Bill Gates: Both BluRay and HDDVD doomed for failure

[blakjedi]

There are people that like buying movies and owning them. Thats why I believe there will always be some kind of physical format. The same way a lot of people prefer to buy a cd, than downloading it from itunes.

Agreed. PLus on demand is ephemeral and pay per view.. sometimes I want to watch something over and over.. or take it with me. Bill Gates comments may be true in that the future of entertainment will consiste primarilay of broadband enabled housing (mini-imax convex screens anyone?) but greater gains in optical technology will always allow for portable consumer media so... no worries.

 

[see colon]

There are people that like buying movies and owning them. Thats why I believe there will always be some kind of physical format. The same way a lot of people prefer to buy a cd, than downloading it from itunes.

and i'm one of those people, but i can see where the market is heading. i think brd/hd-dvd (whoever comes out on top) will be the last real shot a physical distribution.

Agreed. PLus on demand is ephemeral and pay per view.. sometimes I want to watch something over and over.. or take it with me. Bill Gates comments may be true in that the future of entertainment will consiste primarilay of broadband enabled housing (mini-imax convex screens anyone?) but greater gains in optical technology will always allow for portable consumer media so... no worries.

on demand isn't "pay per view" in the traditional sense. most cable providers offer "free" on demand with certain packages, and whatever you get on demand you can watch more than once (you usualy get between 24 and 48 hrs). regardless, it's not like the old PPV network in that it just unlocks the channel for paying customers, it downloads the program you want to your set top box, allowing you tp pause, ff, rewind ect. it's stored localy while it's in use. it's baby steps from the current on demand buisness model to an expiration free "pay once and watch it anytime" model of buisness. think itunes for movies.

 

[V3]

Everyone seems to have forgotten that Sony wanted online digital distribution with PS2, they were talking about that during the launch phase of PS2. It didn't happend. Later they said broadband coverage wasn't enough.

So when broadband coverage are there, this will happend in a big way, not tomorrow or short term future, but surely this is the direction everyone think industry and consumers will go. And STI already chosen broadband processor as their other name for their Cell processor, so they've laid out some kind of long term plan about these things.

 

[valioso]

and i'm one of those people, but i can see where the market is heading. i think brd/hd-dvd (whoever comes out on top) will be the last real shot a physical distribution.


on demand isn't "pay per view" in the traditional sense. most cable providers offer "free" on demand with certain packages, and whatever you get on demand you can watch more than once (you usualy get between 24 and 48 hrs). regardless, it's not like the old PPV network in that it just unlocks the channel for paying customers, it downloads the program you want to your set top box, allowing you tp pause, ff, rewind ect. it's stored localy while it's in use. it's baby steps from the current on demand buisness model to an expiration free "pay once and watch it anytime" model of buisness. think itunes for movies.

I can see it happening for the rental crowd, but for the people that enjoy the extras and commentaries and all that, you will still be able to sell a physical medium.

 

[Magnum PI]

I don't think anybody expects either HD-DVD or Blu Ray to be anything more than a niche product for bleeding edge videophiles.

You would have said the same thing about DVD some years ago..

 

[blakjedi]

and i'm one of those people, but i can see where the market is heading. i think brd/hd-dvd (whoever comes out on top) will be the last real shot a physical distribution.


on demand isn't "pay per view" in the traditional sense. most cable providers offer "free" on demand with certain packages, and whatever you get on demand you can watch more than once (you usualy get between 24 and 48 hrs). regardless, it's not like the old PPV network in that it just unlocks the channel for paying customers, it downloads the program you want to your set top box, allowing you tp pause, ff, rewind ect. it's stored localy while it's in use. it's baby steps from the current on demand buisness model to an expiration free "pay once and watch it anytime" model of buisness. think itunes for movies.

Your right about your analysis of on-demand versus pay per view. I like my on demand especially for features that I a) dont own, or b) not sure I would buy. Because I have HBO and SHowtime most on demand is "unlocked" as it were.

Thanks for the correction.

 

[Frank]

Download and pay on demand will make Bill Gates more money, that's all.

 

[seismologist]

I need to have a tangible media in order to protect my investment. Downloading is ok for temporary files like demos and previews .

