Bill Gates on HDVD/Blu-Ray
Oct. 18th, 2005 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerThere's currently a major power struggle going on over the successor to DVD. Bill Gates has this to say, which I agree with:
I can see the next generation being useful - broadband isn't wide-spread enough for everyone at this point. But it's definitely taking over as a delivery medium - the only software I've installed from CD recently has been Windows itself. Everything else has been downloaded, and the same goes for most video and music.
Understand that this is the last physical format there will ever be. Everything's going to be streamed directly or on a hard disk. So, in this way, it's even unclear how much this one counts.
I can see the next generation being useful - broadband isn't wide-spread enough for everyone at this point. But it's definitely taking over as a delivery medium - the only software I've installed from CD recently has been Windows itself. Everything else has been downloaded, and the same goes for most video and music.
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Date: 2005-10-18 10:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-18 10:42 pm (UTC)There will always be some sales of out of date stuff. Heck you can probably buy tapes if you look hard enough, but it's fairly niche stuff.
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Date: 2005-10-18 11:32 pm (UTC)We're only just reaching the end of the "This is DVD! You need it!" marketing, and now there's another new format.
I think, as far as films go, it'll take a lot to persuade people that now the picture is EVEN BETTER and that the sound is EVEN BETTER. Of course, when regular DVDs just aren't sold any more.... well, we won't have a choice. I'd be interested to see figures showing films that were available on video that have not been reissued to DVD to see what we're losing.
Of course, if DVDs weren't that great and would degrade quickly over time, this new format would probably do quite well as people's film collections deteriorated.... ;-)
I also disagree with what Bill Gates has to say, because when you get down to it, money is the key. Money is a strong mover. And you can get people to pay more for a CD in a case or a film in a shiny box with "features" than streamed media or a download.
Yes, downloads etc are growing in popularity, but I can see physical media still being popular for a long time. And it's not the kind of field where innovation is frowned upon. At the moment, people are often being presented with social incentives to download media "It's cool! It's the latest hip thing!" but product incentives to purchase physical media "Extras! Pictures! More THINGS!". I think that the media will keep an online and physical marketplace as long as they possibly can, since it's a simple way of getting people to pay for things they already have.
"Downloaded the latest blockbuster movie? If you BUY the future-nu-shiny-DV-Uber-D special edition you get a free backrub from the director! FREE! If you buy the film you already own today, or this year!"
Also, small hard disks or memory sticks or what-have-you will be seen as physical media, as opposed to online content, and I think that they will be lumped in with vinyl, tapes, DVDs etc in the way that people think of them and consume them.
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Date: 2005-10-18 11:44 pm (UTC)I have tapes that were produced ten to fifteen years ago, they barely work.
Listening to vinyl, then to tape, then to CD.... Vinyl (when it's not been mistreated, admittedly) gives better quality than tape on any equipment that I've heard.
Which is interesting, because it means people massively took to a new format which wasn't as good. It was just smaller. Okay, you could -record- stuff, but as for buying new albums... bleh!
I'm not trying to refute any arguments or anything, just making a point.
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Date: 2005-10-18 10:58 pm (UTC)Record->Tape had advantages.
Record->CD had advantages.
VHS->DVD had advantages.
It's going to be pretty hard to convince people of CD+ or DVD+ advantages.
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Date: 2005-10-18 11:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-19 06:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-18 11:08 pm (UTC)I like things. I like having discs with pretty covers with things written on them. I like going into a shop and picking a physical thing up and taking it home with me. I feel sure I'm not alone (or even in an insignificant minorty) in this.
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Date: 2005-10-18 11:19 pm (UTC)I guess only time will tell...
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Date: 2005-10-18 11:33 pm (UTC)You can stream Lost, but you'll still buy the expensive box set when it comes out to get the special features.
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Date: 2005-10-19 10:15 am (UTC)The season one box set has been sitting in the top 5 at Amazon.com for a month and a half.
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Date: 2005-10-19 10:34 am (UTC)And huzzah - you can watch episodes on your computer!
Which I don't want to do. I have a reasonably large TV, with a sofa and a surround sound system.
Telewest will be routing Video On Demand to my sofa, which is where I'm used to watching TV. Once they do that, I _could_ get on my arse, spend money and get a shiny box to hold it in. Or I could just choose it off a list.
I'm going to need a damn good reason to do the latter. Which isn't to say I won't have that damn good reason once in a while, but it'll be pretty rare.
