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[David Kulka]

Since I was the only one here to support disks and what I'd call "packaged media", and everyone else disagreed, I can only conclude that I'm wrong and you all are right!  The public wants what it wants.  Come to think of it, all those disks DO use up an awful lot of space in my living room, and jewel boxes are awful...

[Johnny B]

I picked up and scanned an issue of Business Week this morning, the cover article declares that "Nanotech" is now comming our way as well. According to one researcher at HP, "nanotubes" will lead to very different computers and you'll be able to store the entire Library of Congress on a device about as big as a yo-yo. That's roughly several exabytes or so, and Apple's upcomming OS will look at 16 Exabytes! When MS hits, about a year later with its new OS, it will be about the same, give or take a couple of exabytes.

One other thing that caught my eye in the Nanotech article, it was that carbon can be made to pass signal better than copper! Taken as a whole, this entire Nanotech thing could have some very significant impacts on audio.  

One thing seems very clear, big changes are headed our way.

[Loco]

JamSync wrote on Wed, 06 April 2005 21:17

OTOH, they state that if you filled your iPod with 10,000 songs, you'd spend $9,999. You could have a very long subscription for that. Again, the key word is accessibility, not personal storage, so there's no "loss" if your hard drive goes down. There's a record of your purchases, and you just take a few minutes to suck the stuff into a new device.

With the full bandwidth of standard Firewire (400 mbps) available, it takes a little bit over an hour to fill up my 40 GB iPod. The 20 GB one is about 35-40 minutes and still haven't tested the 60 GB one for a full-refill. Downloading 10,000 songs makes no sense. How the heck did I get to that amount of songs? Well, ever since I got my hands on my first iPod, my CD collection has increased dramatically. Let alone my DVD collection...

Now imagine sending over internet high quality video and audio covering all the bases for audio formats, captions, extras... I wonder if you would want to get your computer that messy, or your grandma's computer. Sure, an iFlix application would help at keeping things organized, but not for streaming the media. You don't want the video to drop right when the stupid cheerleader is about to get stabbed with an electric screwdriver.

[Eric Bridenbaker]

Customer demand for a simple, comprehensive solution to their digital needs should lead industry to ultimately get into the business of selling subscription based information access.

Our current anacronym "ISP", may as well mean "Information Service Provider". Whether that content is a movie, song, recipe, piece of software or DNA sequence is in essence irrelevant.

Equally peripheral is the means of access to this information,  whether a headset, in the car, on the big screen at home or at a friends place. It all comes down to a bunch of chips and a hard drive, identical in function: The same connected playback mechanism, with context of use being the only differentiating factor.

But it will take a great deal of pipeline integration (sattelites, optics), standardization (amalgamation of information catalogs) and market saturation (everyone's got one) before the general obsolescence of portable, removeable data storage items. (The USB2.0/mp3 Player keychains are great).

Even under these future market conditions, there still remains some forseeable use for removeable media even if its strictly for "underground" use (double meaning applies).

This still gives no guarantee to the longevity of HDDVD/Blu Ray formats. However, IMO they'll get as good a run as any format would under todays conditions.

They may turn out to be like the DAT tapes, in the sense that consumers may not see the need, but the pros will eat 'em up....

Just riffin..

Great Thread!!! Thanks KK!!

Cheers,
Eric

[David Schober]

As I mentioned before, I don't think the computer will be the place where data for movies resides.  The idea of a master computer running everything in the home may happen someday, but for now, that concept is a bit down the path.  

The reason is partly ergonomics.  Our home computers aren't setup near the TV.  They are a part of whatever kind of desk we have.  A place to write things down, answer the phone, etc.  At this point the computer is a part of that world.  This is the same reason the TV internet system MS tried never took off.  It's simply not a part of that world.  The computer working as a jukebox works, but that's because you don't have to watch it.  It can be anywhere.  Gone are the days of people sitting between a set of good speakers and listening to music.  Earbuds are about as close as that gets.

