As William Gibson said, “The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed.” A few years ago I thought streaming video was an impossible dream. Networks were too slow, we said, and no one cared about streaming. A few us held the torch high and shouted in a stentorian voice “We shall stream!” but it was still not to be. We had TiVo, but that was securely ensconced on a hard drive in a box that sat next to my TV. I could get some video online – there were brief glimmers of hope with sites like SurftheChannel and their ilk (basically, web-based piracy sites) and Google Video which promised full-length films online. But I always stuck by Netflix and DVDs. I recall now that when my son was born, three years ago, we were on the 3 DVD/ unlimited choice plan on Netflix. Now, with my new daughter mewling by the TV, I’m on the 1 DVD/streaming plan. Things are changing drastically.
I have 83 movies on my Roku box. I have video-on-demand – from Netflix – on my Xboxen and on my desktops. I have easy access to movie rentals and purchases on multiple devices in my gadget constellation and, if I so desired, I could have downloaded – with dubious legality – the entire Oscar contender list in about four hours for playback on my hacked Apple TV. Hulu and other sites offer TV downloads. All this leads to a few important points. Please allow me to ruminate.
The first is the death of optical media. In no way is optical media superior to streaming and storage except for the important aspects of archiving and ownership. At this point Blu-ray is at the very best a system for connoisseurs and at the very least a dead-end solution to the streaming problem. I understand that other countries might get a big kick out of DVDs, but expect developing countries, when given the infrastructure, to bypass Blu-ray entirely.
The second point is that we are giving up our rights to content and I doubt my son’s generation will care. His sense of media ownership will be stunted and our vociferous crusades online and off will be for naught. Who cares about DRM and copyright when everything is available right here, right now? Convenience will degrade our righteous anger at EULAs and the industry will be able to remake their business into a form of content arbitrage, releasing videos to various platforms and taking the pennies they will receive for each play.
Just as many of us are deploring the rise of ebooks and the loss of that “old book” smell, will we, as geriatric post-new-media-retirees be missing that “old DVD smell?”
This is the end of optical media, friends. Here’s hoping the industries that used to press things onto disks will now know how to push things into the stream. I know this is an old and hackneyed point, but the very thought that I now have too many movies to watch, potentially in my lifetime, is a bit frightening. And all of this happened in about the space of three years. Your thoughts?
there we go
I do feel like this post is a bit useless… product of a lack of better content to write about?
Yeah. I was going to either post on my belly-button lint or this and this won. Lucky you.
I probably would have read a post about belly-button lint.
This post was good too though. Can we nail Blockbuster in a coffin yet? I’m still bitter about all those late fees.
It’s a relevant post to me. Just yesterday I connected an extra macbook pro to my 46″ Bravia LCD using DVI to HDMI and optical audio into the home theatre amp. This gives you access to DVD’s, iTunes rentals, Amazon rentals, Netflix streaming, Hulu, youtube, etc. Then I installed the airmouse app on the iPhone — works amazingly well. It’s a better solution for me than a Roku box, xbox streaming or AppleTV.
Anyway, the point is, that the physical media feels very old school all of a sudden and a PC based home theatre is the future. Especially as more HD content is available and honestly I don’t even want to own personal copies of movies. You can just pull things up in a matter of seconds.
As a content creator this new trend is great. It;s one more barrier shattered. The production and distribution on content is becoming democratized at a breakneck pace. This should also echos a recent essay by paul graham declaring the death on the TV.
With hulu and other VOD services the concept of channels and programed content it becoming a relic of the past. I suspect this new trend will have a far more profound impact on the next generation . A generation that will grow up unaware of the limitations of the past.
As a content creator how can you be happy that ‘The production and distribution on content is becoming democratized’? that means that anyone can do it, its now like saying you’re a painter. If anyone can do it, who cares? the reason why film makers had status in the past was precisely because it was a very closed, exclusive elitist club.
