http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitaltv/news/a290464/dvd-industry-goes-digital-as-sales-slump.html
Maybe this will happen faster than first thought.
Maybe Steve Jobs was right not to include Blu ray drives and BR support for DVDSP after all ;)
Maybe Steve Jobs was right not to include Blu ray drives and BR support for DVDSP after all ;)
Brilliant! Another Mac vs PC thread ;)
Let the fighting talk commence......
I prefer real media ....... the bandwidth to download a bluray equivalent would have the ISP's going nuts and driving up charges.
Brilliant! Another Mac vs PC thread ;)Let the fighting talk commence......
I think you'd have to try quite hard to make that comment into a Mac v Pc debate.
You mean rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of being able to gouge us for a BluRay rate!
You mean rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of being able to gouge us for a BluRay rate!
LOL - that would never happen......... :D
VOD/Streaming video is becoming so much easier - PS3 and some set-top players here can access LoveFilm and others. In the States Netflix is fairly big. I'm sure there are many more around and lots more to be announced.
How many DVDs/Blu-ray discs do you have taking up space - never to be watched again?
Downloads are cheaper for the end user and hog far less resources than making and distributing physical media.
There will still be a market for a while - lots of people still don't have/want interweb services. Important stuff (for now) will find a home on a shiny disc.
We've been trying to find workable long term solutions for our DOMESTIC customers to archive family videos. Joe Public isn't really up for buying a Vimeo account at eighty quid a year.
There were some other options but HP bought them up and shut them down.
http://www.viddyou.com/motionbox.htm
It could be that HP decide to relaunch "something" based on the Motionbox platform - who knows?
Arkiva.com in the U.S. have built their business on the "fear of disaster". If your family home was at risk of being wiped out on a regular basis then you might consider digital archiving a bit more seriously too.
If what happened to Motionbox is anything to go by then who can you trust to host your content? Will they be here tomorrow?
How long will it be before the great unwashed think that paying for a Vimeo (or similar) account is worthwhile when they can have little shiny discs or memory sticks?
Never bought a Bluray disc and only one commercial DVD in the last year.
Any movie I want to keep I wait until it is on Sky Movies, record it on the Sky box and output it to a 25p DVD via a Panny DVD recorder for the movie collection.
Archiving home movies is dead simple, save them on the PC as MPG or MP4 and with a Western Digital WD TV HD box connected to the HD TV copy the movie from the PC store disc to a memory stick or a seperate hard drive, then plug that into the WD TV unit and there you are.
Even easier if you have the network version of the WD TV connected to your home system, the unit playback just about anything apart from AVI's.
I am encouraging customers to seriously consider a hard copy of the family treasures on a USB hard drive. I encode into canopus` Mp2 format and add a free player , notably VLC which plays anything you chuck at it including .VOB
Yes, VLC is one of the best players out there. Nothing seems to phase it.
Incidentally, did you know that NetFlix in the US is now growing very fast? So fast that Forbes rates them at the top level for investment? They deliver movies on demand via satellite to individuals rather than cinemas. I was, last week, in the US, and read quite a lot about it in the press. Also, with ISP bandwidth to the home at around 54Mb/s it's easily fast enough to make it make sense. That makes my 2Mb/s maximum look dire (which it is), and is why I still use discs.
Never bought a Bluray disc and only one commercial DVD in the last year.Any movie I want to keep I wait until it is on Sky Movies, record it on the Sky box and output it to a 25p DVD via a Panny DVD recorder for the movie collection.
Same here.
Never bought a Bluray disc and only one commercial DVD in the last year.Any movie I want to keep I wait until it is on Sky Movies, record it on the Sky box and output it to a 25p DVD via a Panny DVD recorder for the movie collection.
Archiving home movies is dead simple, save them on the PC as MPG or MP4 and with a Western Digital WD TV HD box connected to the HD TV copy the movie from the PC store disc to a memory stick or a seperate hard drive, then plug that into the WD TV unit and there you are.
Even easier if you have the network version of the WD TV connected to your home system, the unit playback just about anything apart from AVI's.
Hi Colin,
What you may not appreciate is that you are a total genius compared to the average man in the street.
Gavin
.......We've been trying to find workable long term solutions for our DOMESTIC customers to archive family videos. Joe Public isn't really up for buying a Vimeo account at eighty quid a year.
:confused: - Vimeo Plus is only £38 per year ($59.95 a year).
mmm and still looks pretty awful unless you shoot 24P
:confused: - Vimeo Plus is only £38 per year ($59.95 a year).
Duly noted Dave - but still (perhaps?) too much for the want-everything-for-nothing mentality that people have come to expect from anything that starts with www.
Yes, VLC is one of the best players out there. Nothing seems to phase it.
I've been having problems for months now trying to burn blu ray discs with Encore, were it would lock up just trying to import files. (SD files are ok but it locks up with HD)
If I was to put the blu ray file on to an external HDD, with VLC, would I be able to just plug the HDD into an HD tele and play the file?
Peter
No. DVD hardware can't play the data fast enough for a BD file, and the protocol isn't set up for it anyway.
