Streaming/downloading is the future, not blu-ray?

[guest]

I have bee thinking about this. There were video tapes, then DVD, now Blu-ray. The media types keep changing over the years and, of course, the trend goes to a more capacity, better picture quality, more durable, and less bulky media. But I don't understand why people think Blu-eay is the future. Right now, there are more and more people watch their TV shows and movies on some streaming sites or download them. I bet for some shows, there are more people streaming it than buying DVD.

The point being, why don't commercial companies start to focus on developing major business model based on streaming or downloading? I mean, major. There are still more shows, way too many, only available in DVD but not streaming or downloading. We need to change that. It's like those business people are always one step behind what customers want and then just resist the trend until they absolutely can't anymore. Way back when downloading music first became available, music industry sued people for downloading. Guess what? Now iTune/downloading is so popular that CD sales just keep dropping and it will never go back to the days when the sales of CDs are the major market in music industry. If those companies had pick it up fast, they and the consumers wouldn't have to suffer.

Now there are so many video clips at youtube or some video streaming sites and well, practically, illegal. What do the companies do? Ask those websites to take them down. Of course they have the perfect right to do so, but that doesn't help their business at all.

As far as I know, the sales of like shows and movies are dropping, too. The world is getting smaller and people have more choice now. Like someone said, this is no longer like 60's when people just listened to a few songs for the entire summer. Now they have so many songs to listen to (and, urr, they are not going to pay if they don't like them because they can now. Internet, remember?). I just feel like those business people are always one step, actually, many steps, behind, and the battle of squeezing consumers for every penny they have in a wrong business model goes on.

[CuXe]

Very good point you bring up in this thread. No matter how many times physical media types change the fact that they can be converted to standard digital items makes digital media far more practical which is where I see things headed.

VHS, DVD, HDDVD (dead) and BR can all be converted to smaller and easier to handle media files (I am talking about physical media formats disregarding the contents) - Upgrading to a new physical media container/player is impractical for content producers and users.

On the web the only variables are the software containers and codecs but adapting to a change like that only takes a few clicks of the mouse to upgrade the player and/or codecs which is a snap!

The point is that BR may become extinct in a few years, who knows but regardless of the format they come up with.... Digital formats remain practical and stable. For instance DIVX and AVI were lossy codecs mainly used for anime but as people demanded better quality media files have gone from AVI/MP3 to HD MP4 (or MKV) using multiple AAC audio tracks and a H.264 matrix resulting in very high quality files with relatively small sizes.

The beauty of it all is that even websites can take advantage of H.264 and provide full HD streams with the proper use server resources and a cloud based storage. That being the case the only thing people need is a browser and the standard Adobe Flash player so forget about physical media formats or codecs n whatnot!

Needless to say, media companies need to step up their game if they want to remain alive but so far their efforts are mostly geared towards the protection of their intellectual material instead of thinking how to turn the tide on their favor... .but I guess that suing a few people for millions of dollars is a good way to send out a message, mess with us an we'll @#$# u!

Netflix and other companies like that adapted rather quickly and haven't taken a big hit but that was just because they learned how to use their noodle.

All in all... digital is where things are headed, not towards different physical media containers...

[OceanBlue]

They are. Hulu and many broadcast stations stream their programs with ads.

To me, the problem is that stream quality is severely inferior to Blu-ray and impedes future-proofing in general. It's not as bad with videos as with audio, as video can be updated, but what irritates me with iTunes music is the quality they provide to you. The artifacting is noticeable through headphones, and as I get better speakers, I'm going to end up noticing it on those too. This is why I prefer CDs to internet streams.

The same issue is present with video. I'm not sure how much of an impact it makes, to be honest, but Youtube has a video bit rate of around 4 Mbit/s. To compare this to physical media, DVDs have a max bitrate of 9.8 Mbit/s and Blu-ray discs have a max bitrate of 40 Mbit/s.This is an example of what I mean with streaming:
http://trevorgreenfield.com/rants-an...ou-look-at-it/

Overall, if you're nitpicky [All of my music is encoded in lossless], then streaming causes problems. Then again, we're on an anime forum for torrents where there's always quality loss, so I guess it just depends on the person.

a.k.a. There's a reason why Blu-ray sales of anime in Japan surpass DVDs, if I remember correctly.

[Alchemist007]

Streaming Blu-ray though...gonna need that super fast internet.

[CuXe]

Yeap, free websites with an ad-driven business model have a long way to go... which is why people opt for "downloads" which are encoded by other people with far better quality *cough cough*

The problem with those big video sites is bandwidth ... they have yet to strike the right balance between compression (which sacrifices quality and affects the user) and file sizes which would reduce their bandwidth usage and improve their bottom line...

