CDIH

<font size="3">Virtual Delivery Seen as Death to Discs
Tue Sep 2,10:05 PM ET</font>

By Jesse Hiestand

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Hollywood will win the war against illegal downloading but the battlefield will be littered with casualties, including the DVD and CD formats as physical means of distributing video and audio, according to a Forrester Research study released Tuesday.



The study predicts that in five years, CDs and DVDs will start to go the way of the vinyl LP as 33% of music sales and 19% of home video revenue shifts to streaming and downloading.


Part of that stems from the continued proliferation of illegal file trading, which has caused an estimated $700 million of lost CD sales since 1999. But it will be due more so to efforts by the studios, cable companies and telcos to finally deliver legitimate alternatives like video-on-demand, Forrester researcher Josh Bernoff said.


"The idea that anyone who has video-on-demand access to any movie they are interested in would get up and go to Blockbuster just doesn't make any sense," Bernoff said. "(The decline) begins with rentals, but eventually I think sales of these pieces of plastic are going to start going away because people will have access to whatever they want right there at their television set."


While consumers with VOD capabilities should grow within five years from 10 million to 35 million, or about a third of all U.S. television households, the association that represents disc makers does not believe that output will slow.


In fact, the Princeton, N.J.-based International Recording Media Assn. estimates that the number of DVDs replicated each year in North America will increase from a current 1.4 billion to 2.6 billion by 2008.


CD replications, though, are forecast by IRMA to fall by 15%-18% in the next five years, about half the rate of decline estimated by Forrester.


"The consensus in the manufacturing business is that there will be a decline, but we don't see as drastic a decline," IRMA president Charles Van Horn said. "We see growth (in video and DVD), and I don't think it will be because there are more pipelines to feed. It will be consumers buying discs."


Analysts also caution that the shift from hard copy to virtual distribution could be more gradual.


"People like walking into the store and seeing the product. It's part of the entertainment," Barrington Research Associates analyst James Goss said. "The studios would be just as happy to sell something in a streamed form or a hard disc form. But once you download it to your computer, you're probably going to burn it onto a CD or DVD, so you'd end up with the same optical storage issues."


The Forrester report lists a number of winners and losers from the expected changes.


Among the beneficiaries are Internet portals (news - web sites) that enable on-demand media services, broadband suppliers such as cable and telcos and the creative community, which would profit from the removal of manufacturing and distribution costs and constraints. AOL Time Warner's decision to sell off its disc manufacturing plants was said to be proof of this trend.


Media conglomerates could be among the losers if they do not have control of emerging means of distribution like VOD, Forrester said. Such retailers as Tower Records and Blockbuster will certainly feel the pain as sales and rentals shrink, though they may be able to sustain business by associating themselves with newer on-demand services. Major retailers including Wal-Mart and Best Buy are expected to survive by shifting CD and DVD floor space to sales of media devices.


The shift could also present several opportunities for companies if they move quickly.


Television companies have about three more years to release shows on DVD. By 2006, it is estimated that negotiations will start to focus on making content available on cable and Internet "basic VOD" tiers.


Movies studios are also urged to press the development of Internet-based alternatives to cable VOD for movies-on-demand.


"On-demand media services have the potential to turn pirate losses into gains even as they break the disc-based shackles that now hold back entertainment," the report concludes.

The thing you have to know about Forrester is that they are seen as extremists.

Everything they predict is revolutionary and how the way we do business will be completely different in five years. They always do this. Look at their reports from '97, and one would expect that paper money would be extinct and everyone's refrigerator would automatically order milk when you were low

Quote:everyone's refrigerator would automatically order milk when you were low

i thought the whole idea of ordering groceries from your fridge was a great idea, i wish it had taken off.

Lazy ass motherfucker.

this will never happen. Streaming media will increase, but it will also come at a price to the consumer, which is never taken easily. What about portable music? Will it stream to my headphones? Maybe one day, but not anytime soon. VOD is a great concept, but it has a long way to go before it takes off.

i want a button to push to pick up my laundry and dry cleaning too, 9 buttons are too many. and i dont want to strain my vocal chords telling them to pick it up either!!!

how is any of that going to stop pirating? wasn't that a goal or something for them?

Quote:this will never happen

This is the opposite extreme. Of course it will happen. Just not as soon as these folks say it will.

Quote:The study predicts that in five years, CDs and DVDs will start to go the way of the vinyl LP as 33% of music sales and 19% of home video revenue shifts to streaming and downloading.