I am encouraging customers to seriously consider a hard copy of the family treasures on a USB hard drive. I encode into canopus` Mp2 format and add a free player , notably VLC which plays anything you chuck at it including .VOB
So John's information was incorrect ?
Edit. Are you referring to a DVD player Alan or VLC playing off a HDD?
Peter
If I was to put the blu ray file on to an external HDD, with VLC, would I be able to just plug the HDD into an HD tele and play the file?
No, VLC doesn't support Blu-ray yet, but they're working on it. Last time I tried it (1.1.4), it played the first chapter of an unencrypted disc for a few seconds and then stopped.
DVD player, the actual hardware. They simply aren't fast enough.
We don't need DVD or Blue Ray, we need pockets full of money. Everything we buy today is old hat by the time we get into the swing of enjoying the format. Or learning the art of producing the product.
What makes all these companies think that we are a nation of spenders. I don't mind the advance of new ideas or products. But what hurts if you cant obtain the product you are using. Or you have to pay an arm and a leg for the product.
"So John's information was incorrect ?"
Not at all , I thought this thread was about the demise of discs be it blu ray or Dvd and alternatives to them. Followed on from some replies to family films , which in my line of work is not in HD format.
I am in the right forum Shiny discs !
yes, John, this is the right place. If discs are to die at all, it'll be due to things like NetFlix delivering programme content. But that needs far fatter pipes than we have in the UK. I'm only 2.5 miles from my local BT exchange, but the maximum data rate I can get is 2Mb/s, and that's on a good day. When it rains, the connection can drop out completely (yes, I'm serious about that, copper connections to the exchange, but it drops out when the weather's wet).
My recent short stay in the US was a revelation, our hosts have a 54Mb/s connection which is rock solid although they're a lot further from an exchange. All because of fibre to the home. When the UK is properly fibre-connected, then the downloading of content will make sense. At present, we've still got large tracts of populated land where the only connection is either dial-up or satellite, let alone fibre. But, if fibre really does happen, then disc will probably die as a means of distribution.
Of course, in the US 'cable' is standard for TV/internet/phone. We have such limited coverage here and even from street to street it varies. Thus, they have much better data rates as the norm.
As for disks, for home entertainment they are bound to be phased out, much as VHS has all but vanished from home use (how many of us haven't bothered putting the vcr back after a move or a TV upgrade?). However, for professional use there is likely to be a good few years left for archive purposes and delivery of video and whole media projects to clients and diverse locations. EG Blu-Ray is a brilliant solution for archiving solid-state video. Since I began using Excam, I have been copying everything I shoot AND all the resulting projects, in full, onto dual-layer BDs. With disks from Japan, the total cost is about £20 per 50GB data, to a format that won't be damaged by a bump or moisture and with a long shelf-life (circa 100 years) - that's equivalent to 1/3 the cost of a 1 hr DVCAM or HDV master tape. Dominic
yes, John, this is the right place. If discs are to die at all, it'll be due to things like NetFlix delivering programme content. But that needs far fatter pipes than we have in the UK. I'm only 2.5 miles from my local BT exchange, but the maximum data rate I can get is 2Mb/s, and that's on a good day. When it rains, the connection can drop out completely (yes, I'm serious about that, copper connections to the exchange, but it drops out when the weather's wet).
I had a similar problem in the January snow, it turned out to be a small nick in the cable that was shorted by the water (amusingly, at it's worst the line was unusable for voice traffic, yet the ADSL connection could still sync at 2Mbps -- down from 16-17Mbps normally)... BT came and replaced the cable when I ran up to complain...
Might be worth getting BT to have a look at your physical copper cable, I suspect it is a similar problem.
Steven
I've already tried that :(
The biggest problem they have in overcoming , is finding a business model that'll work. Songs were easy as storage was simple and they weren't that big so they just sold them. Movies on the other hand are a lot harder to store and I don't want Netflix when my daughter wants to watch Toy Story 3 for the tenth time in a week.
i.e I want ownership of a copy, but to own a lot of digital copies I'm going to need a big hard drive, which might eventually happen but it will need to be very large and then there is the question of back-up incase of failure. I can pick up a £3 DVD for my family and it can be watched an unlimited amount of times, there is no business model for any streaming service that can compete with that.
Amen to that. I'm happy buying CDs and DVDs, but have yet to see any good reason for downloading anything. On the other hand, it's inevitably going to happen at some stage, but not yet as far as I'm concerned.
I'm also happy buying CDs and DVDs and for a reason that makes downloads unattractive - the lack of a good 'booklet'. For me, a booklet by a well-informed, well-researched writer adds a lot to the enjoyment of the film or the music.
Ray
The debate will go on from the manufactories point of view how do we make one system better and smaller and squeeze more money out of the public.
I agree with John Paul statement.
My YouYube account now lets me and my clients upload longer files.
I'm going to test exactly how long, but I've read it's up to 20GB files.
