Online Hi-Def vs. Blu-Ray

In article , FDR wrote:
GMAN wrote:
In article , FDR
wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:
FDR wrote:
flambe wrote:
Being a curmudgeon is one thing, seeing where things are headed is
another. As the internet pipeline widens nearly all content delivery
will move there, particularly the delivery of pre-recorded materials.
DVD has made inroads in portable devices but the market will move to
an ipod style download model over the long term, as will what people
now regard as OTA/Cable/Satellite television.
Unfortunately in the rush to move to this model consumers will have
to endure compression schemes as bad or worse than what we are now
seeing. However as bandwidth increases this will improve if
consumers demand it: alas most consumers are morons.
Wait until your pc becomes a cheap applicance where nearly all
programs will be run from a remote server. Yourhard drive will be
just a redundant back up drive.
Taint gunna happen, you watch.


I'd like to believe it won't. But big companies who are tired of piracy
will resort to this.
And i will resort to fighting back with my wallet. I will support the
companies that "Dont" do this.

Be ready for a Linux world then

If need be , OK!

MakeNoAttemptToAdjustYourSet wrote:
On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 14:55:19 -0800, wrote:

"Rod Speed" wrote in message ...
FDR wrote
But big companies who are tired of piracy will resort to this.
Nope, because the end users wont wear not being able to use it unless they are online.
Could you translate that into English?

If you are really so stupid that you cannot garner his meaning from
that remark, you have abso-****ing-lutely no business in Usenet.

Of course he knows what it means, but it is very satisfying (for those
of us who have tolerated Rod's lame troll antics) to see Rod looking
like the idiot he is. We like to pounce on that, even though it is, in
fact, "feeding the trolls".

Your stupidity is apparent from your total ignorance of this situation.

TheKraken wrote:
On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 16:07:43 -0800, Helen Weed
wrote:

MakeNoAttemptToAdjustYourSet wrote:
On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 14:55:19 -0800, wrote:

"Rod Speed" wrote in message ...
FDR wrote
But big companies who are tired of piracy will resort to this.
Nope, because the end users wont wear not being able to use it unless they are online.

Could you translate that into English?

If you are really so stupid that you cannot garner his meaning from
that remark, you have abso-****ing-lutely no business in Usenet.

Of course he knows what it means, but it is very satisfying (for those
of us who have tolerated Rod's lame troll antics) to see Rod looking
like the idiot he is. We like to pounce on that, even though it is, in
fact, "feeding the trolls".

Your stupidity is apparent from your total ignorance of this situation.


You are the dip****s that have invaded a.v.d, not the other way around.

Your stupidity is proven by this major basic logic flaw.

TheKraken must be some troll alias. More nonsense. I mean, what would
"the other way around" actually be?

I've now read a few of your drivel posts and I must say . . .


****!

****!

How can somone as ****ing stupid as you remember to continue
breathing?


On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 21:51:24 -0500, FDR wrote:

ChairmanOfTheBored wrote:
On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 08:51:03 -0500, "Elmo P. Shagnasty"
wrote:

In article ,
MakeNoAttemptToAdjustYourSet
wrote:

Maybe now you will understand the difference between buying a streaming
content event, and buying a hard copy.
You mean, like people who go to a theater and have the movie streamed
from the screen to their eyeballs, spend ten bucks for the privilege,
and then have to pay again if they want to see it again?

Yeah, that whole streaming thing. Useless, isn't it. It's a business
model that will NEVER take off.


You really have no clue what this DVD group is about do you, boy?

People like having a hard copy of certain things.

It like the difference between actually owning a real house, and the
idiots on the playstation that live in a virtual home.

One has equity from the first day on, the other never will.

What is the equity in a 10 year old Disk? A few bucks? You can buy
Lord of the Rings used for $1 on Amazon.

Real houses gain value over time.