But I dont like the idea of buying something and only having a digital copy.
Then once the service goes down or you have to refomat, everything is gone. I've already been burned by this too many times in the past.

 

[BlueTsunami]

I need to have a tangible media in order to protect my investment. Downloading is ok for temporary files like demos and previews .

But I dont like the idea of buying something and only having a digital copy.
Then once the service goes down or you have to refomat, everything is gone. I've already been burned by this too many times in the past.

Considering how a regular users handles their PC

• Opens mystery documents

• Goes to sites that a knowledgable person would stay miles away from

• Does not run scans or atleast schedules Anti-Virus, Spyware and Adware scans

• Just common neglect, figures that the PC can take care of itself

• Using a Windows OS in general

You build a scenario where a person may download (legitimantley) hundreds of dollors of digital media. Now, some may liken this to licensed programs (Installers), but a smart person would have saved it to a different location (for me, a FileServer with a depository of Installers) or burnt it to a disk (or saved the original disk they may have bought from the store).

DRM will probably simplify this, but you would have to redownload all your media content. Its going to be interesting how Digital Content like that is managed..

 

[see colon]

I can see it happening for the rental crowd, but for the people that enjoy the extras and commentaries and all that, you will still be able to sell a physical medium.

the beauty of it would be that you could buy the extras modularly. although, i'm not sure if the studios would like not releasing another version of a movie out on dvd with a few extras every 6 months, but it would be great for the consumer.

@ BlueTsunami
in an ideal world the system would work like steam (the good parts of steam), where you have an account that knows everything you own. if something happens, you just download the stuff again.

i don't see digital distribution of movies concentrating on PC's anyway. i think digital set-top boxes with a large amount of storage where action will be. and i think sony and microsoft both know it, that's why they're both fighting so hard for the living room.

sony in particular... i think they're pulling an emperor palpatine and playing both sides of the battle. on one hand they're showing everyone blue ray, bragging about the specs and quality, but in the background they're building PS3 around their "broadband engine". if blue ray looses the HD format war i can see sony instantly switching gears to digital distribution.

 

[Sean*O]

You would have said the same thing about DVD some years ago..

Actually, no, I did not say nor think anything of the sort.

DVD was a totally different animal. It allowed everyone to take a big leap forward with not only the picture and audio quality, but with the convenience and physical asthetics as well.

For the masses, HD-DVD/BluRay would really only offer an upgraded picture, and these improvments won't be open to everyone with a TV and 5.1 surround sound reciever as they were with DVD, they will almost exclusively benefit people with high end HD sets with special digital inputs.. a fraction of a fraction of the total market that DVD had to work with.

My opinion is that there is absolutely no way on this Earth that HD-DVD and Blu Ray combined will ever come close to enjoying the level of adoption that DVD has.

Once they can create a compression algorythm that can make downloadable video as user friendly as MP3 has made music, it's going to change things. The video will most likely not be the best quality in the same way a MP3 is not the best for quality audio, but it will be good enough for most people when you factor in the convenience.

I stand by my statement that HD-DVD/BluRay will remain a niche product for bleeding edge videophiles.

 

[DemoCoder]

HDTV is being adopted at exponential rates (it's been doubling every year) In the US, all SD broadcasting is legislated to stop. Thus, there is a forced switchover coming. Hi-Def formats, atleast in the US and Japan, are not going to be a niche market in 5 years.

 

[Sean*O]

Right you are, but I am betting by that time (5 years from now), downloadable HD content will be more prominent that optical disc based content.

 

[avaya]

HDTV is being adopted at exponential rates (it's been doubling every year) In the US, all SD broadcasting is legislated to stop. Thus, there is a forced switchover coming. Hi-Def formats, atleast in the US and Japan, are not going to be a niche market in 5 years.

Did Japan not have analogue 1080i since the 80's? IIRC Hi-Vision or something similar in name

 

[Sean*O]

I'll add one more thing about the success of DVD being a physical format;

When DVD came to market, things like downloadable music and movies for the everyman were miles off, now they are not. They will be even closer to commonplace by the time HD-DVD and Blu Ray manage a launch.

 

[Carl B]

I'll add one more thing about the success of DVD being a physical format;

When DVD came to market, things like downloadable music and movies for the everyman were miles off, now they are not. They will be even closer to commonplace by the time HD-DVD and Blu Ray manage a launch.

