Do you think DVDs will become obsolete?

[manning]

Sure. Already you are seeing solid state storage (SSD). Solid state storage is like memory cards for your camera.

Sony is one who is using solid state hard drives in place of spinning hard drives.

 

[Big Cuddly Bear]

At some point, of course they will be obsolete. Really it isn't a question of "if", but "when".

 

[Big Cuddly Bear]

I work in TV commercials and everything will eventually be sent digitally. Some of our stations are fighting the change but tapes and discs will be a part of the things we laugh about soon.

Absolutely 100% true. I know from experience.

 

[twokids0204]

Technology is always evolving, and ever changing.

Makes me think of what a wise man once said at the 1964 World's Fair


There's a great big beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of everyday
There's a great big beautiful tomorrow
And tomorrow's just a dream away

Man has a dream and that's the start
He follows his dream with mind and heart
And when it becomes a reality
It's a dream come true for you and me

So there's a great big beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of everyday
There's a great big beautiful tomorrow
Just a dream away

 

[tvguy]

I work in TV commercials and everything will eventually be sent digitally. Some of our stations are fighting the change but tapes and discs will be a part of the things we laugh about soon.

Eventually...yes, soon, probably not.
I work at a TV station and our corporate owners were of the same mindset as you, about 5 years ago they put all their eggs into the FTP basket, (via Pathfire) figuring improvements and new technology would speed transfer rates. Well, it hasn't happened. A 30 second spot in HD delivered via FTP take 12 minutes to download. And automation of commerical play back has ended the last minute changes some advertisers used to like to make. Back in the TCR/Odetic/Mark era, you could spot into the system as fast as you could transfer it in. Now with everything done remotely, we're required 24 hours notice to execute changes, certainly made the last election cycle interesting, where some campaigns wanted to change spots 2 or 3 times a day.

As for my home, my last video purchase was a new VHS deck last year.

 

[Planogirl]

I'm a little uneasy about storing everything on a digital format. I think that some physical copy should still be available or at least there should be a good backup system.

 

[DisMN]

Blu-ray isn't something I'm jumping on the bandwagon with. I don't see us converting to that method.
As for streaming and watching, I hook my laptop up to my tv and watch it that way.

I know we don't have plans to go to BlueRay. The fact a blueray costs quite a bit more than a dvd makes me kinda mad. Pretty soon the next technology will come along and we'll be paying $50 per video. Shouldn't it be getting cheaper?

To answer the OP, yep, DVDs will eventually go away....I just hope it isn't any time soon. I also hope we're not forced into BlueRay between the techno changes. LOL

 

[Jambo82]

Everything as we know it will become obsolete at some point.

 

[bicker]

Everything as we know it will become obsolete at some point.

As discussed in the recent thread:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2590448

 

[The Mystery Machine]

I know we don't have plans to go to BlueRay. The fact a blueray costs quite a bit more than a dvd makes me kinda mad. Pretty soon the next technology will come along and we'll be paying $50 per video. Shouldn't it be getting cheaper?

To answer the OP, yep, DVDs will eventually go away....I just hope it isn't any time soon. I also hope we're not forced into BlueRay between the techno changes. LOL

Now see, I agree with this. I refuse to buy Blu Ray because of this. Now granted I am really not one to buy DVDs anyway, which is why I love Netflix.

Are they able to "stream" Blu Ray quality stuff or not? Do you NEED a DVD for Blu Ray or is HDTV the same thing?

 

[kamik86]

I definitely think blue ray will eventaully become obsolete but not for a while. The reason is we don't really have a good solution to protect ownership of streaming content.

Someone above mentioned Kindle. A few years ago they had an issue where Amazon realized that the person that gave them the rights to a book didn't have the authority to do so, so Amazon didn't have the rights to sell that book. They not only stopped selling it and stopped allowing people to redownload it but Amazon can remotely delete something from your Kindle as many people discovered when the book was just suddenly gone. I don't remember if they eneded up refunding the money to everyone for that or not.

Now in order to make it so that COULDNT happen you would have to store the format locally, on something that the service didn't provide. However movies that are the quality of blue rays take ALOT of space so for people with very large collections that could also be a challange. Not to bad though since there are large hard drives and they would still take up less space then the disks but still annoying.

One of the reasons some industries, especially video games, are pushing downloadables so much is that they hate the resale market of video games. Right now the games I have on disk can be sold back to gamestop and sold again. Which means Nintendo, Sony, or Mircosoft as well as the game developer lost out on that second sale. With digital formats you can't do this.