No, the reason that film makers have status was because they make art that people like. From what you’re saying, quality and talent don’t matter.
If that was true, why has anybody bothered to paint since the technicalities were figured out in a cave in France 10,000 years ago? Anybody can do it. Who cares?
What you seem to be talking about is the perspective of businessmen whose success is predicated on the leverage over content creators that control of methods of distribution gave them. Once anybody can create and distribute content, who cares about the music labels or movie studios? People are still going to listen to music and watch movies…but we’ll stop knowing the names of the movie studios and labels, and the beancounters and businessmen will move on to the next shiny toy.
+1 and excellent point might I say…
I’ll still sometimes stop and marvel at people that don’t get to pick exactly when and what they watch. It’s only been maybe six months, and I could never go back to my pre-netflix-streaming-and-hulu world.
Then again, I might be the exception. I’m the youngest person I know to sometimes stop and think about how cool cell phones are. Magic far-talk devices. Then there’s google video chat…
Good times.
John,
While you make some valid points, I have to disagree with you. For your first point, you state that optical media is not superior to streaming? Maybe when it comes to quality but you missed out on the number one issue with streaming and that is Bandwidth!!! I have an AppleTv connected to a 10 megabit connection and it lag every now and then. And should you choose to view something in HD, the lag is even greater.
Not everyone has a fiber connection to their house and even in areas such as los angeles, fiber is advertised but the homes that would sign up for that service are generally out of the area where fiber was installed. Perhaps in newer neighborhoods and planned areas, it is more available, but generally speaking it is not.
As far as the sense of ownership, optical vs streaming makes no difference. Already, I feel like I simply am paying rent for the right to watch the movie as many times as I want when I purchase a DVD. The media companies do not allow me to make a copy for achiving purpose (at least not legally – thank god for DVDShrink and AnyDVD).
Last, but not least, you are forgetting that the Living Room (or TV room) is not the only place where people watch films and media. My kids do the majority of their TV watching in the car on the entertainment package that I got with the car (3 screens, dolby surround sound, bose headsets – beautiful thing) and when we travel, on a portable DVD player or on a laptop. When I travel on business, I do the majority of my viewing on my laptop as well and I doubt that my wireless broadband card will be able to stream anything in good quality while I am at the airport. We still can not stream to cars at anything that would amount for a good viewing experience.
Perhaps in the future (far future) this would be a possibility. I just don’t see the end of optical media anytime soon. These are not eBooks or Kindle Books where I can fit 150 books on 1mb. 1 mb in HD video means about one sec worth of viewing time.
Jim
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/03/04/whippersnappers-prefer-mp3-sound-quality-over-cd-sound-quality/
remember – our concept of quality kind of dies on a 2.5-inch screen.
Convenience is God, huh?
The issue is that DRM from content owners and bandwidth caps from ISPs *will* slap the ‘whippersnappers’ in the face and prompt them to look for better alternatives. The greed and abuse from those providing the content and the infrastructure to deliver the content just isn’t a conducive environment to consumers. Color me skeptical on the future of digital streaming of media.
Good point, actually… Just look at Hulu asking Boxee to remove Hulu functionality cuz it made it too easy to access on a TV set…
Do you think that would have happened if Hulu weren’t instructed to do that by either NBC or Fox or both? (parent companies)
John,
I don’t know about you, but my idea watching setup is on a 65″ 1080p LCD with surround audio.
Your concept of streaming in that situation is not streaming. It is called Downloading. I generally have to wait for the video to download at least 25% before I can start watching it without stopping in the middle. And this is with a device such as the AppleTV which has far less subscribers than NetFlix.
Ever try to watch a YouTube video on the AppleTv connected to a 65″ screen? Not a very good viewing experience.
I am as eager as you to get video on demand, but the issue of quality and viewing experience due to bandwidth is a very big obstacle that is sitting smack in the middle between the streaming companies and the viewers.
