD's are very successful and movie downloads have not affected DVD sales at all. Now that the format war is over, BluRay players and discs should begin to drop in price as more electronics makers will produce BluRay hardware.
Millions wasted because they couldn't agree on one standard as they did with DVD.
Oh, and Apple's crappy low-bit downloads are not true-HD. Why? Because of compression. Too much compression. Besides, I will not settle for anything less than 1080p. Apple TV only supports 720p upconverted to 1080p.
I'm glad it's over. Bring on cheaper blu-ray movies and players.
There were "multiple" DVD formats, with a short-lived format war. Don't you remember the failed Divx DVD? Not the Divx video compression, but the Pay-Per-Play Divx DVD that was created by a bunch of lawyers and Circuit City. You bought a Divx DVD player ($100 more than a standard DVD player) and connected it to your phone line so it can "phone-home" to allow your Divx DVD to play for 24 hours. Divx DVD's were cheaper, had no special features, and the initial idea was that you bought the movie, did the Pay per Play, and then threw it away, without having to return it to the store. Or, if you kept the disc, you would have to pay to watch it again.
Then the consumer groups complained about landfills filling up with Divx DVD's. So Circuit City created a drop box for Divx DVD's so they could be recycled. Now the initial marketing idea (of never returning the "rented" movie) was ruined because Circuit City wanted you to return the DVD to the store!
Disney was big on the Pay per Play Divx DVD because they knew parents would be playing the titles over and over and they would rake in the bucks. You could pay the "full price" and unlock the Divx DVD so it would play forever, well, as long as the Divx servers were running. The other failure of the format was if you brought your Divx DVD to a friend's house. If you tried to play the disc on your friend's Divx player, your friend got charged to watch it!
The format failed after about a year and it resulted in a class action lawsuit because the titles no longer played once the Divx servers were shut down. People that bought the Divx DVD players received a $100 refund (the premium price over the standard DVD player at the time). The only concession was that the players also played standard DVD's.
That is a nice dream you have. Too bad it won't come true. I don't think people are going to favor 720p movie downloads over a 1080p BluRay Disc. People that like movies want to own them. DVD's are very successful and movie downloads have not affected DVD sales at all. Now that the format war is over, BluRay players and discs should begin to drop in price as more electronics makers will produce BluRay hardware.
Blu-Ray will likely have a pretty nice five-year run as a format, due to market inertia (the mainstream is just comfortable with renting/buying movies in a physical format) and the fact that movie dloading is still in its infancy.
But I wouldn't want to place any bets on Blu-Ray's successor having a good run, whatever it is. Dloading should easily be king by then... discs for movies will go the way of the CD, most of us see it coming, the only question is when.
Comments
I doubt very much that we will see another physical format. Though perhaps the 1440p format which is going to hit in 2010 might make it to disk. If it does, it will probably use the physical layer of BR, as BR has the space for the data, where HD-DVD didn't. Not on a single layer, at least, and just barely on two. It could be a firmware upgrade, or so people in the industry I know tell me.
So what about solid-state media? My Sony PMW-EX1 uses (currently very expensive) ExpressCard 34 media rather than tape for HDV recording. I would think something similar in solid-state media --when in large enough capacities for average film (2hr+) content and affordable for mass public consumption --would make a convenient delivery mechanism that didn't have to deal with spinning disks and optical lasers. Although the bus and video playback mechanism required might cost a lot more than a disc-based player connected to a monitor.
I guess it might even be a viable mechanism for in-store kiosk delivery to a reusable read/write "media card" for HD content rentals, since you could conceivably write to the media card a lot faster than you can download, and I would imagine copy-protection and time-limit locks wouldn't be that difficult to implement.
Granted, I can't envision too many well-heeled content buyers standing in line with their card at a McDonalds RedBox for a HiDef fix for the night, but technology has a way of heightening people's expectations of what's tolerable (I have little interest in watching anything that isn't delivered in cable HD anymore).
And as you said, the costs always keep coming down. An over-the-counter 2gb iPod shuffle now sells for 10% of what I paid for my first mail-order discount 60 megabyte external hard drive.
So what about solid-state media? My Sony PMW-EX1 uses (currently very expensive) ExpressCard 34 media rather than tape for HDV recording. I would think something similar in solid-state media --when in large enough capacities for average film (2hr+) content and affordable for mass public consumption --would make a convenient delivery mechanism that didn't have to deal with spinning disks and optical lasers. Although the bus and video playback mechanism required might cost a lot more than a disc-based player connected to a monitor.
I guess it might even be a viable mechanism for in-store kiosk delivery to a reusable read/write "media card" for HD content rentals, since you could conceivably write to the media card a lot faster than you can download, and I would imagine copy-protection and time-limit locks wouldn't be that difficult to implement.
Granted, I can't envision too many well-heeled content buyers standing in line with their card at a McDonalds RedBox for a HiDef fix for the night, but technology has a way of heightening people's expectations of what's tolerable (I have little interest in watching anything that isn't delivered in cable HD anymore).
And as you said, the costs always keep coming down. An over-the-counter 2gb iPod shuffle now sells for 10% of what I paid for my first mail-order discount 60 megabyte external hard drive.
I'm not sure if they will ever sell content on SS media. I believe that downloads will take over from there, though it will be some years yet before it becomes totally seamless.
You know, I find that many people who should know better simply don't take advances in technology into account. Whenever something new comes out, and it's expensive, or doesn't work well, they dismiss it.
