Shades wrote:

Last time i read, they were working on making DVDs that commit sucide. That is to say, after you watch them 2 or 3 times, they format themself.

Actually what it is, is a DVD that is vacuum sealed, and after a set amount of time after opening, the DVD turns completely black, making it so light cannot pass through it to read the data contained. I think it'll be just a new way to create tons of waste.

~>Volte

DVDs are several times cheaper to create and write to than VHS, yet still cost more, and like VHS, they will still be quite popular for a long time even when the next type of CD is released.

It'll be interesting to see how the market plays out over the next 5-10 years. On the one hand, you have consumers who are happy with their current DVD players and don't want to pay to upgrade their systems or their movies. DVD was the first successor to VHS that really took off, and it took several years to gain the critical mass of popularity to survive long term. Laserdisc and D-VHS failed to do this (though D-VHS came after DVD, it hasn't caught on).

On the other hand, you have the electronics companies that want to sell new players, and movie studios that want to sell you the same movies over again. If HD-DVD takes off, everyone will be repurchasing all of the movies they already own on DVD, just as people did with what they owned on VHS. This means more money for the fat wallets of the movie execs, something they'd really like to see!

And on the third hand, you have the current state of the movie industry and its extreme dislike for its own customers. We're treated like thieves with DVD copy protection (that's easily broken) and it'll only get more difficult with the next generation. I can see a scenario where the movie industry decides against a higher resolution format because they're afraid to give their evil customers -- the same people that pay for their mansions and yachts and Ferraris -- such pristine copies of their movies. You know, we might actually, like, enjoy them too much or something. Can't have that!

They've tried things in the past to limit our use of their products - Divx, where you bought a DVD but had to pay a fee to keep watching it again - which failed because consumers wouldn't have any of it. This idea of DVDs which go bad after a few days or weeks in the atmosphere will also fail. People aren't that stupid. Yet the industry has succeeded in getting Macrovision, CSS encryption, and region encoding -- which allows for price fixing -- without much of a fuss. You can bet the next generation will have much stricter controls on what we can and can't do.

They'd love to have it where we pay for every time we watch a movie or listen to a song. I don't think consumers will ever put up with that, but it'll be interesting to see how far it'll be able to go. I just want to be able to make backup copies of legally purchased media for my own purposes, but it's unlikely that'll ever happen with newer formats.

The CD was invented long before digital piracy was a concern, so the CD Audio specification doesn't allow for copy protection. We're in kind of a golden age for digital media right now, as consumers probably enjoy more rights than they ever will again. I can buy a music CD at the store, rip it to my computer, put it on my iPod, and listen to it anywhere I go. I can take my entire collection with me wherever I go, on one small device. The music industry hates this, because the same technology that allows me to do this also allows me to illegally share my copies of the music with the world. I don't do this and I don't download illegal copies of anything, yet I'm presumed guilty. If the CD were specified today, it would have the same copy protections as DVDs, if not more. Already, the competing next generation audio formats - SACD and DVD-Audio - can't be digitally copied to a computer, where the music can be easily managed. The same will be true of the next generation DVD.

It's a shame, really. Computers are the ideal tool for flexible management of digital entertainment media. But because they can be used for easy and illegal copying, I have a feeling that management will go away in the future. As far as the industry is concerned, those pesky customers are not to be trusted. Sometimes I get the feeling the industry wishes the customers would just go away. Then they wouldn't have to worry about piracy at all! Except for that whole matter of making money...

Hopefully I'm wrong and people are smart enough to demand the ability to do whatever they want with content they've legally purchased.

I think things like that are legitimate when they're used to control the spread of complimentary "screener" disks given to reviewers and contest judges and things like that. Surprisingly, these people, whose jobs depend on their integrity and credibility, are actually the entry point into the black market for the highest quality pirating, because they've got a working DVD ahead of everybody else.

My personal lord and savior Tori Amos invented her own solution for this with her music: she created a CD player that doesn't open, where a portion of the CD is actually glued to part of the player. Opening the device without shattering the disk is next to impossible. I don't know if she asks for them back after the review is done... if I was her, I would, because it would be fun to listen to the abashed excuses of the people who broke the proverbial cookie jar.

In response to points elsewhere in the thread: I also don't think putting copy protection on a DVD is treating us like thieves. If you're not going to copy it, then the protection doesn't affect you. If you're going to copy it... um, why are you copying it? Isn't it non-degradable media? Yeah, accidents happen, but you can't back up your DVD player or your lamp or your chair so why is it a big loss that you can't back up your DVDs?

I've heard people say the same thing about video cameras in Wal-Mart, that it's insulting because it assumes everyone's a thief. That's simply asinine. It's a classic case of "belling the cat." Here... you point out everybody who's an actual software pirate and we'll put the copy protection just on their DVDs. Does that work for you?

Blame the people who made it necessary, not the industry that takes the steps. No, they're not starving to death... but if they gave up the fight and stopped trying to keep up with (or at least only a few steps behind) the curve, they would be. It's human nature: tell people they can't talk and they'll whisper. Tell people they can whisper and they'll talk quietly. Tell them they can talk quietly... we need the consumer advocates and electronic freedom types to oppose the media industries, but at the same time we need the industries to oppose the advocates. If one side or the other ultimately prevailed, it would be nothing less than catastrophic.

They put much more work into DVD's with special features and commentary, etc. A small price hike aint not no bad.

Most of our VHS tapes from ten years ago are in sad shape. Not un-watchable, but it doesn't seem like they'll last much longer. That and the fact that we can watch DVD's on our computers and PS2's is why we're making the shift. My dad got a DVD recorder for christmas, so we're in the process of recording all of our old movies. This new system did do something else for me, though, I doubt I'd be able to find any Earnest P. Worrel tapes, but BestBuy has some on DVD. A lot of older movies are being remade for DVD, movies that I might have had to resort to the internet to get on VHS. Maybe I should go out and find The Car. =)

Volte wrote:

Shades wrote:

Last time i read, they were working on making DVDs that commit sucide. That is to say, after you watch them 2 or 3 times, they format themself.

Actually what it is, is a DVD that is vacuum sealed, and after a set amount of time after opening, the DVD turns completely black, making it so light cannot pass through it to read the data contained. I think it'll be just a new way to create tons of waste.

~>Volte

I heard that this was for renting stores, like blockbuster. Late fees? Hah! Just watch it and throw it away!

The point was that we all already had DVD players. I'm not going to fork out the money for a new VHS player, to watch VHS tapes, with VHS (or less) quality. =P

Urgh. I sure hope not. Not all of us have unlimited bandwidth and download allowances, you know. (Which is why Steam is really, really unpopular around these parts.)