I think we'll have a dedicated video box that connects either by cable or DSL, or who knows what to the servers that hold the info.  It's possible that the home computer can be networked to this box, but to what end?  We'll want the controls on a hand held remote so we can sit on the couch...not at the computer.  The role of the computer could be like Netflicks and you order content online.  But the content isn't sent to the computer, it's sent to the box.  The computer isn't doing much of a different thing than it does now.

The advantages of the separate box would be pretty obvious.  Your home computer wouldn't need massive amounts of drive space.  And if your computer crashes, the tv wouldn't.  (god help us if the tv crashed as often as a computer OS)

[Johnny B]

I forgot to mention, the HP guy said that NanoTech/Nanotube would be with us BEFORE the end of the decade, maybe sooner. Products such as the new GM Hummer SUV already have some NanoTech, albeit, not directly related to this thread's topic. But imagine being able to store Exabytes in a device as small as a yo-yo. That's so incredible.



 

[guerillamixer]

i dunno, call me a luddite, but all our speculation about future delivery media has three things in common,

1. A 1st world skewed bias (where most of us live and work  i guess)  The bandwidth required for subscription based services is dependant upon infrastructure roll-out, and generally speaking, only 1st world countries have this capability. Even countries that have the theoretical capability have problems with practical implementation.  


2.Denial that most of the world still hordes physical objects. I think technology and our "minds eye" evolves much quicker than our basic human tendencies.   Physical objects are still more desirable than data; while digital hording is rife, it requires high bandwidth supply and a certain mindset....

3.  Lack of recognition that oil supplies are finite. No petrochemicals means no CDs and no cheap physical distribution. Check  out http://www.odac-info.org for a sobering look at the worlds oil future..


While the first two points weigh against the "discs are dead" argument, point three makes them irrelevant IMHO.

I'd put money on distribution going mostly digital when it is cheaper than physical manufacture and distribution. I think it will be cheaper when oil hits a certain price......If only I knew that price..then I'd know where and when to put my money ...

[Bob Olhsson]

Wired has been promoting this concept since the magazine's founding, hence the magazine's name! I dropped my subscription after the first three years because I got bored with the repetition.

History shows us that people will buy any technology that offers more compelling content. Convenience is a factor if all things are equal but in fact they never really are. A perfect example is the fact that people are buying plenty of hardbound books to enjoy the latest Harry Potter adventure.

Subscription services are a totally unique medium as are disks. Content always needs to be fine-tuned to a particular medium in order to be successful. That fine-tuning generally turns out to be a pretty expensive proposition. This is why "multimedia" and most of the early Internet stocks tanked. There is also the small problem that this is talking about a monopoly over media by a few corporations that's utterly unprecedented. You'll notice many of the active contenders for last ISP standing are Wired advertisers.

[JamSync]

Johnny B wrote on Thu, 07 April 2005 17:17

I picked up and scanned an issue of Business Week this morning, the cover article declares that "Nanotech" is now comming our way as well. According to one researcher at HP, "nanotubes" will lead to very different computers and you'll be able to store the entire Library of Congress on a device about as big as a yo-yo. That's roughly several exabytes or so, and Apple's upcomming OS will look at 16 Exabytes! When MS hits, about a year later with its new OS, it will be about the same, give or take a couple of exabytes. One other thing that caught my eye in the Nanotech article, it was that carbon can be made to pass signal better than copper! Taken as a whole, this entire Nanotech thing could have some very significant impacts on audio.   One thing seems very clear, big changes are headed our way.

I need those things now! Forget exabytes...let's talk yottabytes Very cool idea, though. Thanks for pointing it out.

[JamSync]

Bob Olhsson wrote on Fri, 08 April 2005 04:46

Wired has been promoting this concept since the magazine's founding, hence the magazine's name! I dropped my subscription after the first three years because I got bored with the repetition. History shows us that people will buy any technology that offers more compelling content. Convenience is a factor if all things are equal but in fact they never really are. A perfect example is the fact that people are buying plenty of hardbound books to enjoy the latest Harry Potter adventure. Subscription services are a totally unique medium as are disks. Content always needs to be fine-tuned to a particular medium in order to be successful. That fine-tuning generally turns out to be a pretty expensive proposition. This is why "multimedia" and most of the early Internet stocks tanked. There is also the small problem that this is talking about a monopoly over media by a few corporations that's utterly unprecedented. You'll notice many of the active contenders for last ISP standing are Wired advertisers.