Which means that after a while it won't be mass-market any more.
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Date: 2005-10-19 04:51 pm (UTC)*falls off chair laughing*
Either they'd have to charge a tidy sum for it OR fill it so full of advertising that it was as profitable.
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Date: 2005-10-19 05:01 pm (UTC)If, for instance, DVDs cost £25 for 11 episodes (which is what you can pick Lost season 1 part 1 up for) then that's £2(ish) an episode. Or £1 once you knock off the retailer markup. Or about 50p once you knock off manufacturing, shipping, wholesalers, etc.
Compared to that, charging £1 an episode on VoD, where it's an impulse buy, may well look pretty good...
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Date: 2005-10-19 05:25 pm (UTC)Although it'd be good if VoD was the norm, that the governments of various countries, in a bid to reduce TV watching and encourage people to do other things, set the prices artificially high.
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Date: 2005-10-18 11:47 pm (UTC)They tend to make a big deal of the packaging, since their fans tend to be the kind who care. I bloody hate those snapping crap scratched jewel cases. I which some of the alternatives had been more widely used by the mass market.
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Date: 2005-10-19 10:09 am (UTC)And fans *do* care about how there album is presented, and that isn't going to change any time soon.
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Date: 2005-10-19 10:19 am (UTC)When you watch TV, do you wish you had a box to hold?
When you download films, do you wish you had a box to hold?
There are a few films I'm interested in holding in tangible form - the ones that really mean something to me.
Most of them? Happy to be able tp turn on the TV and see them, but I don't care if they come in a box, or when I choose them off a list, any more than I care about the fact that Dr Who was broadcast, not delivered in a little shiny TARDIS.
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Date: 2005-10-19 10:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-19 10:26 am (UTC)When you watch TV, do you wish you had a box to hold?
No, because I need that hand for beer.
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Date: 2005-10-19 10:49 am (UTC)More seriously, this isn't really the point I was trying to make. Let me put it this way, people still bought albums even when they could tape them from friends. Why do you think that was?
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Date: 2005-10-19 10:55 am (UTC)Tapes sound bad, and you can't instantly go to the track you want to listen to. That's why I switched from tape to CD.
MP3s sound 'good enough' (at 128kbps, for me) and I can instantly go to the track I want, even if it's on a different album.
I don't think I ever bought a CD for its box, except for Dark Side of the Moon, anniversary edition.
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Date: 2005-10-19 12:41 pm (UTC)I wasn't with the "hand for beer" comment. I was refering to that.
Tapes sound bad, and you can't instantly go to the track you want to listen to. That's why I switched from tape to CD.
Yeah, I kinda guessed you'd respond with things relating to function.
I don't think I ever bought a CD for its box, except for Dark Side of the Moon, anniversary edition.
Again with the missing of the point! I don't either! I never suggested people did buy albums to have "a picture to look at"! Lets try again. People like having a physical representation of there purchase. I'd say it was human nature to want to have something physical to "own" as a result of that.
People like fancy digipaks and gatefold albums because of this, I'm not saying it means a person will or will not buy an album, I do think it adds value.
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Date: 2005-10-19 01:08 pm (UTC)Leaving aside your appalling grammar, there are two points:
1) I'm not entirely sure people do. I think they _think_ they do, but when it comes down to it, they don't care very much, if at all.
2) We're moving to a non-purchase model. When I watch an episode of The Simpsons on VoD I haven't bought anything, no more than when I stream stuff on Napster, listen to the radio or go to the cinema.
Now, there's bound to be an initial feeling of uncertainty and fear. Of "what if I want to watch this same Simpsons episode once a week for the rest of my life - I should buy it, so I can do that!" or "What if next week they decide to stop showing The Simpsons. Then I'd never be able to watch it again!".
But given time, and a realisation that (a) you watch very little stuff repeatedly and (b) they aren't going to take TV away, because they want you to pay for it, I expect that fear to fade.
Of course, it will still be worth you buying (or paying for a perpetual license) for things you watch every week. But how many things are in this category?
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Date: 2005-10-19 01:32 pm (UTC)Well; your write their! Apologys, Please bere with me. Im a bit simple. I thunk we shud leve that arguemunt hear: as I cant begun to understand you're point off view. To many big wurds!
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Date: 2005-10-19 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-19 01:58 pm (UTC)Anyway...
I'm not entirely sure people do. I think they _think_ they do, but when it comes down to it, they don't care very much, if at all.