Disks, just like cars, lose value over time. So in 10 years you'll lose
most of your equity in a disk, while the money you saved by renting or
even watching it over cable could be pocketed and make some interest.

In alt.video.dvd Just Visiting wrote:
Well, here we go again! This format war should be more interesting
than the last one. Since online video has exploded in the last couple
of years, anyone can save their favorite movies and clips to any media
they want. The movie studios will probably require registration per
movie per IP address. Toshiba could still offer a hardware solution
for this market though. The cable, phone and satellite companies will
make out with this one, too. However, somebody will still offer a
retail or mail order movie business if the studios are willing to
license their material on various types of media versus online
distribution. It doesn't have to be limited to Blu-Ray with the
threat of hi-def online content. For the consumer, it has to be an
offer that will last for many years to come. Isn't competition great?
Hee-hee...

Current download services are offering highly compressed video, so the
picture quality isn't quite as good as a local blu-ray disc.

Even if you had the technology available to stream blu-ray quality audio
and video over the internet, there's one non-technology issue that will
still exist - the psychological desire for a physical object. Think about
it. We've had the technology for years now to moreorless switch entirely
from printed words on paper to electronic formats like eBooks. Why pay $7
for a chunk of wood that you store on your shelf when you could store
hundreds, even thousands of books' worth of printed material on something
the size of a keychain USB drive? Collecting is why. People like
collecting stuff, be it books, movies, 'Precious Moments' statuettes,
etc. People bought DVDs because they are an affordable and durable
format, unlike VHS before it.

Now, online HD formats DO have a place in the market in the form of PPV or
rentals. Why bother with mailing DVDs back to Netflix when you can just
browse their library online, hit "play" and enjoy the movie right then and
there on your TV? That technology is almost here now.

However I don't see Blu-Ray and Online Downloads competing with one
another really. Most folks who are going to upgrade to blu-ray are going
to be the ones who are interested in OWNING blu-ray discs. They may still
use downloads as rentals, but they're not going to see the two
technologies are competing against each other. They're two separate
answers to completely different questions.

--
It's not broken. It's...advanced.

In alt.video.dvd Scott in SoCal wrote:
Already there are applications that "phone home" each and every time
you run them and refuse to operate unless they get authentication from
the company servers. One such application was "TimeTrax Recast" - put
out by a company that is (thankfully) now defunct. Another is TMPGEnc:

http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/pr...operation.html

Yes, yes, these systems have been in existence for decades for corporate
and enterprise software licensing. However there's a big difference
between that, and the consumer setting. Unless you have completely
ubiquitous internet connectivity, this is not a viable solution for
consumers. Many people like watching videos in their car, on the train,
or airplane. These types of phone-home systems don't work in those types
of environments. And what happens if there's an outage that prevents you
from connecting to the internet? Then you can't watch any of your shows?
Today's (consumer) technology isn't robust enough to ensure the sorts of
uptime and quality of service required for these systems.

Back in the 90s, my school tried to roll out a centralized licensing
and storage system for common applications like MSWord and Excel. The
reason was that many of the computers' hard drives were now too small to
hold the newer versions of the software. It was cheaper to implement a
central storage server for the software, and a licensing server meant the
school wasn't paying for licenses that would just "sit idle" on most
machines.

It worked pretty well...until midterms hit. Then, there was such a heavy
load on the servers and the network, that the equipment couldn't keep up.
Entire labs were unable to contact the licensing servers, and students
needing to finish their term papers were practically ready to kill you for
your license token.

The upgrade of all the computers in all the labs finished in time for the
start of the winter semester. The licensing server hardware was repurposed
as a network-wide fileserver, with each student receiving a 20MB share of
their very own. From then on, any tech or staff member who even mentioned
the word "centralized" would receive a severe verbal beating by the head
of the technology services department.

--
It's not broken. It's...advanced.

In alt.video.dvd Rod Speed wrote:

There *will be local storage*, but on solid state media.

Irrelevant to that claim that all the apps will be running from a remote
server and wont be local.