Jim
John,
One more thing. There is a difference between quality of what you are watching versus the quality of the experience of what you are watching.
Case in point. Using DVDShrink, one is able to take a 9gb DVD and compress it down to 4.7gb DVD. The picture quality is still the same (well, it is not but not anything that is really noticeable). That DVD Image can then be burned to a DVD or viewed on a computer. This refers to quality of what you are watching.
The quality of the experience of watching a DVD on a DVD player is a great experience. You watch the movie from beginning to end without any interruptions (of the technology of-course – the wife is a different story altogether). But when you stream the movie and it stops every now and then to complete streaming, that changes the quality of viewing. Again, it is all about the bandwidth.
Jim
I think the experience of watching a DVD is probably one of the wost experiences possible. When I put in a DVD, I have to sit through the anti-piracy advertisement (I bought the damn thing!), the FBI warning, the advertisements for other products, all before I get to the menu. Then I have to navigate the awful menu system with their fancy (read: annoying) transitions. I just want to watch the damn movie! Special features were quaint and neat when DVDs first came out, but I just don’t care anymore.
I’m 100% on board with media-less content.
Drew,
What do you think will eventually happen with streaming media? The reason for the previews on DVDs is marketing. Hulu is great but not commercial free, and NetFlix, you pay for. Once the studios realize that this is viable and mainstream (which would increase the piracy rates), they will add the FBI warning as well.
Everyone is out to make money and with shrinking profit margins, they will use every bit of technology to do so. Just like studios today pay for the previews that are added to DVDs and to movies (trust me on this one – my sister in law is a VP of Marketing at Universal responsible for media relations), the same thing will eventually happen in streaming media. The problem with streaming media is that they can force you to watch it while on a DVD, you can always fast forward…
Jim
Drew,
If you are already watching your video content on a computer of some sort you should check out VLC for DVD viewing. You can skip past the FBI warning/previews/transitions easily.
Regarding the larger issue, I am one of the new Hulu, ABC.com, CBS.com Netfix people. I watch all of my content with a regular cable internet connection on those 4 sites, occasionally buying a series on iTunes if it isn’t offered on one of those. On my 47″ lcd the content looks great. The only site I have had bandwidth issues with is Hulu.
CK
I totally share John’s point of view! As a provider of white label HD encoding & streaming technology, I must say I’m pretty glad about it :D
test
Agreed, to think some folks were laughing at Jobs for ditching the optical drive on the MBA too. I think i’ve used it once on my MBP.
The world is digitalizing and I think opitical CD’s, like Cassettes, will be phased out as our storage increases. (Which, with Moore’s Law, will naturally occur.)
yes maybe for over in america but in europe we still have a long way to go.
+1 for William Gibson quote.
Now where are my Virtual Light glasses?
Streaming as those of you in this forum know it shall become irrelevant once we launch http://www.YourNight.com, a massive interactive portal which allows for streaming of HDTV content over a telephone line. http://www.eeihq.com
Arent you like $4 million short of that dream still
Dude, you’re deluded. Streaming media is a neat feature, but until I can get true 1080p HD I’ll never substitute streaming over Blu-ray.
And for all the online hype by media pundits about optical media being dead, I have yet to have a single one of my friends buy a Roku box or have a streaming subscription to Netflix, whereas most of us have PS3’s that also double as the best Blu-ray player on the market.
Streaming media is a cool concept, but until I pay $15 a month for a 50mb connection, forget it. Picture quality is bad enough with compression artifacting on my ATT Uverse displayed on my 1080p Panasonic plasma. And that’s supposed to be 1080i. Streaming never comes through at more than 720p — if they tried to push more through it’d kill the stream because of the bottleneck on the network.
Besides, with ISPs like Comcast out there who lovingly impose bandwidth caps on their customers it’s no wonder streaming media hasn’t taken off like all of you media pundits claim it will.