[Xion Valkyrie]

I think once the infrastructure gets put into place, streaming will become the standard. I don't really see another physical format after Blu-Ray.

[Master_Yoma]

Well there is a point here but DVDs will not go away that easy

[Raiga]

Originally Posted by Master_Yoma

Well there is a point here but DVDs will not go away that easy

Similar sentiments. I get the feeling there will always be a market for a "physical copy." I know my friends who are gamers often prefer to buy a hard copy of a game as opposed to buying a downloadable version.

I mean I can definitely see things moving in the streaming/downloadable direction but I can't see physical versions dying out, not completely at least. There's just something about being able to hold something, or have something that takes up shelf space, with a case and cover art and a booklet...

[Kudryavka]

Originally Posted by Master_Yoma

Well there is a point here but DVDs will not go away that easy

Obviously written by a BluRay nonbeliever, it's like a cult who lives with his parents and sees even ugly Westerners out with more beautiful women than have ever spoken to him in his life, or ever will!

Ha Ha Ha!

Back to wanking, you DVDs will stay for a long time, I don't see them leaving until something replaces it as well as DVDs replaced VHS. Yea there's BluRay, but all it offers over DVD is higher visual quality, not enough. Maybe that new 3D home movie system will replace DVDs, I can see that happening.

[Dilla]

Originally Posted by Komari

Back to wanking, you DVDs will stay for a long time, I don't see them leaving until something replaces it as well as DVDs replaced VHS. Yea there's BluRay, but all it offers over DVD is higher visual quality, not enough. Maybe that new 3D home movie system will replace DVDs, I can see that happening.

They better. I've spent way too much money on boxsets and movies for them to become so obsolete so quickly.

Originally Posted by Raiga

Similar sentiments. I get the feeling there will always be a market for a "physical copy." I know my friends who are gamers often prefer to buy a hard copy of a game as opposed to buying a downloadable version.

Yeah, I download/stream regularly, but I always feel safest with a physical copy at hand. Just in case.

[Kudryavka]

Originally Posted by Dilla

Yeah, I download/stream regularly, but I always feel safest with a physical copy at hand. Just in case.

^This.

This is why I'm praying to the gods that digital download music will never wipe out physical albums. I don't care if they start putting the music on cheapo USB drives and selling them with CD cases and booklets, I need my physical copies.

[Xion Valkyrie]

Originally Posted by Komari

^This.

This is why I'm praying to the gods that digital download music will never wipe out physical albums. I don't care if they start putting the music on cheapo USB drives and selling them with CD cases and booklets, I need my physical copies.

At that point, you might as well just burn them onto your own CD and print out a leaflet.

I think physical copies for games at least will eventually disappear, except for collectors editions. Distributors and retailers take up way too much of a piece of the pie. According to the last Kotaku article about it, publishers usually only get 25% of the sales price of a game back, and the developer gets however much the publisher gives them from that 25%. From those numbers, you can see why many medium to small developers would prefer a digital distribution system.

Collectors editions will probably still be made, but you'll either order directly from the website or only select store will stock them.

[synaesthetic]

Streaming is not the future, unless you like having multinational media conglomerates telling you exactly what you can do with your media, when you can view your media, how long your media is legal to use...

The "cloud" is good for business stuffs, but stay the fuck away from my entertainment, damn it. Copyright laws need a severe overhaul before I'll be totally comfortable with streaming media and digital distribution.

While I don't hate certain DDSes (like Steam, Impulse and especially GOG.com, which is absolutely DRM-free) I don't especially like them, either. But at least Steam and Impulse allow you to install the game on your machine and run it even when you're not connected to the Internet.

Streaming video will not replace physical media or local digital media.

It just might replace TV, though!

Edit: Optical media won't last, though. NAND keeps getting cheaper, and you can use NAND that's been binned really low for writes as ROM for media distribution. Hell, I'd love to see a mass switch to SD cards from optical media. An SD card reader has no moving parts and is so small you can cram it into an MP3 player (Cowon D2 has a full-size SDHC slot) while optical drives are big, heavy, fragile and tend to reduce the sturdiness of the laptop they're installed in. Plus keyboards are usually bouncy right above the optical drive.

[OceanBlue]

A switch to flash media would be interesting. It'll seem like DS games are everywhere.

I support the switch to flash media as well, because you don't have to watch out for scratches, etc. with flash media. On the other hand, I know SDs have a limited amount of times you can write to them before they fail. Does it matter whether they're read or written to?

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

The "cloud" is good for business stuffs, but stay the fuck away from my entertainment, damn it. Copyright laws need a severe overhaul before I'll be totally comfortable with streaming media and digital distribution.

