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A year ago most of us were bracing for a long, drawn out battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, but we all know how that turned out. What we don't know, at least not yet, is what impact digital distribution will have as the nation's broadband continues to improve. Michael Bay, the man who directed Transformers and then voiced his outrage over Paramount's decision to abandon Blu-ray, claimed in late 2007 that Microsoft wanted both formats to fail, and was even actively trying to sabotage the high definition format war, all so it could reap the rewards when digital downloads take over.
Tossing aside the conspiracy theory, Bay may have been on to something in seeing a future for digital distribution, but rather than supplant Blu-ray, some content makers are looking at how the two can co-exist rather than wage another war.
"It's a mistake to think it's either a physical (media) or an electronic (download) business," said Danny Kaye, VP of research and technology strategy at 20th Century Fox. "That's arbitrary. They will co-exist."
Cnet points out that such a notion seems to contradict the belief that digital downloads will supplant physical media once broadband becomes ubiquitous, but how close are we to that happening? While you won't find a 56K modem in many Maximum PC reader rigs, there still exists a large portion confined to dial-up, and according to a recent survey, 62 percent of them don't have plans to switch. Asinie DRM schemes aren't helping matters much either, such as the one employed by Sony for Playstation 3 video rentals.
But the real reason why both Blu-ray and digital distribution may co-exist is because this time around the fight isn't against each other, and instead against standard DVDs. The high cost of Blu-ray players have prevented consumers flocking to the high definition format, and while DVD sales aren't showing an upward momentum, the numbers still loom high over digital downloads.
How long do you think this truce will last?
Comments are closed on this article
yr
September 27, 2008 at 6:36pm
I have read in many propaganda based articles that digital is the new in thing, and that CDs, DVDs and the like will all disappear.
IT WILL NOT HAPPEN ANY TIME SOON.
When I pay $$$ to watch a movie, I want good quality, and don't want crazy software installed on my PC. When I play a game, I want the disc so that I can use it at my discression, not to have to be subject to some PC in a server farm halfway across the globe. I WANT IT TO WORK ON MY TERMS, OR I WILL NOT SPEND MY CASH ON IT. PERIOD. I do believe that the majority of users want physical media with packaging that looks nice, and maybe even a nice instruction manual or the like. It is the movie industry that wants to save money on making disks, packaging, manuals etc that want us to use digital media, better for their bottom line.
Well here is my bottom line; I like CDs, DVDs and BD discs, and Hard drives attached to MY pc to store my stuff. Period.
BluFan
September 26, 2008 at 4:00pm
It's silly to think that in the next 5 years we'll see a complete abandonment of traditional content delivery systems (IE: discs) in favor of purely downloadable content. Blu-ray will remain an active player on the scene for a long time to come, regardless of whether or not streaming media ever catches up to where it should be by now. I've actually been working with WHV on some BR projects and know they're committed to Blu-ray for years to come.
cigar3tte
September 26, 2008 at 1:27pm
I can't understand at all where the digital distribution idea is coming from. Until they double our bandwidth (not even enough with this, 6Mb x 2 = 12Mb, I'd like at least 20Mb for downloading BR sized movies), I don't see how anyone would put up with it.
I'm not referring to streaming, that's a rental, not a purchase.
Antilogic81
September 26, 2008 at 12:43pm
I don't think it has anything to do with wanting a physical copy of somthing. DRM will dash all hopes of security in owning a physical object...Imagine this, no longer can you take your videos to a friends house to watch lol.
atomaweapon
September 26, 2008 at 10:56am
I personally don't think digital anything is going to take over and completely replace physical media. There's no way I want to have some crappy 3rd party program installed, got to a separate site to download any games I want to play, and then have it all archived on some hard drive that if it fails, I lose hundreds of dollars worth of purchase goods. Do any of us really believe if my download got corrupted or deleted 5 years from now the company is going to replace it free of charge?
Secondly, half the reason to make a physical purchase is simply to have a nice packaged box with artwork from the game, any extras they throw in (which is rare), and a physical cd that I can store safely away until im ready to install or copy or whatever.
neo1piv14
September 26, 2008 at 10:10am
Of course physical formats are going to stick around. There are some people that will just never watch movies on their computers. When my parents want to watch a movie, they're going to want to have something as simple as walking to the movie shelves, grabbing the movie, and putting the disc in the player. My mother will never want to learn how to stream something to the TV or navigate something like Media Center (simple as it is). Besides, for some people, the case with the cover art and the notes on the back is worth owning the disc as opposed to a download.