If you’ve got a 250gb per month bandwidth cap, that basically lets you stream five — yes, just five — blu-ray movies a month. And that doesn’t even take into account any internet browsing, music downloading, etc., that you may do.
Until this country has a broadband infrastructure like Japan or S. Korea, streaming will never overtake optical media.
“until I can get true 1080p HD I’ll never substitute streaming over Blu-ray.”
Wait two years.
the amazing thing is…i understood everything you just said. and i’m not a techie.
In about 2 months a new technology will be released that will instantly kill any and all life thought to still be in optical media.
The technology is called “Film Knight”.
Don’t forget the emerging live streaming market as well, NSFW but http://www.tvalways.com/home.html has the 1st 24/7 live girlie show running in the UK
Is that a spam comment or a real comment? The mind reels!
It’s spam John…come on… :-)
It’s real. It’s been streaming live daily shows since december of last year. Free to view funded by phone calls to the service. Not exactly HD but fit for viewing with an intelligent flash player on the viewers side.
By “We” you of course me “We in North America”.
Those of us living elsewhere have limited or no access to Netflix, Roku, Hulu…
I think it will take a few more countries getting this sort of abilities before you can call an end to optical media.
I tried to point that out, but yes, DVD is still king in europe.
By we in “North America” you of course mean “We in the United States”. Those of us living in Canada have extremely limited access to streaming content, nor can we buy the majority of video on iTunes.
There are just too many limitations still in streaming. And one of those you sort of touched on in the article but kind of brushed it aside. That issue is that the media companies that own the copyrights still insist on playing too many games with is it/isn’t it available. The “celestial jukebox” is a nice fantasy yet, and maybe it is the eventual “way of the future”, but as others touched on, too many limitations on file size, bandwidth, storage, battery power (for mobile), etc., and again, capped off by the fact that EVERYTHING is not available, and all too frequently anything that is gets messed with by greedy content owners as they play their “availability/release window” games.
I tend to think you’re right, in terms of the LONG TERM future… but it’s a very far off future. And that difference gives Blu-ray plenty of time to thrive. I’ve experienced both now (after resisting both for a while), and altho streaming wins for some convenience things, for anything I really care about Blu-ray trumps everything.
Great post, but in paragraph three you toss away “ownership” of media as if it’s a used tissue. Evolution has imposed two things on me:
1. I am almost always fascinated by shiny metal things.
2. I am a better collector than hunter.
While I have watch streamed movies through my AppleTV, and I have the bare minimum Netflix account, but when I want to OWN a movie for the rest of my life (or until aluminum oxidation takes effect), I spent the $$ on blu-ray.
Maybe it’s 20+ years of having dealt with crashed hard drives, but I don’t consider anything that resides on any drive a long term solution.
But again, a great post to get people thinking.
-pjc
Most of the dissentors are too old and narrow minded. John alludes: “I doubt my son’s generation will care”
I’m in my 30s and personally thought this post is a few years out of date… The BluRay HDDVD battle had little interest to me because I had already sworn off technically advanced but archaeic optical media, long before the battle began.
Ubiquitous broadband, faster pipes, newer optimised technologies (repurposed ‘bittorrent’ models / useable smart phones / the cloud as storage), and a rapidly changing landscape are painting a future that likens ‘ownership’ and IP to gas guzzlers and their oil… Sure we can’t just get rid of them yet, but we all know it’s coming…
The music industry is a prime understudy… Music takes up a lot less bandwidth and has already made CDs pretty much obsolete… Services like Spotify (fairly high quality for a streaming service – and transparent on most peoples PCs) are fast making digital stores like Amazon and iTunes obsolete too…
The public library of the 21st century is close at hand!
John
Excellent points — it’ll definitely be interesting to see how this impacts the traditional distribution media. If newspapers can be any proxy, they are in for a real challenge and the timeline will probably accelerate.
Another challenge that you allude to is the difficulty we will all face navigating all of these varied sources for digital content. Every day another media outlet is jumping onto the bandwagon — yesterday it was Disney, tomorrow who knows.