Hahahaha.

You should go work for Sun. No, seriously. They also believe in the idea
of centralized servers that run everything, with cheap and dumb clients on
everyone's desks. Yeah...and they work really well, those SunRays! Just
ask anyone who's used them! Well, that'd be the folks at Sun, since no
one else is stupid enough to buy them!

40 years ago(!) this model made sense. Back then, you used a "dumb
terminal" to connect to "the Mainframe" to access your data and
applications. Nothing was stored on the terminal.

Nowadays, however, this setup doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I can get
a fully functional computer - WITH software AND a (small) LCD panel for
$500 or less. Heck, you even get a laptop for that amount - or even a
little less.

The future will be that you download the application, and then run it
locally. That's already happening with PC games with systems like Valve,
or GameTap.

But thinking we're going to see a return to the days of the mainframe is
just being ignorant of today's computer environments and markets. Unless
you can point to emerging technologies that result in incredibly powerful
- yet massive - computers that would be unwieldly to put on everyone's
desk at work, the days of the dumb terminal and mainframe are dead, gone,
and little more than an entry in the history books.

--
It's not broken. It's...advanced.

In alt.video.dvd Elmo P. Shagnasty wrote:
Think back 15 years to what you were using and to what you said would
never come to pass in 15 years.

I don't know. 15 years ago, the big talk amongst my professors was still
"client server" architecture. The internet was around, as were web
browsers. The idea of centralized data - like in a database - with
simplified interfaces for other applications - like web browsers - was all
the rage. Although modems were still the main way of connecting to the
internet, I already knew about then-emerging technologies like cable, DSL
and fiber. The groundwork for today's "triple play" offerings from AT&T,
Comcast and others was being laid back then.

In many ways, things haven't changed a whole lot since then. Things have
gotten bigger, faster, smaller, better, but that shouldn't be surprising,
now, should it?

Just like typewriters and carbon paper, this spinning disc thing too
shall pass.

Sure, but to think that purely virtual downloads will replace them is a
silly statement. After all, books are still very popular, despite having
the technology to completely replace them with digital files for the
better part of a decade.

--
It's not broken. It's...advanced.

In alt.video.dvd Elmo P. Shagnasty wrote:
No, but the infrastructure for doing it all solid state and streaming is
in place. It's just a matter of beefing up what we already have.

We did NOT have an infrastructure for flying cars, plus no one even
started looking that way.

Eh? People have been tinkering with flying cars for almost 50 years.
Check out Popular Mechanics. A lot of the home computer technologies
started the same way - people tinkering in their garages.

Remember seeing your first 1 megapixel digital camera?

Did you ever say, "nah, we'll never be rid of film"?

Film will still be around for certain applications for a very very long
time...or until you find a way to change this world around us into a
completely digital one.

--
It's not broken. It's...advanced.

In alt.video.dvd FDR wrote:
Right now today's environment is that you need "your" pc to do what you
want. Don't have your computer? Oh well can't do anything. Centralize
the apps and data and you can work anywhere.

Centralization means nothing if you don't have ubiquitous networking.

If I take my laptop with me on the plane, to the beach or whereever, I can
still do work (or play games).

Look at Google Docs. Work anywhere and collaborate.

That's centralized data - not apps. I can accomplish the same thing with
a networked CVS server.

Even then, the amount of hardware needed to just get a web browser up and
running is pretty close to what a full computer needs anyways, so again,
what's the point? Want to be able to work anywhere? Get a laptop with
a good wireless connection. Done.

Centralization of data makes more sense - but again relies on a network
connection which not everyone has available to them all the time.

However, centralization of applications does not make sense in today's
world of cheap and powerful hardware. Things like Google Docs are nice,
but again their weakness is that they rely on a network connection to even
USE them. Whereas, a computer, laptop, or even PDA with a local word
processor will work anywhere and anytime.

--
It's not broken. It's...advanced.