DVDs will be obsolete in 10 years: Bill Gates

[flaninacupboard]

If you think about things, the technology used by the dvd format
is already obsolete, as we can already produce devices that can play and record video using smart cards, ie Pocket Pc's
The only real limiting factor to the quality of the video is the storage capacity of the smart cards. Currently the price of a 5gig storage card would be out of this world.

four gigs for $1,399 eight gigs for $5,499. not too shabby...
http://store.digitalfilm.com/index.cfm?category=8

Given how quickly prices have dropped on cards up to 512megs, not long before we'll all be using them for everyday temp files/transfer/silent booting PC's.

[BobK]

> Not to nitpick, but vinyls certainly could be copied.

You might find this hard to believe, but vinyls could not be copied when they were new. Vinyl was around for years before tape recorders were invented. And it was decades before tape recorders were widely available at a price normal peole could afford.

> Almost anything could be copied to a cassette

And it was at least 40 years after vinyl was invented that cassettes came alone. So nothing could be copied to a cassette until after the cassette was invented.

[handyguy]

NEWS: Gates will be obsolete in 10 years.
---president of Ikea

[Nilfennasion]

DVDs could not be copied when they were new, either. The tools to defeat the encryption scheme were years over the horizon, and the only place to store them was on your hard drive until about 18 months ago.

[Rookie64]

DVDs could not be copied when they were new, either. The tools to defeat the encryption scheme were years over the horizon, and the only place to store them was on your hard drive until about 18 months ago.

You could copy/record them to VHS using early model VHS camcorders - they don't have any copy protection.


Older VCRs, (from the 80s's) if still working, could also get past the copy protection.


And some capture cards would get passed the copy protection.

[MOVIEGEEK]

NEWS: Gates will be obsolete in 10 years.
---president of Ikea

I thought the pres. of IKEA said "quality furniture will be obsolete in 10 years".

[Capmaster]

NEWS: Gates will be obsolete in 10 years.
---president of Ikea

I thought the pres. of IKEA said "quality furniture will be obsolete in 10 years".

Yeah, and George Orwell thought that by 1984 everyone would be getting his nutrition from pills and getting around on conveyor belts. :P

Predicting the future is riskier than forecasting the weather

[tekkieman]

NEWS: Gates will be obsolete in 10 years.
---president of Ikea

I thought the pres. of IKEA said "quality furniture will be obsolete in 10 years".

Yeah, and George Orwell thought that by 1984 everyone would be getting his nutrition from pills and getting around on conveyor belts. :P

Predicting the future is riskier than forecasting the weather

As a former weather forecaster for the military, I can agree with that statement!

[flaninacupboard]

DVDs could not be copied when they were new, either. The tools to defeat the encryption scheme were years over the horizon, and the only place to store them was on your hard drive until about 18 months ago.

Pioneer 103 was released in may 2001, the 104 around june 02. DeCSS came out Feb 2000. First 2x DVD-rom came out April 1997.

[kamuixtv]

What Bill thinks is like this: In ten years you have a gigabyte broadband and terrabytes of hardrive(s). You will subsribe to MSN or something similar to download movies, do shit and everything. You can download in an instant you don't need to burn them, errr what about the CD?

Maybe Windows 2014 will not detect your cd/dvd/bluray drive

[Madz]

DVDs could not be copied when they were new, either. The tools to defeat the encryption scheme were years over the horizon, and the only place to store them was on your hard drive until about 18 months ago.

You could copy/record them to VHS using early model VHS camcorders - they don't have any copy protection.


Older VCRs, (from the 80s's) if still working, could also get past the copy protection.


And some capture cards would get passed the copy protection.

Beta recorders have no problem copying DVD's (except maybe the last few early 90's models). Also there are even some late-model VHS decks that aren't affected either (especially some RCA models).

Somewhere back in the thread Laserdisc was mentioned. They could be copied to any video format since they don't have Macrovision (was never built into the format or players).

[DereX888]

10 years is a long time for any device.
Ive said it before on this forum:

10 years ago nobody of you could copy stinky CDDA at home. At best some of you had good tape or cassette deck capable of recording CDs with dolby B or C noise reduction, on a chrome type II (metal type IV was very new and cost $10+ per cassette AFAIR), while most of you used to use cheap taiwanese stereos and type I tapes/cassettes, copying your CDs at quality worsen than stinkiest MP3s nowaday.