We’ve been working on and just recently released a kayak-like search site for helping people find every movie that is available via these online channels. We are actively working on improving the site to make it easier to use, more comprehensive and more intuitive. We’d love feedback and thoughts, if anyone has a few minutes. The site is hellomovies.com
Certainly my movie watching habits changed the day Netflix came out on the Xbox. Now the 3 DVDs that come by the mail tend to receive quite a lot of dust.
It’s awesome to have movie marathons without having to wait for DVDs to come, or having to rent or buy overpriced DVDs.
Netflix is the glimpse of the future John talks about.
I started selling all my DVDs on Amazon, I thought I’d miss them, but I recommend you do the same, it’s a good extra cash, everything will indeed be available online. Bandwidth availability is only gonna get better. Can’t wait to see what’s going to happen with the radio spectrum used for analog tv now, really hope it’ll be used for free internet access one day, there will be huge bandwidth available there, and the number of viewers will grow exponentially making it really attractive for advertisers to announce on services like Hulu and Joost.
I have just started to use my 360 and my Netflix subscription.
I am on an unlimited fiber 50/20 FIOS line which means I can go Netflix all day without an worry. I have several Blu-ray machines and this streaming has been the most fun so far. BTW: I have been enjoying the full 6 seasons of Voltron!
Here are the major issues for video on the web:
- Streaming – lots of servers on the cloud. Storage is cheap. Solved.
- Bandwidth – fibre coming. China’s already done it. competition drives prices lower – despite Comcast’s stubborn stance on restricting flow.
- Filming – cheap recorders, easy to use. Solved.
- Editing – better tools, but still labor intensive.
- Search – Google does a good job on video.
- Paid versus free – the battle looms. If the iTune model applies, paid will be micro-currencies.
Conclusion – John is right. DVD is dated.
The next major battle is live-casting significant events – huge challenge. Once solved, broadcast may be endangered.
Well, everything is becoming software …
I love minimum hardware in my house … I love to have only 1 box just doing everything. I don’t rent any DVD anymore .. I forget to return them in time & was fed up of paying late fees!!
A three-year revolution? Don’t be silly. The death of optical media has been in progress for at least 15 years. I remember sitting in an office of Princeton University in c.1993, marveling at how quickly a Gopher search found and delivered a one-minute video to the screen. Unsecured music CDs ran into trouble with the development of the MP3 format in the mid-1990s. The release of Winamp closed the circle for consumers, who now could actually listen to MP3 files transferred from one machine to another. The music companies have been struggling with the devaluation of disc-making for about 12 years.
Any media company, production outfit, or copyright holding group that hasn’t seen seen disc irrelevancy coming for at least as decade, has been living in denial of obvious signposts.
John, can you comment on the video game industry following suit?
I’d say Blockbuster’s (B&M stores anyway) days are numbered.
In eastern Brooklyn, NY they already are.
Hey, don’t forget orb and orb on the iphone…a bit buggy but when it works, it works well.
Yeah, we’ve all come to this conclusion in our heads before. It certainly is inevitable, but not for a long while.
Hard copies of media are what sparks innovation in distributing that same quality of media. Blu-Ray is the new kid on the block, but without it we wouldn’t have other institutions shuffling around to try to figure out the next and better way to distribute it (whether its via internet or snail mail netflix).
For example – without advances such as Blu-Ray, the ISPs have less reason to want to expand/increase bandwidth. Until the average consumers bandwidth is capable of teleporting people from one place to another, hard copies of media will always exist.
Stickam anyone?
@christopherott
I can download and/or stream anything I want to watch thru a HTPC on my plama tv. But I still start movies on HBO half way through. Still watch movies on tv.
I would totally agree with what you are saying, total access is more daunting then convenient alot of the time. People still need to be sold on what to watch.
Optical will not die in my lifetime or yours so forget about it.