When Quicktime first came out, and all it could do was 240 x 160 with 8 bit color at 15 fps with 8 bit mono audio, many people laughed at it. I insisted that it would be the most important computer development in 40 years, but I was told that I was nuts, and that it would never amount to much. We see what happened.
When Real came out with streaming audio over the net at a max of 64kbs, it was miraculous! Even though it stuttered and dropped out. I was using ISDN at the time, at the amazing speed of 128kbs.
The same thing is true of downloads and streaming video. When I started out with Compuserve, at 300 baud, it was an amazing thing. I could actually watch each letter come on the screen, one at a time, at about the speed I could read! Who would have thought that we would have 6mbs downloads? But, we do.
Even 52kbs dial-up was a major leap from that, and broadband is another major leap. People are too much in a hurry these days. If it doesn't do what I want NOW, then it's no good.
Verison is planning FIOS to move to 150Mbs in a few short years, and later, 1Gbs!
Ten years from now, we will all be downloading 1080p with little or no extra compression over what it has now on disk. No one will think about the fights people are having now about it.
iPods will have a half terabyte of memory, if people really want it, and computers will be at least 100 times more powerful than they are today.
I'm saying all this because we have to think ahead, not a year or two, but five or more years out. Things will be very different from what they are today.
I think there's the possibility that what's called ubiquitous computing, and ubiquitous networks will be here in a decade or so.
We'll walk down the street, and want to listen to a song, and we will just ask for the song, and it will be there. We'll pay a few cents, and not think about it.
If we're sitting in our doctors office (or just about anywhere), and we're bored, we'll just call for a Tv show, and it will appear, instantly. We'll watch it, and again be charged a few cents.
That's the way it will be. We don't really need to own any of this stuff. At some point, the pricing will be pennies per listen, or view. People will call up entertainment, or information, wherever they are, and whenever they want it.
The only time they might want something on a memory card is if they have to go off network.
Sorry I went on so long about what was a perfectly straightforward question, but I feel strongly about this.
I have to laugh when I think about the people who said nobody cared about the HD disc war. There are now what, four separate threads here in AI alone? Including one in Future Hardware, which is interesting considering HD DVD is now effectively past hardware.
And about eight people are generating most of the posts.
And about eight people are generating most of the posts.
There was about $270 million worth of BR disks sold in 2007. An estimate is now that HD-DVD is gone, there will be about $1 billion worth of BR disks sold in 2008, and the number has already picked up considerably.
People were waiting for this resolution.
Don't be so smug. It'll be good riddance Blu-ray sooner than you think. Now that Apple has downloadable HD movies , this is only the beginning. There should be a total convergence of HD over the internet in five years at which time the general public will finally have HDTVs and skip Blu-ray enitirely. People are not going to double dip their collections for yet another format that will eventually loose to downloads.
That is a nice dream you have. Too bad it won't come true. I don't think people are going to favor 720p movie downloads over a 1080p BluRay Disc. People that like movies want to own them. DVD's are very successful and movie downloads have not affected DVD sales at all. Now that the format war is over, BluRay players and discs should begin to drop in price as more electronics makers will produce BluRay hardware.
Millions wasted because they couldn't agree on one standard as they did with DVD.
Oh, and Apple's crappy low-bit downloads are not true-HD. Why? Because of compression. Too much compression. Besides, I will not settle for anything less than 1080p. Apple TV only supports 720p upconverted to 1080p.
I'm glad it's over. Bring on cheaper blu-ray movies and players.
There were "multiple" DVD formats, with a short-lived format war. Don't you remember the failed Divx DVD? Not the Divx video compression, but the Pay-Per-Play Divx DVD that was created by a bunch of lawyers and Circuit City. You bought a Divx DVD player ($100 more than a standard DVD player) and connected it to your phone line so it can "phone-home" to allow your Divx DVD to play for 24 hours. Divx DVD's were cheaper, had no special features, and the initial idea was that you bought the movie, did the Pay per Play, and then threw it away, without having to return it to the store. Or, if you kept the disc, you would have to pay to watch it again.
Then the consumer groups complained about landfills filling up with Divx DVD's. So Circuit City created a drop box for Divx DVD's so they could be recycled. Now the initial marketing idea (of never returning the "rented" movie) was ruined because Circuit City wanted you to return the DVD to the store!
Disney was big on the Pay per Play Divx DVD because they knew parents would be playing the titles over and over and they would rake in the bucks. You could pay the "full price" and unlock the Divx DVD so it would play forever, well, as long as the Divx servers were running. The other failure of the format was if you brought your Divx DVD to a friend's house. If you tried to play the disc on your friend's Divx player, your friend got charged to watch it!
The format failed after about a year and it resulted in a class action lawsuit because the titles no longer played once the Divx servers were shut down. People that bought the Divx DVD players received a $100 refund (the premium price over the standard DVD player at the time). The only concession was that the players also played standard DVD's.
That is a nice dream you have. Too bad it won't come true. I don't think people are going to favor 720p movie downloads over a 1080p BluRay Disc. People that like movies want to own them. DVD's are very successful and movie downloads have not affected DVD sales at all. Now that the format war is over, BluRay players and discs should begin to drop in price as more electronics makers will produce BluRay hardware.
Blu-Ray will likely have a pretty nice five-year run as a format, due to market inertia (the mainstream is just comfortable with renting/buying movies in a physical format) and the fact that movie dloading is still in its infancy.
But I wouldn't want to place any bets on Blu-Ray's successor having a good run, whatever it is.
.