The percentage of sales people that recommend Samsung HDTVs.
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I don't know why people get so heated about this debate. It will happen when it will happen. I just think of the downloading being too far off for me to put off purchasing Blu Ray discs. I mean, if I replace my 300 DVDs with Blu Rays, and let's say they are all 50 GB discs, that's 15,000 GB or 15 terabytes. Is a 15 TB drive going to be affordable in the next 5-7 years? Maybe, but I don't know why I should put off purchasing stuff until then.
Granted, I understand that downloads are normally much smaller than a full-on disc, but still. It's very difficult to understand WHY people want one or the other to fail. I agree that downloads ARE the future, but I don't see why that has to undermine physical media. It just seems that some people need to pick sides, regardless of the conflict instead of seeing what can work together.
So, give me a little of both. I'm going to keep buying and renting Blu Ray discs, but if I see something on Xbox Live that is worth renting or downloading, I'm going to take advantage of it. Not to mention the excitement over HD streaming with Netflix.
Frankly, look at the wealth of possibilities that exist regarding the future of content. Twenty years ago, it was nothing but VHS. Now, the possibilities are endless. We should just enjoy that.
And you are correct for the most part..but once the mainstream takes over with downloads we will see optical media die out just from the reason of economics. It's very simple. Just like with LaserDisc. If an optical format doesn't reach mass appeal it becomes a financial burden on the companies releasing content and slowly but surely they die off - get discontinued. The proof is your VHS note. If it was true what you said, VHS would still be around but at some point it became financially unreasonable to continue pushing the format.
15tb drives might not be too far away.. We are talking next 5 years of advancement in compression technologies, optimization of HD content to maintain the same quality but lowering size. That's why VC-1 and AVC codecs are so good, they are allowing more and more that compression is simply transparent (quality wise) but the size goes down drastically.
Look at it this way, storage space grows incredibly fast on hard drives over time. We have proof of that as we've jumped from 250gb discs to 1.5tb in like 2 years. That's 6-7 times increase in size. On the other hand compression technologies are allowing to get master quality while reducing the size. So reality is that you really won't need 15tb to store you movies.
But overall I think you are looking at it wrong in a way. I don't think people will actaully store movies to begin with. I think that all you can eat rental models like Netflix or super high quality models like Vudu or Xbox 360 or PS3 will allow users to have virtual libraries of movies at their finger tips at any time. There won't be really a reason for anyone to buy a movie and I can tell you from the business model of things that companies would like to harvest monthly subscriptions then get a few bucks from individual sales. Monthly subscriptions are more stable revenue stream. Everybody wins in that scenario. Studios are protected as they don't really have to worry about DRM that much (it's all server side), companies offering download service will make money but studios will also take percentage and user gets virtual libraries at their finger tips for a monthly subscription for example.
Don't you agree that is much better way then paying $20-$30 per disc that you will essentially watch maybe a few times in it's lifetime?
Another reason why digital downloads seems more flexible is expansion. Everything is transparent to the consumer without the need to repurchase new devices or discs in the future if newer, higher quality movies come out. As I mentioned before, imagine 4k movies start coming out. With optical media you would have to rebuy your discs again (probably at a premium), you would have to buy a new player since your current optics won't support it and then wait for rental stores (who btw are dying and are getting severely undercut by studios with rentals because studios want to sell movies) to get those movies if you want to rent. That's hundreds and thousands of dollars wasted because you like to hold a disc in your hand. It's impractical, costly and overall the whole method and business model around optical media is ancient and highly stale.
In digital downloads, when even more and more services start competing you will see Cable companies expanding bandwidth capabilities because there's huge money in it. There's also a lot of competition space in digital downloads because if you look at rentals and since DRM is server side, movie studios could give licenses to anyone since it's safe for them and many download services could come out with better subscription and similar. It's really a very bright future.
Let me just leave you with this thought.
As of now, digital downloads capable households are several times bigger then Blu-Ray one. Just look at this:
1. PCs and HTPCs are digital downloads capable
2. Xbox 360 (25 million)
3. PS3 (16 million)
4. Roku and Vudu boxes (don't know numbers but it's definitely growing)
this probably 100+ million users against probaby 20 million with Blu-Ray and I'm very generous.
Put all these together and you will see that revenue and audience will soon exceed Blu-Ray several times.
The future is already here, we are just waiting for services to improve and that will most likely happen in the next 2-3 years to the point that you will see no difference between Blu-Ray and downloads. Vudu is already borderline with that with their HDX movies as many reputable Home Theater reviews say.
"2-3 years to the point that you will see no difference between Blu-Ray and downloads".
You may forget that physical media also advances and thus they may never have the same quality at the same time.
"As of now, digital downloads capable households are several times bigger then Blu-Ray one"
You may also forget that digital needs a fatter broadband connection to stream higher quality and one that's not capped. Many many people do not have one if not both and will not have that for years.
Digital is a good addition which will only get better but not a replacement. Its more like comparing tv service to blu-ray. I think digital will more likely eat away at cable,sat not blu-ray just as it is currently doing.
Don't forget that downloading does not require the fast connections that streaming demands.
With a tailored download of say 8.5gbs (enough for a very nice x264 1080p movie with one language audio track using full DTS @ 1.5mbps or Dolby Digital Plus @ 1.5mbps = much superior to vanilla Dolby Digital or the lower rated versions of DTS) any connection offering 6 -7mb will be done in about 3 - 4hrs.
Better net connections will do it even faster.
That's perfectly feasible for a hell of a lot of people right now.