I Hate DVDs
DVDs were a great follow up to VHS tapes. VHS tapes were bulky, broke easily, didn't play in a computer, and took up plenty of storage space. The DVD on the other hand, is compact, maintained picture quality over years of use, and was easily played in a college dorm via a computer. But now DVDs are obsolete, and not just because high definition discs are going to replace them. Physical media, DVD or Blu-Ray discs, simply are irrelevant.
Many things have changed since the debut of the DVD. Portable media players, mostly the iPod, but also Zunes and Playstation Portables, are ubiquitous devices. Yet content on a DVD, thanks to digital rights restrictions, can't be transferred to an iPod (at least not easily and legally). Music CDs still have significant value in the age of Mp3 players because the CD's content can be transferred to a player easily. The CD is then a backup copy of the content that can be safely stored only to be called upon in the case of a hardware failure.
The same is not true of DVDs. A DVD needs to be easily accessible to watch the content rather than stashed in the back of a closet or under a bed, meaning my library of DVDs consumes a large block of bookshelf space I rather have books on. Additionally, finding the DVD I want to watch, or even browsing the library I have, is a major task since DVDs are stacked two deep. By contrast, a digital library can easily be browsed, searched and instantly accessed with a remote or a mouse.
In the DVD's heyday, computer hard drives were smaller, and prohibitively expensive to amass a library of DVD quality movies. Physical discs were cheap to manufacture and provided a great alternative. But now, terabyte hard drives, enough storage for hundreds of DVDs, cost fifty to seventy cents a gigabyte. In comparison, my six year old desktop came with a hard drive with 4 percent of that storage space, or enough for maybe 5 DVD quality movies, cost about $3 per gigabyte.
Movie studios want us all to buy the next generation laser disc, the Blu-Ray format from Sony. Not only do players cost several hundreds of dollars, movies on the discs cost about twice as much as standard DVDs. And on top of that, Blu-Ray discs still can't be transfered to iPods and still require the disc to play the movie.
The alternative is clear: digital videos over the internet. iTunes is one alternative, though this locks users into using an iPod for portable media. Amazon's service works smoothly for the most part, but is incompatible with iPods. There are rental models too, like Netflix which streams video on demand, and also cable service video on Demand which doesn't require a computer at all. All of these services, especially when used in tandem, are far superior to DVDs. There is no collection of discs taking up valuable real estate. Libraries are indexed and easily searched or browsed. In short, its time to say goodbye to the DVD.
You were a good friend DVD, but sadly, I won't really miss you.
Many things have changed since the debut of the DVD. Portable media players, mostly the iPod, but also Zunes and Playstation Portables, are ubiquitous devices. Yet content on a DVD, thanks to digital rights restrictions, can't be transferred to an iPod (at least not easily and legally). Music CDs still have significant value in the age of Mp3 players because the CD's content can be transferred to a player easily. The CD is then a backup copy of the content that can be safely stored only to be called upon in the case of a hardware failure.
The same is not true of DVDs. A DVD needs to be easily accessible to watch the content rather than stashed in the back of a closet or under a bed, meaning my library of DVDs consumes a large block of bookshelf space I rather have books on. Additionally, finding the DVD I want to watch, or even browsing the library I have, is a major task since DVDs are stacked two deep. By contrast, a digital library can easily be browsed, searched and instantly accessed with a remote or a mouse.
In the DVD's heyday, computer hard drives were smaller, and prohibitively expensive to amass a library of DVD quality movies. Physical discs were cheap to manufacture and provided a great alternative. But now, terabyte hard drives, enough storage for hundreds of DVDs, cost fifty to seventy cents a gigabyte. In comparison, my six year old desktop came with a hard drive with 4 percent of that storage space, or enough for maybe 5 DVD quality movies, cost about $3 per gigabyte.
Movie studios want us all to buy the next generation laser disc, the Blu-Ray format from Sony. Not only do players cost several hundreds of dollars, movies on the discs cost about twice as much as standard DVDs. And on top of that, Blu-Ray discs still can't be transfered to iPods and still require the disc to play the movie.
The alternative is clear: digital videos over the internet. iTunes is one alternative, though this locks users into using an iPod for portable media. Amazon's service works smoothly for the most part, but is incompatible with iPods. There are rental models too, like Netflix which streams video on demand, and also cable service video on Demand which doesn't require a computer at all. All of these services, especially when used in tandem, are far superior to DVDs. There is no collection of discs taking up valuable real estate. Libraries are indexed and easily searched or browsed. In short, its time to say goodbye to the DVD.
You were a good friend DVD, but sadly, I won't really miss you.
Labels: Technology
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