It’s always a funny moment when you realize that a major change has happened. I proclaim it now: DVDs are a dead format, and should be treated as such.
The laptop that I am typing on has no DVD/CD drive in it, something that is becoming more and more common. I really doubt that it will ever bother me. What disc would I want to put into it?
When you are looking for music or software, two of the things that discs have for long carried, where do you go? The store? Of course npot, you go online, and purchase what you want, and download it.
This is now mainstream, but people have tended to continue to use DVDs for movies. It made sense for a while, given that people did not have fast enough internet connections to handle streaming in the past. And people had invested so much money into their televison setup, that using it had a monentum in and off itself.
But this has been in decline, as we all know. Netflix brought new life to the physical medium by mailing you discs, removing the need to actually go out and rent a movie, something that I will never do again.
But then Netflix began to stream movies. And that was the beginning of the end. It put real time streaming into the hands of the mass market consumer for the first time, ever. You use Netflix to rent movies for your home TV? Now just stream them.
Hell, even YouTube is getting on board with streaming movies. You can watch full length films on YouTube here, if you don’t mind the ads.
This trend will continue, unabated, until physical storage mediums will become, finally, moot. The body is dead, we are just seeing the death-twitches. Let’s bring in Metallica to show off exatly what I am saying.
Metallica is currently on tour everywhere, and has just released two DVDs of taped concerts. One in an ancient arena in France, and one filmed at a gigantic soccer stadium in Mexico City. You can buy the DVDs, and then have them shipped to you in a neat box. Metallica is a mega-act, and people all over the world want to see these concerts, including your humble blogger.
What was the consumer reaction? To upload the files to YouTube (well worth your time to watch), and based on a quick search around the internet, torrent them to no end. The content is racking up downloads and views in the tens of thousands. It is a safe wager that the (albeit illegal) streaming content is going to steamroll the physical product.
Question: would you rather watch it in three minutes, or wait for a week, plus shipping fees? The market has spoken. The convience of streaming over the wait of a box of Metallica-goodness.
Now, if Metallica had a purchase-to-download option, that would be a different story. I would have purchased that in a second, but am stuck with YoutTube instead. The bad actually is quite progressive there, recording all their shows for consumer download. But to only sell physical copies of the DVD is archaic.
Point is, consumers are demanding that content be streamable, now. The internet has killed off physical conveyance of data. Hats off to Al Gore everyone, the change has happened.
tl;dr, have a great weekend everyone.
Don’t forget, though, that there is still a huge portion of the population (it’s not just me) in the U.S., at least, that does not have reliable broadband service. Therefore, there are still quite a few of us that don’t stream or download large items on the Internet.
This may be true for films, but real music fans are audiophiles. DVD’s and Blu-rays are unbeatable for good sound quality, hich is what you want when watching footage of a live concert.
DVD’s/Blu-rays are still the way to go for live concerts.
I still think it will be a while before the DVD is truly gone. There are too many instances like my in-laws, who have no access to broadband, not even satellite. They are on the wrong side of the mountain. In fact, they got so tired of waiting for new content-heavy sites on their 36k connection, they threw out their computer, and disconnected their $1/k service. (Their service was $35/month for an approx. 36k connection. Occasionally they could get a speed of 42k.)
There’s just too many areas like this, where broadband just isn’t available. For them, neither is satellite TV, such as Dish Network or Direct TV, nor digital cable for that matter. However, I do get 5 bars of service with AT&T… Go figure. Even though 60% of households in the US have access to broadband, that still leaves 40% of households without such access, and with companies like Time Warner and Comcast imposing usage limits, it will be difficult for these types of services to fully replace media – at least in the near future. Personally, due to the current level of broadband expansion, I’d give media another 10 years at least. But that’s just my own opinion.
First of, i am not a metallica fan boy. But it reads as if you just put M in there for the deadline. While you might not like that they went for DVD on this release, din’t forget they totally embracwd mp3 (albeit after Napster), offering a huge number of recorded liveshows for sale and download. Video will come too is my guess, in the next web ;-)
unlike other entertainers, metallica’s been sellin the taped recordings of their shows on their website for a few years now. seems like you just woke up from some kinda hibernation…
Ease up, Alex. DVDs and Blu-Ray are still used for video game consoles like Xbox 360 and PS3, and most people still purchase games in DVD format rather than download them. So, yeah, chill.
Curtiss, of course. But something to the effect of 60% of the US has accesss to broadband. Your sat connection is bad, as we all know.
But the trend is clear: streaming.