Page 1 of Is DVD Dead?

Will digital video on demand kill off DVD by giving us instant access to any film we want?

Will it stop us from shelving out our 15 quid per disc in lieu of poaying say 2 quid per viewing?

Or do we prefer to always have a collection of tapes/discs/whatver on the lounge shelves instead?

Whaddya think? What alternative media are there to DVD?

Regards

T

Pay per view is fine if you want to check a movie out
before buying.But you Are never going to get the picture
or sound quality from a satalite or cabel provider.
It is going to have to be something really special to
replace DVD and I cant see that happening for a little
while yet.

Can`t see Pay per view having Dolby Digital yet, and of course the picture quality is always going to be lower. It seems that DVD is aimed at collectors who used to buy widescreen VHS tapes, whilst pay per view appeals directly to those who regularly rent out tapes anyway.

Although pay per view still seems ages behind availability of the same stuff in the high street. Take Austin Powers 2 which is just starting the rounds on Sky Box Office, how long have we had this on DVD? :-)

People will always want to own copies of the films they love. Whether its on DVD or not. Cable didnt spell death to video, and neither will digital to DVD.

--Mike

I work for NTL and you wouldn`t believe how often the TVOD and NVOD cocks up.
Myself I always like to have my own copy of films I like.

I have yet to see a reasonable explanation of where the bandwidth is going to come from for any kind of wide scale application of video-on-demand. Maybe they are relying on a program I saw recently which promised to further compress your DVD stream. I think it was probably an mpeg 1 software compressor. Another great backward step for viewing kind.

Plus one of my favourite features of DVDs are the commentary tracks, I don`t see ppv vendors bothering with those.

Finally, historically the cable companies show very little inclination to true innovation. They have mostly set up the minimum service possible and then griped when people have been underwhelmed.

Rumours of the death of DVD are Highly exaggerated.

Grahame

Has anyone ever seen a whatchable video stream from the internet? No, running off a local LAN doesn`t count. ;-)

I doubt that even if we provided trailers from our website, which bearing in mind sits on a gigabit line is very fast connection wise, the bottlenecks between it and even cable users will prevent any decent full motion video.

It`s bad enough watching sky digital during weather interuptions, same goes for digital cable as that is also prone to blacking out every now and again.

So, the consensus is definitely in the "No" camp. And I agree with that, for now at least.

I personally want to have something in my pssession that means I own a copy of the film. That is probably true for a lot of people.

But the time will come I am sure, when we have access to massive central databases of films, music and information for which we pay a small fee to download.

Bandwidth will come from improved data compression and transmission media. Its the advances in technology that are the key.

Its only a matter of time really.

In 50 years time, (kinda a long term view but why not, eh?) this discussion will look stupid. Nobody will own films. We will all merely access them.

If you don`t believe that technology will advance far enough for that and other far more dramatic changes in our everyday lives, check out today`s DVD players, mobile WAP phones, laptops and home PCs, then compare them with the communications and entertainment technology we had in everday use in 1950. AM radio, celluloid cinemas and embryonic TV.

We ain`t gonna know what hit us.