Bill Gates: Both BluRay and HDDVD doomed for failure

[mckmas8808]

One thing everyone here is forgetting is are the movie companies going to like online only distribution?

I would say no. There would be too much money that they would be giving up to the everyday non-internet having consumer. Why throw away billions of dollars just to support internet only distribution?

 

[deathstar121]

From my point of view, as a consumer Blu Ray and HD-dvd will fail if they are not unified, because I don't want to buy a HD-DVD to play FOX movies, or buy a Blu ray to play Disney movies, and right now DVD is really selling well, and for them to split the market it will hurt them, and consumer won't buy it.

Another reason why I am not in a rush to buy Blu ray or HD-dvd, because I have 10 dvd format in my house, I have 3 stand alone DVD players, I have 2 xboxes, PS2 and 4 dvd ROM on two 2 PC's, so any where I go in my house there's a DVD player that's why i don't care about BLU-RAY or HD-DVD, in order for them to succeed they need to unified the formats IMHO.

 

[AlphaWolf]

One thing everyone here is forgetting is are the movie companies going to like online only distribution?

I would say no. There would be too much money that they would be giving up to the everyday non-internet having consumer. Why throw away billions of dollars just to support internet only distribution?

um... the comparison is online distro vs. blu-ray/HD-DVD. How long do you think it will be before the installed base of those devices exceeds the installed base of broadband? With the growth rate of broadband vs the adoption rate of HDTV, 'never' is quite possible.

Seriously there is a lot of work to do before online is any position to take over the market, but BR and HD-DVD are a long way from pushing DVD out also, I seriously doubt there will be an adoption rate anywhere near that of dvd.

 

[mckmas8808]

um... the comparison is online distro vs. blu-ray/HD-DVD. How long do you think it will be before the installed base of those devices exceeds the installed base of broadband? With the growth rate of broadband vs the adoption rate of HDTV, 'never' is quite possible.

Seriously there is a lot of work to do before online is any position to take over the market, but BR and HD-DVD are a long way from pushing DVD out also, I seriously doubt there will be an adoption rate anywhere near that of dvd.

Why are you guys bringing up Bluray and HD-DVD? I was only talking about online distribution kicking physical distribution to the curb. I don't see it happening no time soon thats all. Why get rid of physical media? Nobody and I mean nobody here I've got close to explaining that. The people want it so why get rid of it? I thought companies used supply and demand? If the demand is there why not supply them?

 

[London Geezer]

Why are you guys bringing up Bluray and HD-DVD? I was only talking about online distribution kicking physical distribution to the curb. I don't see it happening no time soon thats all. Why get rid of physical media? Nobody and I mean nobody here I've got close to explaining that. The people want it so why get rid of it? I thought companies used supply and demand? If the demand is there why not supply them?

When it will be feasible (when badnwidth and storage make it possible) to have a sort of HD-movies iTunes, people will go for that.
Like MP3 kinda killed CD sales (not completely, mind you), i expect things to progress the same way. Optical media won't die, like CD hasn't died yet, but it's undeniable that internet music sales have proved people like to just go online, download what they want and listen to it without having to go to the shop and buy the CD.

When it will be physically "easy" to download and store HD movies (or any other content), the industry will move forward.

 

[mckmas8808]

When it will be feasible (when badnwidth and storage make it possible) to have a sort of HD-movies iTunes, people will go for that.
Like MP3 kinda killed CD sales (not completely, mind you), i expect things to progress the same way. Optical media won't die, like CD hasn't died yet, but it's undeniable that internet music sales have proved people like to just go online, download what they want and listen to it without having to go to the shop and buy the CD.

When it will be physically "easy" to download and store HD movies (or any other content), the industry will move forward.

I understand that but remember this, the market for portable music has been around for over 20 something years. Portable mp3 music brought online wasn't that hard of a guess for the future. People were already doing it by the millions anyway before Apple gave us itunes.

The industry basically had to do it to make money off of it due to them losing so much money through online distribustion anyway. Why do people always bring up itunes when it comes to this debate anyway? They are two different things. Wake me up when millions of people are illegally downloading movies like they were doing with music then we can have a better conversation about this.

 

[London Geezer]

Wake me up when millions of people are illegally downloading movies like they were doing with music then we can have a better conversation about this.

Errr... Do you really think it will take a long time? People do this already, although i'm not sure how many. It's just a matter of time. I never said it will happen tomorrow, but it will happen. In fact i even said that it think Gates is wrong: BDROM/HDDVD will be fine because this online distribution thing won't happen too soon.

 

[mckmas8808]

Errr... Do you really think it will take a long time? People do this already, although i'm not sure how many. It's just a matter of time. I never said it will happen tomorrow, but it will happen. In fact i even said that it think Gates is wrong: BDROM/HDDVD will be fine because this online distribution thing won't happen too soon.

Oh yeah that last comment at the bottom wasn't directed at you. I just it kind of looked that way because I quoted you and all. My bad I was directing that part to the fellas above you.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I understand that but remember this, the market for portable music has been around for over 20 something years. Portable mp3 music brought online wasn't that hard of a guess for the future. People were already doing it by the millions anyway before Apple gave us itunes.

The industry basically had to do it to make money off of it due to them losing so much money through online distribustion anyway. Why do people always bring up itunes when it comes to this debate anyway? They are two different things. Wake me up when millions of people are illegally downloading movies like they were doing with music then we can have a better conversation about this.

One reason music companies were against online distribution is a lack of DRM functionality way back when. You download a track and share it around. Interestingly investigations have shown that music downloads tends to increse sales despite piracy. No that I agree with piracy, but the idea piracy loses them money appears to be hogwash (and it's not like they need more money anyway).