There are so many reasons why this is just not even debatable and doesn’t make any sense for anyone to think optical will die but here are just a few points.
Is everyone forgeting that almost all the ISP’s put BW caps on all their plans in the last few years?
I am on the top plan with my ISP which is more than most people are willing to pay and I get 100gb per month, which I usually hit.
Shifting even more to the net would mean even higher BW usage and strain on already strained networks.
Put simply..
The ISP’s wouldn’t want this.
The content creators wouldn’t want this.
The average person wouldn’t want this.
It’s not going to happen.
“The ISP’s wouldn’t want this.
The content creators wouldn’t want this.
The average person wouldn’t want this.
It’s not going to happen.”
————-
What the ISP’s want is irrelevant. As people stream more, they are simply going to adapt their business model.
Content creators have no say in the matter.
The average person ABSOLUTELY wants this. Think about how many more video streams people watch today vs. even two years ago. I don’t live in Silicon Valley, but in plain old middle America. Notwithstanding, I know more and more people that have hooked up their PCs or Macs to their HDTV and cancelled their cable subscriptions. Who needs 150 channels (140 of which I couldn’t care less about) when I can watch what I want, when I want?
It’s not going to happen? Dude, it’s already happening…
“What the ISP’s want is irrelevant. As people stream more, they are simply going to adapt their business model.” Yeah, imagine the bandwidth they have tied up in cable tv. if they made that part of the internet stream, i think we would have plenty of bandwidth for any thing being discussed here.
Streaming is the future no doubt but it is going to take a very long time before it dominates in the mainstream…Expect a fierce fight for the legacy companies too!
I have to laugh every time I hear the words “right to content”. TV and Movies aren’t a right.
Physical media isn’t quite dead, but it is certainly on the way out. Blu-ray is a good case. It is still pushing hard, but the adoption rate is low and people are turned off by the high prices and high player prices. Most people who have mountains of DVDs aren’t going to want to replace them with another disc.
They will replace them I think with a streaming service. I own a VUDU Box and have been using that to rent movies. I enjoy it more than going to the store to rent movies. The studios are even opening up now to HD purchases, so that is another good thing.
I personally won’t replace my DVD collection with Blu-ray, but I might replace it digitally.
Well, this is exactly Blockbuster ’s bankruptcy is near!
http://www.wealthalchemist.com/Blog/2009/03/blockbuster-filing-bankruptcy/
I still like dvd’s. I hate commercials and if I watch some show online you have to sit through the commercials. I don’t buy very many dvd’s anymore. I can rent them for $1 from Redbox. If I really like the movie, I will buy it cheap from the video store after they sell it when they are done renting it.
This is something that, i too believe is in the near future. Eventually all movie releases will come via download and play of a beefed up appleTV type device. I love my appleTV and prefer to portability with my devices over a DVD.
BluRay will replace DVD because its backwardly compatible. Its more or less the same price as DVD and the players are alot cheaper. For the world (not just the US) BluRay is by far the most appropriate form of distributing HD films at present. And will be for a long time because telecommunications is a BIG game. It takes years to improve infrastucture. In that time BluRay will just take all the new DVD business thats there.
For a few economies (US et al..) there will be more choice in how you watch films etc.. But they will just be another choice in the short term. Not a complete wipe out of Blu Ray/DVD.
Finally, BluRay will be the benchmark for watching films and streaming wont touch it for a while. If you want a reliable full HD experience in your living room on a big screen TV. Blu Ray is it for the next 5 yrs.
“Its more or less the same price as DVD and the players are alot cheaper.”
Are you on crack?
Find me a new blue ray player for under $30, and a new blue ray disk for $10.
Philips will be marketing a Net TV set that has streaming videos (Youtube,…).
The same technology will be marketed by Samsung too.
When the mainstream manufacturers are offering the service, then the smaller ones need to look for another emerging niche market.
sorry, I thought this was the discussion about laserdisc for a moment