It can now be officially said that the VHS video tape format is dead, as the final company (in the US at least) offering them is closing shop. This article has the details. I'm still not clear that Blu-Ray (is that how you spell it?) will replace DVD. Yes, it's a bigger storage format (and that's basically "the difference" - contrary to what the average person thinks).
Yes, that means you can put more content on it and make it "more interactive". Yay. But there have been so many articles saying how BADLY the format is doing, and how BADLY the Playstation 3 is selling, etc etc, so who knows. I think we should just 10TB flash drives, drive through Blockbuster, plug them in, grab the 3-5 movies you want to watch with whatever DRM they [think] will stop the movie from being used after a certain number of days, and be done with discs, tapes and the like altogether. Or Hollywood could just stop being a multi-trillion dollar business (ah, but that would never happen, right? Naaahhhhhhhh....). :-P
And no, I'm not all for the streaming of movies over the "web". We have nowhere near enough infrastructure or bandwidth to make things completely fluid, just like VOIP phone calls have yet to be consistently as clear as a wired call, and heaven forbid you compare cell service (don't tell me Sprint or AT&T or any other is "perfect" - take your head out of the sand first). Those people also probably believe Satellite is the way to go for television distribution in a reliable manner. Bah.
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1) Yes, technically the difference is that it's a bigger storage format. You're leaving out what you get for that - 6 times the pixel count of DVD and uncompressed 8 channel "master" audio. There's nothing exceptional for a new competing format to bring ATM, so once the Blu-ray price premium goes away, everything will be blu-ray.
ReplyDelete2) The format is doing badly because the economy is in a nosedive. PS3 and Blu-ray are expensive - when the economy turns around they'll be selling better.
3) A flash drive rental kiosk would be cool, but I think you know they're already paranoid enough about electronic distribution. Just look at the digital copy you get with some DVDs now, it only plays on WMP 10, with an Internet connection, and only until they kill off those specific DRM servers in a few years. When they realize DRM hurts everyone more than it benefits anyone, then maybe we'll start to see some innovation. Until then, BitTorrent provides a very convenient and hassle free means of acquiring just about anything you could want.
4) Movie streaming - your statement about bandwidth is completely wrong. The cable company has been doing on demand streaming movie rentals for many, many years. Despite what they might tell you, their cable box is doing that streaming over IP. Hold down the status and OK buttons when you turn it on and you'll see the streaming server IP addresses on one of the config screens.
You need only a miniscule amount of bandwidth in the grand scheme of things to stream a DVD quality movie, maybe 2-3Mbps I'd say. You wouldn't be able to offer such a service from the datacenter though, you'd have to partner with a content delivery network like Akamai or ATDN. A lot of people don't realize that high-traffic streaming sites that work really well are actually only a few hops away from them. If you put your servers directly on the networks of all major ISPs, then you have a much better chance of reliable streaming. They might tell you it won't work because of the shared nature of cable bandwidth, but I've never seen my bandwidth to the node realistically drop down below 5 Mbps...ever.
5) Consumer VoIP is pretty bad. Well-engineered business VoIP is getting to be almost indistinguishable from POTS. I have a pretty good thumb on the pulse of AT&T since I have to support almost 100 lines, and their service is pretty damn good. Yes, there's usually always something wrong somewhere, but over that many lines somebody will always have a problem. On my personal line, their service has been good. I was out of Florida for 30+ days in 2008, went to probably 8 other states, and their service just worked *everywhere*.
6) If satellite didn't require a long-term contract, I'd look at it more seriously. Sure it's got its' issues, but look at how often the cable company rolls out new firmware and jacks up your box, or your box gets too hot and has a meltdown, etc.
1. You get a higher pixel count where they BOTHER to. Question (because I don't know): Do blu-ray players play DVDs? If not, that's just a ripoff as they migrate all their old movies to blu-ray, and I'm quite sure MANY of them (mostly older, I'm sure) will NOT be in a truly higher resolution, they MIGHT get zoomed out to the higher resolution, with no new quality (as happened with many movies moved from VHS to DVD).
ReplyDelete2. I'm not so sure it's just the economy. That was just the last 3-4 months, really.
3-4. I'm not much of an advocate for DRM being a geek at heart, but I'm sure they'll be trying to do tha "forever and a day". I imagine one day they'll figure out how to make it time-sensitive (big quotes) without having to rely on someone that can just have the clock turned back (end quotes) to bypass it. That DVD format that died in recent years is one example, where the disc simply failed after x-number of uses. Yes, that involved the disc itself (I believe) failing, but perhaps a count mechanism built into the "DRM scheme" of the file, where each play of more than 30% of the movie counts as a full play (just a quick idea, it would have to be worked out as then you could start movies after the kill point, etc, to bypass). As for bandwidth, nah. I don't agree with you. Even watching REGULAR HD TV right now sometimes yields bad pictures. And that's very high latency. That's why it takes 1 to as many as 5 seconds for FF and REW to respond to your button presses. I do agree that the "Netflix" method would be better, having streaming centers at various stragetic locations.
5. This is probably me just showing my age, perhaps (a whopping 40, I know). It's sort of like the vinyl lover telling kids with MP3s that they can't appreciate what a good recording sounds like (which is not the case with me, despite the truth behind THAT comment too). VOIP is the obvious choice, using existing networking to do phone calls, multiple phone calls, video conferencing, etc. I just think the quality is crap, but then again, that's also partly due to the limited bandwidth they usually take up if I'm not mistaken.
Funnily enough, we'd probably not have most of the issues we had if the "entire internet" were run by one entity. :-P Freedom has it's price, as usual.