Actually, I saw the article after I went to the Digital Summit given by Leadership Music here. It was quite informative and a bit frightening for those of us who "massage" audio data. One thing the subscription services are aiming at is content that is not available in stores...old catalog, working out agreements for that stuff. Old catalog is one of the primary reasons P2P is so attractive to a certain number of buyers (and obviously attractive for copyright holders as well).

As for books, I just saw a nicely-bound paperback book that is, yep, publishing on demand. There's apparently a way to make these things as one-offs, so they don't look like something from Kinko's, but like a real paperback that you'd buy at Borders. So even older style media is affected by the market push for convenience.

The big idea at the conference was convenience and broadband delivery. The big drawback was lack of interoperability. That is, lack of compatible formats among  manufacturers. Since cell phones dominate our lives, Sprint and Motorola have figured out that if they become licensed distributors of content, they'll have a huge share of the market. They're not even interested in the "PC concept". They believe they can offer something like an iPod phone or something similar and blow away the  
PC/CD/disc/disk concept entirely. As for me, I hate my cell phone, but they did make the point that camera phones introduced a whole lot of people to digital picture taking who did not own a digital camera before. They think the same thing will happen with audio.

[Johnny B]

Hmmm, that's a scary thought, given the phone companies history with audio.  I fear with data compression schemes that sound quality will suffer, and I think more people should be yelling as loud as they can for better sound quality. People should be yelling at their Congressmen, their Senators, and everyone in the industry that we want, no, we "demand," better sound quality.

And the nice thing for the people here on the forum about a continuing demand for better sound quality is that it is generally gonna take a professional to create excellent results, and that means work.

[zboy2854]

dawkab wrote on Thu, 07 April 2005 21:51

i dunno, call me a luddite, but all our speculation about future delivery media has three things in common, 1. A 1st world skewed bias (where most of us live and work  i guess)  The bandwidth required for subscription based services is dependant upon infrastructure roll-out, and generally speaking, only 1st world countries have this capability. Even countries that have the theoretical capability have problems with practical implementation.

With respect to this, and to further the idea that broadband media delivery is absolutely the way of the future, I submit this:

http://www.ambientcorp.com/

Broadband over power lines.  Every electrical outlet in your house becomes a broadband jack for internet, VOIP telephony, TV, etc.  And it solves the "last mile" problem in rolling out broadband to the "hicks in the sticks", or remote areas.  If there are power lines running to the property, you can have broadband.  Nice.

[dpd]

Extremely high-density memory as storge.  It's just a matter of time.  No rotating media!  CD/DVD is just a better version of a tape drive.  Your stereo becomes a motherboard of plug-in 'albums' and a database to run it.

Broadband over power lines?  Kill it, NOW.  The world doesn't need the electromagnetic interference that this will cause.  Give me a piece of single-mode fiber to my house.

[Dot]

Interesting to see that. I wrote a similar article –  on the implications of MPEG-4 –  6 years ago in April '99...

http://www.mindjack.com/danr/mp4.html

[zboy2854]

dpd wrote on Mon, 11 April 2005 21:41

Broadband over power lines?  Kill it, NOW.  The world doesn't need the electromagnetic interference that this will cause.  Give me a piece of single-mode fiber to my house.

What extra EMI will it cause beyond what power lines already have?  It uses existing power lines, and the broadband signal piggybacks with the electricity already flowing through the lines.  So I fail to see how it makes any difference whatsoever with EMI beyond what we currently experience.

And yes, fiber is nice, IF it's been laid and rolled out to your area.  But if you live in a rural or remote area, you're out of luck.