View Full Version : Do you think that DVD will go the way of VHS?
dvdforum
01-02-2002, 15:51
Surely the high quality of DVD will ensure its survival for a long time to come, even with high definition tv I would be of the belief that DVD's quality will stand the test of time.
The CD has stood the test of time remarkably well and new technology such as MP3 has added to it's appeal
Are we all mad to invest heavily in a format with a lifespan which is undetermined?
Bapapapa
01-02-2002, 15:55
Do you think that DVD will go the way of VHS?
You mean be an unmitigated success and last for 20 years plus?
Lets hope so...
:nuts:
Its the nature of the world that sooner or later be it a format, electronics, car, man or women, they will all evetually end up redundant. If it weren't for this cycle you wouldn't have dvd.
And if you regard VHS as being a failure as a format then I think you are wrong. Nearly everybody has a VHS player and the majority still use it too record everyday.
kerbcrawler
01-02-2002, 16:16
I think it will but I kinda' hope it won't - or rather I hope there will at least always be demand for a physical product that looks good on the shelf and that any replacement for DVD will surpass it in it's beauty as a format.
I actually have a £100 bet with my older brother who's big in IT and reckons that by March 2010 all we'll be buying are access codes to downloadable material - and not just for video material either but music and books too. I on the other hand have faith in the consumer always wanting that book in their hands or the DVD/Video/CD package on the shelf (or in the player), and I better be right 'coz that £100 will increase with inflation etc
And if we no longer have Pound Sterling in 2010, what will happen then? :nuts:
I would think so but not just yet.
"Things can only get better"
dvdforum
01-02-2002, 17:16
I should apologise for the tone in my initial question. I will not be getting rid of my video at any point in the near future, but I believe the role of VHS was always predominantly to record from tv not as a viewing platform for film. VHS is one of the success stories of the 20th century in terms of mass ownership.
However, DVD's role is a medium in which to view prerecorded films etc. As part of a film studies course in college the main text book for the course was the Oxford guide to Film Studies. One of the chapters was in relation to film's relationship to TV and the effect it would have on film production. The idea of pan and scan, audience's(in particular American) dislike for letterbox etc were at the time questions being asked by film studios in relation to the future of film(I think the article was written about 1994).
One view was that the medium in which to view film was TV, not in a cinema and that film production should bare this in mind.
I believe that DVD has heralded a new age in the history of film and that TV and cinema are no longer worlds apart. The majority of DVD owners want there DVD's in widescreen which was not the case with VHS. Foreign language and independent cinema has been given a new ease of life by DVD.
I suppose my point is that I think that DVd will be around for the best part of my lifetime as a format on which to view film. I am certain it will be improved upon but I would be interested to know if others share my optomistic view of DVD's future
Bapapapa
01-02-2002, 17:29
OK, in sales of pre-recorded movies it may not be as successful as DVD, but renting..? Look at the size of Blockbuster as a company, purely on the back of VHS!!!
In fact they're probably the deciding factor behind the *relative* failure of the sales of VHS pre-recorded movies as VHS still has a rental window on almost every new release - 80 sovs a pop!! :eek: DVD wouldn't be half as successful if BB had kept their monopoly on new releases. Not to mention the influence of the 'net...
The majority of DVD owners want there DVD's in widescreen which was not the case with VHS.
Again BB show their influence as they will not allow P&S to die because the majority of their customers dislike the black-bars. Sure the early adopters of DVD & film enthusiasts respect the OAR, but now DVD players are at throwaway prices & the movies are cheap every JSP under the sun has a player and they want their screens filled.
BTW - Luca$ is just dying for DVD to fail....
fattyboombatty
01-02-2002, 18:53
Originally posted by Bapapapa
BTW - Luca$ is just dying for DVD to fail....
why?
If fluorescent disc ever gets released, then DVD may well be on it's way out, although slowly. The public seem to take a long time to grasp new technology (the majority still not knowing anything about w/s, dvd, sound formats etc) and are quite happy with what they've got........
