Bill Gates: Both BluRay and HDDVD doomed for failure

[one]

It reminds me of Teledesic, a venture failure funded by Bill Gates.

 

[kyleb]

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

Depending on how good their infastructure is, sure they can. But that is doing it over a closed netwrok and doing in over the internet is a whole different ballgame.

 

[seismologist]

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

I see the same thing happening with DVD players that happened with televisions. Before long, any new player that you purchase will be HD compatible. There will be no avoiding it.

 

[expletive]

I see the same thing happening with DVD players that happened with televisions. Before long, any new player that you purchase will be HD compatible. There will be no avoiding it.

Depending on how good their infastructure is, sure they can. But that is doing it over a closed netwrok and doing in over the internet is a whole different ballgame.

So the question is, by the time HD TV sets reach critical mass, what will be the penetration of high speed internet access/cable/satellite that could provide the same 'product' as bluray or HD-DVD?

I'm going to take a wild, unfounded stab that 80% of households that own an HDTV in 3 years will ahve one of the 3 methods above to receive on-demand HD programming.

So yes, i still agree with SeanO.

 

[kyleb]

Do you have any idea how long it would take for the average broadband connection today to download the 25gb of data that a single layer BR disk would hold. I don't either exactly but I do know that it would be mesured in days and not hours. In 3 years that might get down to hours, but hardly to the point were it would support real time streaming.

 

[mckmas8808]

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).

This is what really scares me about digital only movies. I will ALWAYS be for optical disc.

 

[seismologist]

So the question is, by the time HD TV sets reach critical mass, what will be the penetration of high speed internet access/cable/satellite that could provide the same 'product' as bluray or HD-DVD?

I'm going to take a wild, unfounded stab that 80% of households that own an HDTV in 3 years will ahve one of the 3 methods above to receive on-demand HD programming.

So yes, i still agree with SeanO.

So within 3 years you think HD optical disks with be niche and on-demand will be the norm?
I see it being the other way around.
Either way, people will have to upgrade to some new hardware player. Either a BRD player or a set top box with a huge amount of harddrive space

 

[mckmas8808]

Do you have any idea how long it would take for the average broadband connection today to download the 25gb of data that a single layer BR disk would hold. I don't either exactly but I do know that it would be mesured in days and not hours. In 3 years that might get down to hours, but hardly to the point were it would support real time streaming.

kyleb be happy that most people in the world agree with you as do I. I will always want something that I can touch and grab (i.e. disc) than some digital movie saved to my 1 Terabyte (what year will this be acceptable worldwide?) harddrive.

 

[kyleb]

Heh, actually while I do respect your opinion, I don't really agree with you as I don't really care about having a physical disk and would love to see everything avalable in streaming HD quality. However, I am also aware of how far we are from having the interent infrastructure to make that happen on a global scale so I won't be holding my breath for it.

 

[expletive]

kyleb be happy that most people in the world agree with you as do I. I will always want something that I can touch and grab (i.e. disc) than some digital movie saved to my 1 Terabyte (what year will this be acceptable worldwide?) harddrive.

Why do you think most people agree? I think most people would prefer paying $5 to rent a movie they will watch once as opposed to paying $20 for a movie they will own, but watch once. I know DVD sales have been very good but with the format war looming and the idea that now even optical foramts will be replaced, i dont think building a movie collection (or upgrading an existing one) will be as popular this time around.

 

[expletive]

Heh, actually while I do respect your opinion, I don't really agree with you as I don't really care about having a physical disk and would love to see everything avalable in streaming HD quality. However, I am also aware of how far we are from having the interent infrastructure to make that happen on a global scale so I won't be holding my breath for it.

How are cable companies streaming HD movies now then?

 

[OVERLORD]

This thread overlaps some of my thoughts with regard to UMD discs here http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24564&page=4

Increasing R&D & manufacturing cost for producing physical media and the subsequent cost of distributing digital media in a physical form will become increasingly prohibitive in future compared to digital ditributed methods.

Maybe the network some propose here is far fetched for all homes now but I can see a future when you could transfer data digitally by visiting a retailer solely providing digital content.

They would nolonger need to store physical media on shelves. You would just upload content to a portable storage device. These retailers would act much like Digital libraries or Data bank retailers.

We already have music retailers going down this route. Compiling music specified by the individual for downloading their own compilated albums.

Imagine what this would mean to retailers like Blockbusters, HMV and the like less they themselves change.

Prerecorded multimedia distribution will have to evolve with technological advancement.

These same kind of arguments occured in Photographic circles with appearance of Digial Camera's and Digital memory. Today we nolonger need send physical negatives away for development.

We can display results immediatley, edit, print, upload digital pictures to Net for others to see or for others to process.

Same discussion is also taking place in Cinema http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_cinema

Culture
There are some like George Lucas or Robert Rodriguez who think celluloid is as good as dead and the future is an all-digital medium. Directors such as Steven Soderbergh and Michael Mann have filmed some parts of their most recent pictures on digital. Many think digital filmmaking will democratize the world of film and point out how inexpensive shooting digitally can be considering the cost of film, especially if the output is on video as a movie can be edited on a home computer and burned to DVD.

Given the constant year-on-year improvements in digital cinema technology, it appears that the long-term future of cinema is likely to be digital, as digital film already approaches the performance of film in some aspects, and is likely in the longer term to surpass it. However, digital cinema still has some way to go before it can completely replace film.

For the last 100 years all movies have been shot on film and nearly every film student learns about how to handle 35mm film. Digital, especially the new high-definition equipment, has not had the time to become as widely accepted, though the growing popularity of this equipment in the television domain will certainly have an effect in the future.