YouTube embedding is working very well for us:
http://www.avia-tv.com
Edit: here's a 2 hr 10 min video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcaXdk9XVss
Ha Ha Great illustration :)
Hmmm. Downloads will need to get significantly cheaper for me to take serious note of them. I just bought the remastered CD of Pinkerton by Weezer. Just had a wee look on itunes. To download the entire 2 discs worth would cost me the same price as I got from Amazon for the physical package. Nice packaging with a booklet containing lots of interesting little notes on the recording etc.
It's just not right.
But by the same token, the Blu-Ray of Twilight - Eclipse is £14.99 but only £12.99 on iTunes. It's swings and roundabouts. Play is the cheapest supplier for some things but not others. iTuners will be just the same.
But by the same token, the Blu-Ray of Twilight - Eclipse is £14.99 but only £12.99 on iTunes. It's swings and roundabouts. Play is the cheapest supplier for some things but not others. iTuners will be just the same.
I'd buy the blu ray. How big is the iTunes file?
No idea. The point of the original article is that even if you and others here would rather buy discs, more and more people are going for downloads. Chances are that this is a trend which will increase.
Just imaging it would look all good on a 42" kinda TV but I like to play my HD stuff through a projector so could imagine image issues there. I would presume its all 720p as 1080p would be a vast file.
I just think that people who take their films seriously are going to want a 1080p version on disc as opposed a 720p version via download especially as the price difference is hardly worth bothering about. Bring that download down to the region of £5 and that would make more sense. Especially as I'm presuming no extra content is available with the download?
The normal DVD-type extras do come with the downloads these days. As for 720 vs 1080 - I thought the general consensus was that some types of programme looked better in 720 while others looked better in 1080. Don't the Americans prefer 720? I know things like Lost were made in 720 and the picture quality of that was pretty impressive.
I recently grabbed a copy of the new(ish) "The A-team" film from my local HMV and was intrigued to find that besides the DVD disc it also contained another disc labelled "digital copy".
On inserting this disc into the PC a menu popped up and required input of a serial number which I eventually located in the sleeve of the box. After inputting I was informed that the code was being sent to the license provider but then received a "timed out" error.
Clicking for help then got me to a dozen FAQs which didn't address the problem, which could of course have a variety of causes including e.g. my own PCs firewall (?). Apparently it was also necessary to install Microsoft ActiveSync. And when (if) I got access to the film I could only play it on a maximum of 2 devices.
I think the DVD disc may be with us for some time!
DRM strikes again. Will they never learn?
I got the Blu-Ray of Inception which also came with a digital copy. It gave me an URL to visit and a code to enter which I did and within seconds, iTunes was running on my Mac and downloading the movie. It was all very painless.
Paying for DRM`d downloads. All very nice until the media Hard disk goes bang ! Then what ? Goodbye collection ?
Surely everyone keeps a backup? :)
I'm happy to rent a movie from LoveFilm rather than buying it.
We rented Up on Blu-ray last year. I then bought the twin pack DVD and Blu-ray at Xmas - it's a good kids film - we kept the Blu-ray and gave the DVD to a friend.
I don't mind DRM control for rentals provided it's invisible to me - but if you BUY something I really don't want my viewing options to be "controlled".
"Surely everyone keeps a backup? " I am thinking of Joe & Janet consumer who may well not.
Surely a backup is another copy which could be passed on and thus be classed as a pirate copy? All my old photos and home videos are (at least) duplicated and held by another member of the family at a different address. I thought DRM had made this hard to do.
I do not speak with authority but rather asking a question in a roundabout way :)
"Surely everyone keeps a backup? " I am thinking of Joe & Janet consumer who may well not.
Hence my smiley! People will have to learn to be more prudent. Certainly, iTunes encourages people to backup their purchases.
iTunes encourages people to backup their purchases.
iTunes allows you to redownload any purchases you have made , so you do not need to make backups of files bought through iTunes.
I think that the current move to downloaded media, particularly music is driven by:
a) the 'I want itall and I want it now' culture
b) the fact that the key music buying market, i.e. teens and twenty somethings listen to their music on the move and don't always have access to proper audio equipment in the home as would be found in the lounge.
The net result is that high pressure advertising mobilises peer pressure in the culture (a), and those who don't have access to a quality listening environment put up with the (sometimes) poor quality, compressed downloaded versions. If sound quality was important to them, they would refuse to pay as much as CDs for the tracks.
Steve
iTunes allows you to redownload any purchases you have made , so you do not need to make backups of files bought through iTunes.
So the Rockies may tumble and Gibraltar may crumble but Apple is here to stay? :D
Interesting thread. For me the disk has been dead for a while. All my music and most of my DVDs have all been ripped and stored on my home server. All movies are re-encoded in H264 including several in HD (I use 720p). I then have netgear media players around the house so can watch/listen to the content at those places on demand.
For me I find its great. The films etc tend to be watched more than when they were in their boxes as its so simple to use (my other half loves it as well as I put her entire collection of friends/simpsons/other random tv series on it)
Imo they should just allow people to download HD films with out crippling DRM and my world at least would be media complete :)
Space is an issue, I have a mirrored 1TB set of media drives that has so far lasted us a couple of years, it is nearly full now and probably have around 50gb remaining, so I will be switching these to a pair of 2TB drives at some point.