The Disc is Dead

If you’ve kept up with high definition television in the least, you’ve probably heard about Blue Ray and HD-DVD. These new formats are the “replacement” for your standard DVD player. While both of these options offer great picture and so on, I think it’s too little, too late for the format. Here’s why . . .

I mentioned in an earlier post that TiVo has downloadable movies through Amazon. I use this feature alot. It’s simple to use, and gives instant (almost) gratification. I find a movie, I enter my pin for payment (from my Credit Card already authorized) and within the hour I have something to watch. I don’t have it in high definition, but that’s ok for now. It still looks as good as a DVD and is formatted for my widescreen TV so it looks just great. I say that to say, I can see the jump to hi-definition for downloads working just as well. I have 2 HD tvs, and all I’ve used them for is DVD (480p) signals. Once HD is in place (2009 hopefully), I can possibly upgrade to an HD TiVo and continue. No discs. No problem. And, I can buy the videos if I’d like and keep them on the player or download whenever I want after purchase. The one drawback is that I cannot take the movies with me on my laptop or burn them to DVD. I don’t mind this, but if they could figure that out . . . that’s just icing on the cake.

The second reason I don’t see the new DVD formats working is that they can’t get on the same page. The movies to watch are split down the middle (HD-DVD has some, Blueray has some, but not both). And studios won’t commit to sell to both camps. That fuels my download option even more.

To sum up, it is my opinion that the growing amount of portable electronics for video on-the-go is growing at such a rate that disc media just isn’t going to be a viable option for movies. And, hard drives are cheaper by the day.