Some purists would argue that digital does not have the same "feel" as a movie shot on film. While this may be a matter of personal preference more than anything, digital cameras have been evolving quickly and quality is improving dramatically from each generation of hardware to the next. While today's digital cameras can achieve the same level of quality as 35 mm film under most conditions, 70 mm may offer a sharper picture. IMAX remains well out of reach for now, since the equivalent resolution (around 30 megapixels) is far beyond the capability of any digital motion picture camera today.

It is also hard to say how democratized cinema would become if it were to turn all digital. There are over 5,000 films shot a year in digital. With such a huge supply, a digital filmmaker has difficulty getting seen and, therefore, often doesn't get the upper hand in distribution negotiations. It has actually given more power to large distribution companies, because now they can play the gatekeepers, in picking which films are seen and which are not.

Economics
Digital cinema has some big economic advantages over film. Digital video is very cheap compared to film. For instance Rick McCallum, a producer on Attack of the Clones, said that it cost US$16,000 for 220 hours of digital tape where a comparable amount of film would have cost US$1.8 million. Obviously this matters most to low-budget films which are often shot for a few million dollars or less.

Digital cinema can also reduce costs while shooting and editing. It is possible to see the video and make any necessary adustments immediately instead of having to wait until after the film is processed. Digital footage can also be edited directly, whereas with film it is usually converted to digital for editing and then re-converted to film for projection.

Digital cinema has also big advantages when it comes to distribution. Making and distributing copies is a lot easier with digital files than with physical film. A film print can cost up to $2000 so making 3000 prints or for a wide-release movie can cost up to $6 million.

On the downside the upfront costs for converting theaters to digital are high: up to US$150,000. Theaters may be reluctant to switch without a cost-sharing arrangement with distributors. Another potential downside is that digital copies may be more vulnerable to piracy than film.

 

[mckmas8808]

Why do you think most people agree? I think most people would prefer paying $5 to rent a movie they will watch once as opposed to paying $20 for a movie they will own, but watch once.

WHAT?? I have a blockbuster account now where I can rent 3 movies at a time for $14.99 a month. I should I pay $5 to stream a movie to watch once when I get 3 at a time for 3 times the price. Keep in mind I can send those first 3 movies back and get 3 more within that same month and do that over and over.

And add to that the 2 movies a month that Blockbuster allows me to rent out of the store for free and you have a better deal that what you just offered me. The consumers will always be the end all be all to these solutions. And thinking the masses of people will have 50MB broadband connections and terabyte of data space that will end up killing physical disc is crazy.

That time will come but that's so so far in the future. And why do people here hate physical media anyway? It's been like this for years. It's tried and proven. Why would a company like Time Warner want to give up the billions that can be made in physical media and go for an untried market?

 

[ihamoitc2005]

Replace physical media?

Until home internet connections reach 50 - 100mbit, physical discs will not be replaced.

Broadband might one day be sufficient for uninterupted low-cost streaming of HD film, but that possibility is many years away due to slow increase in available broadband speed. Block-buster still has many years remaining for physical store based business model.

However, once Broadband speed is fast enough and cheap enough, then copy protected time-limited multiple repeat viewable content is very easy to distribute with support of compatible content receiver/storage at customer homes.

But cost/speed is most important to realization of such situation. Too many people still use dial-up.

 

[mckmas8808]

Yeah way too many people use dial-up. And even sadder lots of people still don't have the internet, yet they do have a $50 DVD player on a $200 TV set. I don't see this changing in the future. Lots of people just won't have the everyday 50MB connection speeds even when they are avaiable at a great price like $19.99 a month.

How will the movie companies get these people to buy movies? At the end of the day I seriously doubt Blu-ray or HD-DVD will be the last physical media disc. Some people just don't live that way. It would take a world changing view of movie distribution from a company and customer stand point.

It's just too damn convient to go to the local Walmart and buy a $9.99 or $14.99 movie and not worry about HDD space or a computer connection. What if your area has a internet outage? Say bye bye to movie watching.

 

[Frank]

Then again, at the moment it's cheaper and quite fast for many students around here and millions of people in Scandinavia with their 100 Mb connections to just download the DVD image. But that generally doesn't make the copyright owners any money.

 

[kyleb]

How are cable companies streaming HD movies now then?

The same way I explained last time you asked a bit up the page when you asked about on-demand.

 

[Frank]

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.

That's why P2P is here to stay, as the amount of data will only get bigger.

 

[MechanizedDeath]

Digital distro is the future. That is a no-brainer. But it is completely controlled by the state of bandwidth. I mean, even assuming most of the world finally hops on broadband and gets with the program, getting bandwidth to a level that would make 15+GB downloads practical is at least 5 years away. Short of a revolution between now and then, it's really a long-term goal. I've got a 10Mb connection (roughly), but it's very, very rare that I find a site that can max out my connection. Hell, only 1UP has given over 1MB/s solid on dloads. And even then, it's still farfetched to think I could download an HD movie in a day. Hopefully we get there soon, but in the interim, physical media is king. Besides, for stuff like tv shows, I'd want to own the physical media, since I would most definitely be watching that repeatedly. Plus personal favs like Big Lebowski or Swingers, etc... Physical media still has a place. Pricing just needs to stay reasonable. PEACE.

 

[see colon]

something i think some of you are overlooking is that digital distribution doesn't nesesarily mean "internet". closed networks (like cable networks, satalite networks, ect) have all of the bandwidth and technology to do "on demand" to a signifigant protion of their suscriber base today. you click the play button and the movie starts almost immediatly. in fact, my local cable's on demand (time warner) takes less time to start playing a movie than my dvd player takes to boot (and i don't have to sit through 3 screens of "it's illeagle to copy this movie and you will be sued" screens). if digital distribution of movies is to become the defacto standard (and i think it will) i think it'll come first to a closed network (either existing or someting completely new) and i don't think it'll have much if anything to do with the internet.