 

[kamik86]

Oh I forgot to add the reason all Disney movies come with both the blue ray and the DVD is that many peopel with little kids have portable DVD players for long drives. These tend not to play blue ray since the high definition is pointless on a screen of that size. But if they wanted blue ray for home they would have to buy the movie twice. Most people would end up just getting the DVD in this case.

So to promote blue ray sales they give you the DVD one too so you have one for the portable unit.

 

[bicker]

The fact a blueray costs quite a bit more than a dvd makes me kinda mad. ... Shouldn't it be getting cheaper?

It is. The difference in price between DVD and Blu-ray has been falling sharply over the years. The Blu-ray premium fell 40% in just six months, last year, and has continued to compress further since then. Will they ever be the same? Gosh no. That would be stupid, for the reasons outlined below

Are they able to "stream" Blu Ray quality stuff or not? Do you NEED a DVD for Blu Ray or is HDTV the same thing?

DVDs and Blu-ray Discs provide radically different quality of video:

• DVDs store video with 480i resolution; that's 480 vertical lines of resolution, divided into two groups of 240 alternating lines each. That's exactly the same as what old televisions provided you back in the 1950s.
  
• Blu-ray Discs store video with 1080p resolution. That is about six times as much resolution as DVDs. (If you're interested in the math, I'll be happy to go into detail.)
  
• HDTV presents video either as 720p or 1080i. Either way, roughly half the resolution of Blu-ray Discs.

They don't make you pay six times the price of the DVD for Blu-ray. For example: Amazon.com is selling Toy Story 3 on DVD for $15.99 and on Blu-ray Disc for $19.99. Buying the DVD only saves you 20%, yet you lose 83% of the resolution. Seems like a bargain to me, but that'll only be true if video quality matters to you, and your television is good enough to display that quality difference.

The good news is that Blu-ray Disc players play DVDs. No problem. If I'm buying a copy of an old television series on disc, and there is a 20%-25% price difference between DVD and Blu-ray Disc, I'll perhaps by the DVDs, if I believe the old television series wasn't produced with enough video quality to warrant the advantage Blu-ray Disc affords in that regard. I think DVD and Blu-ray Disc work so well together as formats that they can both survive long into the future. There is no real need for one to replace the other; the industry can, instead, capitalize on the difference to create separate markets for economy offerings (DVD) and premium offerings (Blu-ray Disc). By providing a good enough value-proposition difference between the two offerings, they can make more money than if they only were offering one or the other.

 

[bicker]

Someone above mentioned Kindle. A few years ago they had an issue where Amazon realized that the person that gave them the rights to a book didn't have the authority to do so, so Amazon didn't have the rights to sell that book. They not only stopped selling it and stopped allowing people to redownload it but Amazon can remotely delete something from your Kindle as many people discovered when the book was just suddenly gone. I don't remember if they eneded up refunding the money to everyone for that or not.

I don't know the case you're talking about, but there is no reason to think they didn't refund every penny in a case like that. Knowing Amazon, they probably gave people a credit on top of that, for the inconvenience.

One of the reasons some industries, especially video games, are pushing downloadables so much is that they hate the resale market of video games.

It works both ways. Back to Kindle... I have typically been paying about 15%-20% less for a Kindle edition as compared to the paperback. I can't resell it or give it away, but I do benefit from a lower price to start with.

 

[Golf4food]

Until the US gets internet speeds up to par with other countries in the world that far exceed ours (at an affordable cost, mind you) and we develop the technology to stream full 1080p video and lossless audio for 5.1 or 7.1 surround systems (which you generally get on Blu-ray) then I will continue to puchase Blu-rays and enjoy them in all of their HD video and audio glory. Streaming video from Netflix - even in Netflix HD - on the same Bluray play doesn't match in quality for video and certainly not close for audio. That time will come - possibly in very few years - but until then I'll keep my Blu-rays.

Another problem is that internet goes down or gets clogged by users. My Blu-ray doesn't care if a billion other people are watching the same thing, doesn't need the internet to be working in order to play the movie, etc.

So the speed must improve, reliability must be constant, and ability to stream full video and surround audio feed at the same quality of Blu-ray must arrive before I will switch to full digital and get rid of my hard copies of anything.

 

[browneyes106]

I only recently started buying Blu-Ray last year. The titles I own are titles that I never had on DVD. I still buy TV shows on DVD because some of my favorite TV shows will likely never be released on Blu-Ray. I also buy documentaries and recorded concerts on DVD.

It will probably take a few more years for Blu-Ray to dominate more. The prices of Blu-Ray go down here and there and often many stores have Blu-Ray sales.