Not as long as they can charge $15-$30 a pop for either a cd or a dvd and continue to make a profit off of it. Companies will not, I repeat, NOT give up profits for anything. Plus it's kind of handy to have a hard copy of a movie or a cd to listen to whenever you want. You can stop it, rewind it, change your mind and start another one. I don't know if you are in the mood to watch say, "Fight Club", start for 15 minutes and decide, "Hmm, I'm in the mood for a comedy", that VOD is going to say, "Oh that's ok, we won't charge you for starting the movie" With a DVD you can do that



Edited By Faceman on 1062907623

This won't happen soon because while people of the internet age like us know about downloading and burning, etc. You'd be amazed how many people still do not own a DVD player, as well as how many who do own a dvd player have no clue how to use it. The same people who never figured out how to set the time on their VCR's. They can barely work a remote where their main function is to play, rewind and stop. Most people fear technology and do not want to move on.

It will eventually happen in maybe 20 years or more when the cycle of life has erased these people but I still doubt it.

Something that blockbuster is doing to make life somewhat easier for people, as well as dealing with the still growing high numbers of theft in the store. They are almost done developing a single play DVD, it's actually gonna be out sometime next year.

The deal is that you rent the dvd, you pay for it like any other rental but you never have to return it, so you don't have to worry about due dates or rental fees. The info in the disc is still sketchy, it's either gonna be a single play disc which may suck cause you can only watch it once, if you miss something you can't track back. Or it will be a 72 hour format where after 72 hours from the first play the disc will erase or lock its contents. I think though the latter one is probably not gonna happen.

But what that does is, help the customer by not having them worry about return dates. Helps the corporation by lowering theft in the stores, also they will be able to downsize employees ofcourse cause dealing with returns takes up a large chunk of the day for employees.

So basically you will be able to go to block buster, get your dvd and never worry about returning it.

lazy fucking blockbuster employees. rewind my balls!!!

Quote:Or it will be a 72 hour format where after 72 hours from the first play the disc will erase or lock its contents. I think though the latter one is probably not gonna happen

why does that scare me?



i dunno if that whole thing will take off. i still know so many people who don't even have cable. they might go nuts if dvd's & vhs tapes go bye bye.

Quote:Or it will be a 72 hour format where after 72 hours from the first play the disc will erase or lock its contents.

How very mission impossiblish of blockbuster

exactly. "this movie will self-destruct in 10, 9, 8, ...."

those morons who rent 48 hour DVDs, the same people who don't know how to work a toaster, will figure out a way to erase it before they watch it.

the "expiration date" DVD was already attempted a few years ago - it was called DIVX and was sponsored by Circuit City - the difference was the DVD would only lock-up, but could be played over and over so long as you dialed up and paid a rental fee to play it - essentially making your very own blockbuster at home. It was a huge failure, but the one good thing that came out of it was the DIVX .avi file format

We as a a people love to pwn things - period. As small and as limited as my DVD collection may be, I take pride in seeing it and like the fact that I can watch each and every one of them at any time with no cost to me other than the initial $20 or whatever it was that I spent on it. I've used the VOD service, and while it's nice I like it mainly because I can rent a movie and watch it any time that day that I feel like it - but if I rent a movie and love it, I'm gonna wanna go out and buy it, not rent it a million times.

If anything, we'll see another format akin to the DVD that uses smaller discs, or maybe puts more interactive features on the DVD's themselves - for example, you rent Lord of the Rings, and after the movie there are online links to an express shopping site where you can order movie posters, T-Shirts, whatever.

People once said that offices will become "paperless" because files, records, etc. could be stored electronically - yet everyone I know that works in an office environment still has to print every goddamn thing on paper AS WELL AS backing their shit up on disc. People like to see what they own, not rent it every time they wanna access it.

it seems very wasteful to make disposable dvds. will there be the option to recycle them if you do bring them back to the store?

i remember seeing an article on this about the disposable dvds. as soon as it touched the air the part that holds the info started to decompose or something, leaving you a few days to watch it.

of course, you could still just rip the stupid thing within the first day of having it

Quote:of course, you could still just rip the stupid thing within the first day of having it

theres a hack for everything.

crx girl Wrote:it seems very wasteful to make disposable dvds. will there be the option to recycle them if you do bring them back to the store?

well the main reason they are doing it is because of the high amount of theft that happens. So instead of not only losing money on the stolen DVD's, but also spending money on security personel and security devices, etc. It's actually gonna be cheaper in the long run.

They can also cut down on employee hours, cause dealing with returns takes up a huge chunk of the day for employees.