6. Satellite. *phbtbtbtt* Bah. Until they come up with an effective, megabits or higher per person two way connectivity, I'd say it's limited by far. "Just TV", or even the very limited Internet I last knew it offered (even if you did remove the latency on the downlink) was not something that would be worth it. Does it even have an uplink option yet? I admit to being out of this loop, back when it was using MODEM for the uplink (good lord...).
1) Blu-ray is always higher resolution than DVD. Even 720p has almost three times the pixel count of DVD. Yes, most (all?) Blu-ray players will also play DVDs and upscale them to 1080p if you tell them to.
ReplyDelete2) You're comparing something brand new to something old like DVD. Blu-ray players just recently broke the $200 price point, so you're only going to see early adopters and home theater guys dropping $600 for a Blu-ray player when they first came out. Same thing with DVD, when you can get players for $100-150 you'll start seeing more market penetration. It took DVD a little while to supplant VHS.
3) Ok, make up your mind. Are we talking DVD quality movie or HDTV quality movie, because as I indicated in #1, those are different things. You may occasionally get a bad picture or pixelation on HDTV, but for the most part, the on demand movies play pretty seamlessly, and I think those are HD, but I'm not sure since I haven't rented one in years. The control delay is a different problem (and one that likely has nothing to do with bandwidth). That's just the amount of the movie you have buffered versus the time it takes for the server to receive and process your request to rew, ff, etc and give your box a few seconds to rebuffer.
And regarding DRM - there is no lock that can't be picked with the right amount of time, determination and resources. If they'd give me unencumbered access to purchase and download unlocked high-res video so I can play it where I want, on the device I want, I'd be all about it.
6) You were talking about satellite for TV, now you're flopping over to broadband. TV - yes, it works. Broadband - yes, it works, badly, as a last resort. I really don't have any issues with satellite TV other than the contract. I believe dollar for dollar, satellite is a better deal than cable, but the simplicity of one bill for TV/Internet, and the ease of no contract is worth the difference to me.
1. It's good to know that DVD is supported (never looked seriously into Blu-Ray so I was not clear on that). Was also not aware that they're doing the DPI thing versus just straight resolution thing. I have always considered this to be a dumb way of measuring pixel count. [shrug]
ReplyDelete2. I know it has gotten a lot cheaper, but going strictly by a lot of postings online (which is probably dumb on my part, as the annoyed minority is usually more vocal) it seems like it's having troubles. The simple fact is, for storage purposes, it makes more sense, yes.
3. I'm really talking about both. But I still think that if the adoption of digital cable is going to suddenly boom in a couple months (which is pretty much guaranteed by the US switchover and new people taking advantage of new services) we're going to have bandwidth issues. The fact that a poorly planned wiring in a home for cable, for instance, can cause disturbances in both your internet and your cable TV is proof enough. Imagine that at the "hub" level in your neighborhood, or expand that outward to central switches at various NOCs (for lack of a better term) at providers.
I agree completely on DRM. It will never be fully secure. And that is good, since it makes them improve it for next time, keeping a "larger majority" of the public honest...
6. Satellite works 2-way reliably now? Hmm. That's interesting. But I can't imagine that latency is going to drastically improve (I'm thinking back to those tests we did at CRG years ago, and the "MP3" compression that was used in the signal, and how it was like a car with bad accelleration but then fine speed once you DID accellerate). One bill is attractive to me, too, though sometimes it gets frustrating due to the PACKAGE DEALS and the sense that you're paying for things you may not want.
The adoption of digital cable....I think you're unclear on exactly what will transpire in February. Cable service is not changing, cable will still be available as analog or digital. The only thing that will change is the transmitters on top of the TV towers will stop transmitting analog signals, so the 1% of the population that still watches analog OTA TV will need to get a converter box.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, one of the primary reasons people have issues with their cable service is because their home is wired poorly, or they've tried to split or amplify the signal themselves without really knowing what they're doing. Your analogy of expanding cable plant problems out from the node is misguided, since the vast majority of the nodes are FTTN (fiber to the node). I think you're overly concerned with a bandwidth issue that doesn't really exist, and definitely won't exist in a year or two. AT&T U-Verse (fiber to the home) is available here now, and should be available all over in the next 12-18 months. Look at the Obama broadband plan, they're talking about 100mbps to the home by the end of his first term.
I'm clear on the digital switchover, dude. I'm also sure that it is going to become a new source of revenue for Cable (and probably those silly Satellites) as people flock to them. I would assume the majority of Americans (?!) are on cable already, but even those who are on cable will be confused into buying new TVs, and then digital service, etc. Already those Best Buy and WalMart employees are confusing/lying to people about what's going to happen (partly their own ignorance I'm sure, but I'd bet there is a lot of outright bull being pushed to get sales). Grandma Jones doesn't need a new TV, if she's on cable... but Little Johnny at Circuit City will surely sell her one without advising against it.
ReplyDeleteObama hopefully will live up to his hype. I've heard only rumors about his technology plans. :-/
I'll agree with you there. I wish someone would crack down on the Best Buys of the world that are giving people bad info about the digital transition. That'd be a great feature for one of the news stations to pick up...send someone in with a hidden mic and ask various stores about what they need to buy to be compatible in february and see what they say.
ReplyDeleteAll the buzz words out there just serve to further confuse everyone, since there's no set definition for many of them.
Kinda makes me wonder how much of what salespeople tell me on subjects I don't know much about is true. Wish we could come up with some kind of way to implement back alley executions for society's scumbags, but the problem there is every jury you could convene will have one or two good-willed idiots on it that'll screw it up for everyone.