If alternatives to video were more reliable, affordable etc, then perhaps more people would use them, but as it stands, we've pretty much all got video recorders and they're essential items for our tv needs, and to make more people dispose of them, there has to be something else to tempt them.
Confucius
01-02-2002, 19:14
I really hope that by 2010 (or any other date) we don't have to download everything of some network controlled by geeks. I will never have to wear glasses like goldfish bowls, never have dandruff like snow in Alaska, never move back in to live with my parents - why should I wish to view everything via computer?
1's and 0's will never take over from tangible material, no matter how logical some zit-faced ****** thinks it may be.
rant over.
Originally posted by Xenole
If fluorescent disc ever gets released, then DVD may well be on it's way out, although slowly. The public seem to take a long time to grasp new technology (the majority still not knowing anything about w/s, dvd, sound formats etc) and are quite happy with what they've got........
If alternatives to video were more reliable, affordable etc, then perhaps more people would use them, but as it stands, we've pretty much all got video recorders and they're essential items for our tv needs, and to make more people dispose of them, there has to be something else to tempt them.
Luckly they have said that the fluorescent disc players could easily be modified to allow backwards compatability with dvd due to the technology that the 2 share.
It was hard enough to get studios to allow access to masters to produce dvd quality movies, do you really think they would allow access to better quality movies, the studios know that any copy protection will eventually be cracked.
The fluorescent discs will most proberly end up being used for mass data archiving and for supplying cinemas with digital movies (many digital cinemas currently get supplied with digital films spread over many dvd discs, they have to they then have to manually transfer the contents of each disc on to a large harddrive, one disc could easily be misplaced and would result in the cinema have to reorder the disc)
If the next technology leap were to provide advances along the lines we have seen between DVD and VHS then it would be quite interesting. However, DVD is, for now, still developing. Pretty soon (a few years) it will be common for DVD writers to do home recoding. That will probably sound the death knell for VHS. I don't know if DVD will be around for more than the next 10 years or so but I would now like to see much better advances in TVs, particularly to bring the cost and bulk (not screen) size down. Plasma screens are still around the £5000 mark :(
Bapapapa
01-02-2002, 19:39
I don't know if DVD will be around for more than the next 10 years or so but I would now like to see much better advances in TVs, particularly to bring the cost and bulk (not screen) size down. Plasma screens are still around the £5000 mark
Keep dreaming mate, they can't even stretch to multiple RGB sockets.
:rolleyes:
Originally posted by kerbcrawler
and I better be right 'coz that £100 will increase with inflation etc
actually, because of inflation that £100 will be worth considerably less.
it will probably be the price of a Criterion DVD.
No expert here but...
What I often think is missed by people looking at the race forward in technology and fearing how DVD's days may already be numbered, is that it's not simply about picture/sound quality.
DVD is/was a leap in technology AND convenience over VHS, much like CD was to vinyl. Both are more resilient, compact and offer random access compared to their predesessors.
As has been somewhat proved by the non-mass takeup of DAT, MiniDisk and Laserdisk the next medium has to be more than just better or smaller than what came before.
I don't believe it will be any form of downloading material because that always relys on the delivery system for an effective level of takeup and as cable TV has shown, it simply takes too long to get installed into even the most densly populated areas. Also, consumers like buying a THING. People like to pay for something they can hold in their hand, collect, give as a present. You can't do that with a download.
I firmly believe that the next step will another great leap forward in technology AND convenience. To me this means a storage medium without moving parts, instantaneous playback and record, for all forms of entertainment including music, films, books, plus information like road maps, phonebooks etc.. The players will simply be an information slot built into just about every device you can imagine like the home entertainment/information system that TV's and PC's will evolve into, and the powerful hand held computers that will replace palms, laptops and mobile phones.
Just what I believe of course.
Deaks.