Online distribution will be the king and replace ownership of movies, becuse the overhead is next to nothing. On a DVD a publisher has to pay for manufacturing, distribution, and then there's the mark-up at the store that sells it pushing up the price. With online they can sell direct needing only the servers and bandwidth. This is expensive now but it'll become dirt cheap. That'll see something like (pie in the sky figures) where maybe 50% of a DVD is profit for the publishers, 90% will be profit in an online distribution model. And preventing people from ownership so they only have pay-per-view, you can keep selling them the same movies. That means a classic like Casa Blanca or Spiderman will be being sold at high profit margins in 50 years time still, whereas on a disc format once people have bought it now in 50 years time they can still view it on their disc.

Unles there's a big shake-up with the way people allow the media industries to operate, online seems a given to me.

 

[seismologist]

If online distribution were the future wouldn't we see games and DVD movies take this route much sooner than 25GB HD movies?

 

[see colon]

Like MP3 kinda killed CD sales (not completely, mind you), i expect things to progress the same way. Optical media won't die, like CD hasn't died yet, but it's undeniable that internet music sales have proved people like to just go online, download what they want and listen to it without having to go to the shop and buy the CD.

i think it's important to bring this up. MP3 and even AAC sound worse than CD audio, and CD sounds worse (in terms of audible range) than vinyl. consumers tend to choose convenience over quality. look at how long high definition audio has been fighting to take hold in the music industry. SACD, HDCD, DVDA... all comecrial failures. why? because consumers see CD and [insert lossy compressed downloadable audio format here] to be "good enough" and convenient.

what i'm saying is that i don't think most consumers will care if a movie they get digitaly isn't quite the quality of what they would get from a physical format, as long as it's "good enough" and convenient.

the more i think about it, the more i think BRD and HD-DVD have a bigger uphill battle than i considered.

If online distribution were the future wouldn't we see games and DVD movies take this route much sooner than 25GB HD movies?

we already see this with games. here's some sites.
games:
http://www.steampowered.com
http://www.direct2drive.com
http://www.gamexstream.com
http://www.gametap.com/home/Home
http://games.yahoo.com/
http://zone.msn.com/en/root/default.htm

movies:
http://www.movielink.com
http://www.cinemanow.com/
http://www.moviexstream.com/
http://starz.real.com/partners/starz/index.html

and then there are public domain sites like liketelevision.com and archive.org

 

[Shifty Geezer]

what i'm saying is that i don't think most consumers will care if a movie they get digitaly isn't quite the quality of what they would get from a physical format, as long as it's "good enough" and convenient.

Good point. Online distribution won't need the same quality as hard-copy. In much the same way there's some really badly compressed digital TV channels. People need to improve their standards!

 

[kyleb]

I'd say that the falure of high quality audio is simply due to the fact that many people don't notice or respect the diffence even when heard on the most high quality audio eqipment. On the other hand, HD video provides a very obvious imporvement on anything better than an SDTV, so it seems more properly compared to surroundsound than SACD and the like.

 

[one]

Personally I'm more interested in BD as PC storage media (BD-R/BD-RE). They can replace DVD-R and DVD-RAM/RW pretty quickly, perhaps more quickly than BD-ROM will replace DVD-ROM/VIDEO.

 

[Frank]

Hollywood films aren't 35mm are they? Pretty sure they shoot at 60 or 80 or something.

AFAIK, it totally depends. 35 mm is the "old and trusted" format. And digital cinema projectors have resolutions from 1600 to 2048 lines, which seems to be the max, as far as the quality of most movies is concerned. Some large movie production houses are switching to all-digital, as it is far cheaper, and those camera's have 2048 lines. So I think that's the best they can do, and many older masters even show diminishing returns when going upwards from 1080 lines.

 

[see colon]

I'd say that the falure of high quality audio is simply due to the fact that many people don't notice or respect the diffence even when heard on the most high quality audio eqipment. On the other hand, HD video provides a very obvious imporvement on anything better than an SDTV, so it seems more properly compared to surroundsound than SACD and the like.

IMHO people that don't notice or respect HD audio because they don't have the proper equipment to do HD audio justice. that mirrors the installed base of HD video equipment today, and honestly i don't see ther being a huge shift in the next 5 years. joe moviewatcher is going to buy the cheapest thing that gets the job done for him.

 

[seismologist]

we already see this with games. here's some sites.
games:
http://www.steampowered.com
http://www.direct2drive.com
http://www.gamexstream.com
http://www.gametap.com/home/Home
http://games.yahoo.com/
http://zone.msn.com/en/root/default.htm

movies:
http://www.movielink.com
http://www.cinemanow.com/
http://www.moviexstream.com/
http://starz.real.com/partners/starz/index.html

and then there are public domain sites like liketelevision.com and archive.org

So have you abandoned disc based media and switched over to one of these services yet?
Then the next question would be why not since you guys seem convinced that it's so much more convenient than going to the video store.

 

[kyleb]

IMHO people that don't notice or respect HD audio because they don't have the proper equipment to do HD audio justice. that mirrors the installed base of HD video equipment today, and honestly i don't see ther being a huge shift in the next 5 years. joe moviewatcher is going to buy the cheapest thing that gets the job done for him.

Heh, it isn't like people without surround sound have the equipment to do surround sound justice. Unlike HD audio, and like surroundsound, HD displays/video makes a very obvious difference the moment you whitess it for yourself even on lower end equipment. Sure, plenty of people will settle for less just as many still use VHS today, but the takeup on HD displays is already greater than HD audio players by a long shot, and I don't see any reason to susspect that would be any different when the HD video player come out.

 

[DemoCoder]

The simple fact is CDs are already near the limit of human hearing with respect to frequency. Video is currently far below human vision's gamut and resolution capability.

Video simply has much farther to go.

 

[randycat99]

I tip my hat to you.