However, as much as you think people think they do when they don't, I think that you think you don't when you actually do.
Y'know, if we're gonna make sweeping statements. :-)
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Date: 2005-10-19 02:20 pm (UTC)The reason that I think people don't care as much as they say they do, is that they're very happy to listen to music on the radio, download it off of AllOfMp3.Com, watch TV as its broadcast (and borrow it from friends), etc.
People will buy it, but I suspect that they do so largely because that's the easiest way to get to watch it, and that once they are able to watch/listen to it without having to own it, they won't bother (With exceptions for exceptional things that people are _really_ attached to).
This is, of course, supposition, and I may well be proved entirely wrong in a couple of years time, when people completely ignore VoD and live in houses made of DVDs they've bought.
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Date: 2005-10-19 05:05 pm (UTC)Sin City on DVD is the example of what I feel is going to happen. Initial release cheaply with no features (read - the future for-download style release) Maybe more adverts tacked on, or even during.
I presume that TV shows on iPods or whatever will sooner or later have adverts in. Because advertising money is what matters, especially to the US.
A later or more expensive release with extra features. (for purchase in shops)
And since DVDs are currently partly marketed on the extras (and films are often made with the full intention of being different on DVD, and scenes are deleted just to be put on the DVD), I think there will be a clear line between films for download and for purchase. Similar to the differences that you often get between rental/bought DVDs. I think, if film downloads become popular, that the extra features of non-downloaded products will be touted more and more. These extra products are ones, of course, that we didn't even miss until DVDs came along and made us want them.
Essentially, the media wants to make a profit.
Look at the sales of TV shows on DVD. People -want- to own them. Or are made to. They want to own things they've already seen, and even things that are often repeated. Those "Friends" box sets sell a lot, even when it was still being repeated. Box sets of The Simpsons sell quite well, even when that is constantly repeated.
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Date: 2005-10-19 05:08 pm (UTC)In both cases people are happy to listen to music without the aid of a shiny box. We weren't talking about legality - we were talking about whether people wanted the physical object to go with their music.
The BBC are curently making a large chunk of their previous week's broadcasting available on VoD, for free. I look forward to seeing how other companies compete with this.
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Date: 2005-10-18 11:30 pm (UTC)...or don't you make backups
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Date: 2005-10-18 11:37 pm (UTC)Explanatory tangent: the company I work for, along with many others, feels that web-based software applications are the way to go. This is -great-... until the work net servers go down, at which point all work stops. This happens on a pretty much weekly basis.
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Date: 2005-10-19 11:37 am (UTC)I have online backup on my home computer, but if I was a company, I'd be using tape drives anyway.
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Date: 2005-10-19 11:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-19 12:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-19 12:31 pm (UTC)If you're a reasonable sized company, tape backup is the best solution.
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Date: 2005-10-19 12:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-03 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-19 02:03 pm (UTC)We back up something like 20Gb (ish) of data nightly, which has recently gone over the capacity of our tape drive. A replacement tape drive was going to be about £500, wheras a simple USB hard disk cost us £90. The hard disk is faster, easier to use and has a bigger 200Gb capacity. We bought 2, use them for backups on alternate dates and store 1 offsite in case of fire.
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Date: 2005-10-19 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-19 02:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-19 10:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-19 10:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-19 05:13 pm (UTC)People are not willing to pay as much for things downloaded as they are for things bought in shops.
Would the general public be willing to pay £16 to download a film, without having a physical thing to show for it?
If not, then how are the companies going to make money when DVDs stop selling? (assuming that Andy is somehow right, which is usually unlikely).
You can charge people more when they have something to show for it. People work that way. Not everyone, especially not the kind of geeks who want everything small, streamlined and shiny.
But the cost is going to be the central issue. If it's cheap to download a film, and if DVDs (or the next format) stop making mony, then the loss has to be made up somehow. And sales of DVDs has shown just what kind of inflated amounts people -will- pay.
If, for example, online music massively takes over from sales in stores, then I imagine you'll see the prices go up across the board, because profits will be impacted by selling in a cheaper form. Because people -will- spend fifteen quid for a new album where they just want a couple of songs. And if they aren't buying CDs anymore, but downloading cheap mp3s, the companies are losing their money.
They are not running a public service. Right now, online music (as regards the distribution channels and methods) is still in its infancy. It's the province of some big groups, but is slowly branching out.