Bapapapa
02-02-2002, 10:56
We're gonna have everything piped straight to our brains direct from Skywalker Ranch. :p
Michael Brooke
02-02-2002, 20:52
Whether or not a format takes off has far more to do with marketing than it does with technical quality - VHS was demonstrably the worst of the three domestic video formats introduced in the late 1970s, but it won the battle because it was cheaper and more convenient: when Sony were stressing the high quality of Betamax, JVC were saying "well, with eight hours of long-play VHS you can timeshift sixteen soap episodes!" In retrospect, it's not remotely surprising which format won!
The four principles of marketing are essentially: product, price, promotion and place. The product may be the most amazing in the entire history of the universe, but unless it's priced realistically, promoted properly and easily accessible, it will fail. Sony chairman Akio Morita said that Betamax was his biggest failure - because he had too much faith in the product and ignored the marketing side.
So a genuine DVD-beater has to be demonstrably better <U>and</U> demonstrably cheaper - and I can't see that happening any time soon. On average, the public will only consider a major format shift once every couple of decades - and DVD just happened to be in the right place at the right time and with the right price.
Jimmyboy
03-02-2002, 01:37
I believe that 1 of the biggest reasons DVD has taken off so well is because its the 1st movie format at a handheld size.
I havent seen or know much about DVHS but I assume that it would be a bulkier format than a DVD disc and does anyone really fancy paying shipping & import charge's from America for something of that size and weight ?.
andybhoy
09-06-2002, 11:55
Originally posted by kerbcrawler
I think it will but I kinda' hope it won't - or rather I hope there will at least always be demand for a physical product that looks good on the shelf and that any replacement for DVD will surpass it in it's beauty as a format.
I actually have a £100 bet with my older brother who's big in IT and reckons that by March 2010 all we'll be buying are access codes to downloadable material - and not just for video material either but music and books too. I on the other hand have faith in the consumer always wanting that book in their hands or the DVD/Video/CD package on the shelf (or in the player), and I better be right 'coz that £100 will increase with inflation etc
I think printed books will always be the popular format.
Don't like the idea of d/l material in expense of physical products.
Legendary
09-06-2002, 13:28
I think DVD will last a long time as it have great sound, pictures, widescreen, subtitles and it doesn't take too much room either.
We might get better DVD players ie recordable DVD with blue ray recording, progressive scan (both pal and ntsc), dvd audio. We will upgrade hardware, but keep the DVDs. I mean what the points of buying Gladiator on super DVD in the future when we got one in our collection which is excellent. I am sure we will buy Super DVD on new films eg Spiderman III.
For now don't worry about DVD collection.
What we want is affordable plasma TV. I would like to be able to buy a 50 inches plasma TV for 1,500 quids in a few years time..
:nuts: :nuts:
Cirrus888
09-06-2002, 17:16
Yeah DVD discs should be with us for a long while yet and what I do see an advancement in is the home entertainment system. Bigger screens, louder amps, more speakers, less cables and better DVD players.
Originally posted by Legendary
I mean what the points of buying Gladiator on super DVD in the future when we got one in our collection which is excellent.
For the same reason we buy a new version now that has a DTS soundtrack or an extra 1/25 of a second added to a scene, cos we want the best!
Some films have already had 3+ releases on DVD and there will be people that have brought them all.
AndyWilson
09-06-2002, 18:06
Originally posted by Gromit
...I would now like to see much better advances in TVs, particularly to bring the cost and bulk (not screen) size down. Plasma screens are still around the £5000 mark :(
You're shopping in the wrong places!
(logs off to go play with his new £3.3K plasma...)
Originally posted by Cirrus888
Yeah DVD discs should be with us for a long while yet and what I do see an advancement in is the home entertainment system. Bigger screens, louder amps, more speakers, less cables and better DVD players.
My amp's quite loud enough, I'm not that keen on more speakers, and although less cables sounds good it would mean each speaker having its own power source - hence more cables :confused:
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