I'm not big on the idea of only having a copy of my media "in the cloud" either, although I like the idea of putting my private data in there even less.

Originally Posted by OceanBlue

I support the switch to flash media as well, because you don't have to watch out for scratches, etc. with flash media. On the other hand, I know SDs have a limited amount of times you can write to them before they fail. Does it matter whether they're read or written to?

I'm pretty sure it's just when they're written too, although I believe they can lose data if they sit for long enough without being used (as in, like a decade or more) too.

Although I must admit that SD cards aren't quite as durable as I'd like for swappable media... they definitely seem designed for situations in which you only need to swap stuff occasionally.

[Vexx]

Check with me when the world actually *has* FIOS to every doorstep, no transfer caps, and secure personal storage in the "cloud" that isn't licensed-smokeware/datamined garbage. Until then, I'll stick with physical media for the stuff important to me.

[synaesthetic]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Check with me when the world actually *has* FIOS to every doorstep, no transfer caps, and secure personal storage in the "cloud" that isn't licensed-smokeware/datamined garbage. Until then, I'll stick with physical media for the stuff important to me.

+1

What this man said.

[guest]

We don't have internet connection fast enough, file size being too big for Blu-ray quality for this to work right now. But instead of spending money to develop the technology to make it come true, companies only spend money on selling more DVD or protecting the intellectual rights. The software for downloading music was first put out on the internet by public. I don't see them now really trying to make the file size smaller and not sacrifice the quality or invent a way to really speed up internet connection for public.

Once again, there are so many free software out there to compress video files and try to retain the quality, but I don't think companies are doing it, not much and it is definitely not their goal. I just think that they should focus on next generation technology, not next generation media for whatever.

[Doughnuts]

I think when the WebM format is finalized and adopted by the W3C, it'll become the standard distribution format for most, and will probably be adopted in all new hardware. Although it's still going to be inferior to our H264/AAC, so we should still have our BT downloads for higher quality.

Have any of you checked out Microsoft's IIS Smooth Streaming btw? They encode a few versions of the same video with different bit rates, and the version to use is chosen based on bandwidth availability. It can switch between the bit rates at any time if there's some heavy traffic - the transition between two encodes is pretty smooth that it's barely visible - and as soon as the network is OK again, it'll continue giving the highest quality one. You can partially solve the bandwidth/quality arguments against streaming here - but it's still no golden hammer.

My prediction is that optical storage will become a niche. It's both inconvenient and expensive when compared to downloading.

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Streaming is not the future, unless you like having multinational media conglomerates telling you exactly what you can do with your media, when you can view your media, how long your media is legal to use...

Hopefully we won't get to that stage. Google's victory means they can effectively host what they want to. They have no legal requirement to keep running those filters they have - only remove things after a take down request. There's not much the big media can do against that, other then pushing our democratic governments to reform copyright law, and impose Chinese-style web censorship. Most of our democracies now are pushing these censorship bills, some have passed already. Your government probably couldn't care less about "internet piracy", but they're happy to have more censorship.

On the other hand though, Iceland have scored a victory in freedom of expression with the IMMI. Iceland will probably become a safe-harbor for server hosting and media distribution. I'm curious to see if IMMI can survive in the totalitarian EU when Iceland join it though.

[synaesthetic]

Originally Posted by Doughnuts

Hopefully we won't get to that stage. Google's victory means they can effectively host what they want to. They have no legal requirement to keep running those filters they have - only remove things after a take down request. There's not much the big media can do against that, other then pushing our democratic governments to reform copyright law, and impose Chinese-style web censorship. Most of our democracies now are pushing these censorship bills, some have passed already. Your government probably couldn't care less about "internet piracy", but they're happy to have more censorship.

On the other hand though, Iceland have scored a victory in freedom of expression with the IMMI. Iceland will probably become a safe-harbor for server hosting and media distribution. I'm curious to see if IMMI can survive in the totalitarian EU when Iceland join it though.

Good for Google on that one, I hadn't heard about that!

Unfortunately I suspect you're correct. America's system of crony capitalism will mean that what Big Media can't do with their lawyers, they'll do with their lobbyists. They'll send hordes of them to Washington with big bags of money and lots of crocodile tears to get our legislators to pass laws allowing them to ass-rape their customers even further.

Copyright law needs to go back to the way it was and fast. Fourteen years standard, with one fourteen year extension at the very most. This current method of doing things only gives way too much power to the content gatekeepers and seriously stifles innovation.

Slash copyright protections down to the original level, and you'll see a lot less sequels, retreads, remakes, shovelware titles and a lot more creativity!