Commonplace... but for what demographic?

I think physical formats are still much more 'attainable' across a wider swath of the population, as managing digital content requires something of a mix of means and education.

 

[DemoCoder]

Right you are, but I am betting by that time (5 years from now), downloadable HD content will be more prominent that optical disc based content.

Bandwidth in the US isn't going to go up appreciably in 5 years, the vast majority of people will still have 1.5mbps DSL. A 15Gb HD movie is going to take 24hrs to download best case. Now, imagine that it is release day, and 10 million people want to download this movie in 24 hours. What kind of bandwidth is needed for the distributers? 15 terabit/s aggregate. You'd have to distribute this around to 10,000 mirror servers just to get it down to a reasonable requirement. I think only one company in the whole world has the infrastructure to do it today: Google. And that's for a SINGLE disc download.

In that time, Netflix could send you 5 discs of much higher quality.

Sorry, but SNEAKERNET is here to stay.

 

[kyleb]

I'd like to ask Bill why if online delivery is his answer to high density disks, how come the movies I can rent and buy though my Windows Media Center are all crapply compressed only 480x320 with two channel sound weighing in at around 700mb? Also, assuming we do get all the HD content over the internent to our 360s, he surely doesn't expect us to store it on the Xbox HDD that is 5gb less than even a single layer Blue Ray disk, eh?

Then there is the cost of bandwidth, which is different in different places but for example I get allotted 18gb a month with my permium service and the people with the basic package get 10gb. It's $10 for every 10gb after that up front, or $1 a gb if you go over what you paid for. He better make the price of buying this stuff over then net damn cheap if he expects me to dish out around of $25 on bandwidth alone per each BR disk worth of content and then have to pay more for a place to store it.

So yeah, I think Gates is FOS here.

 

[expletive]

Actually, no, I did not say nor think anything of the sort.

DVD was a totally different animal. It allowed everyone to take a big leap forward with not only the picture and audio quality, but with the convenience and physical asthetics as well.

For the masses, HD-DVD/BluRay would really only offer an upgraded picture, and these improvments won't be open to everyone with a TV and 5.1 surround sound reciever as they were with DVD, they will almost exclusively benefit people with high end HD sets with special digital inputs.. a fraction of a fraction of the total market that DVD had to work with.

My opinion is that there is absolutely no way on this Earth that HD-DVD and Blu Ray combined will ever come close to enjoying the level of adoption that DVD has.

Once they can create a compression algorythm that can make downloadable video as user friendly as MP3 has made music, it's going to change things. The video will most likely not be the best quality in the same way a MP3 is not the best for quality audio, but it will be good enough for most people when you factor in the convenience.

I stand by my statement that HD-DVD/BluRay will remain a niche product for bleeding edge videophiles.

I happen to agree here, a format war improves the chances of this by a whole lot. Cable companies are starting to offer on-demand HD programming. I think people liked the idea of buying DVDs becuase they were priced to own and they felt like 'this is the last copy i'll ever need'. Now that they see there will be iterations of optical discs as well, i dont think theyll be so quick to spend $20 on a disc theyll watch once when they can 'on-demand' it for $4.95.

And before anyone says it, who REALLY watches the extra content on Disc 2 or listens to the commentary (outside of this forum) ?

 

[expletive]

I'd like to ask Bill why if online delivery is his answer to high density disks, how come the movies I can rent and buy though my Windows Media Center are all crapply compressed only 480x320 with two channel sound weighing in at around 700mb? Also, assuming we do get all the HD content over the internent to our 360s, he surely doesn't expect us to store it on the Xbox HDD that is 5gb less than even a single layer Blue Ray disk, eh?

Then there is the cost of bandwidth, which is different in different places but for example I get allotted 18gb a month with my permium service and the people with the basic package get 10gb. It's $10 for every 10gb after that up front, or $1 a gb if you go over what you paid for. He better make the price of buying this stuff over then net damn cheap if he expects me to dish out around of $25 on bandwidth alone per each BR disk worth of content and then have to pay more for a place to store it.

So yeah, I think Gates is FOS here.

Cable companies and satellite providers can on-demand HD movies cant they?