10 years ago most of stereo Hi-Fi, first *Home Theater* series 6-head VCRs used to cost about $500, and most of you used to use stinky monaural 2-head VCRs. New at that time Dolby Pro-Logic amplifiers used to cost small fortune, and any 36'' TVs were showcased in a 'large screen TVs' sections.

10 years ago Laser Disc was the top quality media you could get your movies on.

Today none of it (or almost none of it) exists.


So, unusally, but I must agree with Billy Gatsey. In 10 years DVDs - as we know them now - most likely will be gone the route of VCRs, LDs, cassettes etc. Lets just hope that Windows OS will be gone with it as well by that time.

[Nilfennasion]

In ten years, anything can become obsolete, but whether that means it will fade out of existence is another matter. More than likely, DVD-Video will last about twenty years-plus and be obsolete for half of that time. Which is a better run than VHS, which is facing extinction after less than 20 years, and was obsolete right from the get-go.

[daredevil]

Bill gates is obsolete since 1981 :P , so don't worry about what he is saying about technologies, trust him only when he speaks about business

[SatStorm]

Any entertainment technology, holds about a Generation (30 years). That is what the psychologists say.

Now, something to think about: For the common person (worldwide, and without counting the consumer countries for which the new technologies are some kind of fashion ...), DVDs are simply big CDs.
They looks the same, you put them the same way on those same look like machines that plays them, you store and clean them the say way, even the burners that later appeared look the same.
And we already know that HD DVD, blue Ray, etc, gonna be about the same in appearance with CDs and DVDs today. So for those same people those devils gonna be nothing more than even bigger CDs. And so on, untill this generation of consumers stop buying or following or need to keep up with the new stuff...

When this gonna happen and the technology fully change?
If we say that CDs start selling wild after 1989, then I guess something that looks like CDs gonna exist up to 2024 at least.
The closest thing to compare on video terms, are the VCRs, and we see that those machines are expected to sell and used far beyond 2010. If we think now that VHS appeared in 1979, the "one generation" rule (about 30 years) still prooves that it is correct

We don't know what the next media gonna be. But it has to be something that holds in time and RAM / HD solutions don't hold as long as a good quality Vinyl Disc, CD disc or a T.Y. DVD-R disc....

[flaninacupboard]

yeah, most people i speak to don't even know a DVD has more capacity than a CD, they think it's a CD with video on it. i don't think HD-DVD or bluray or whichever format is going to be succesful, too soon for most people. plus the push has been so hard that "CD is perfect digital sound" and DVD is "perfect digital picture" your average consumer won't understand "perfect digital picture, BUT EVEN BETTER!" same with DVD-A and SACD, no one seems to care, and hardly any atists are releasing stuff.


When 20gb flash cards with HD movies on them come out, we'll perhaps see a shift.

[Nilfennasion]

I see the jump to HD as being like the jump to colour. So far, it has been very slow, with only a handful of early adopters taking a serious plunge. But the quality it offers has it all over SD. I've sat and watched demos of HDTV in which thirty minutes of cliffs, buildings, or vehicles have been shown, and the number of interlacing artefacts I noticed could be counted on one hand. When people see the difference that an extra 500 pixels makes, they're going to want to see more of it. The only thing that will stop them is the cost, and like the cost of colour, it won't hold people back for long.

HD DVD will be a bit harder to sell. But the same principle applies. Once the quality difference is appreciated and explained, there won't be any holdbacks.

[flaninacupboard]

HD DVD will be a bit harder to sell. But the same principle applies. Once the quality difference is appreciated and explained, there won't be any holdbacks.

But the indsutry spent MILLIONS telling people DVD's were perfect, and the best you can get. how do you overcome that programming?

You think normal people know what an interlace artifact is??

It's also not such an issue for us PAL users, going from 576p to 720p is only a 25% increase not 50% for NTSC, unless we'll get 864p ?
In a world where people don't understand anamorphic video, will they really shell out thousands for a 25% increase in resolution?

[Nilfennasion]

1) The only people who hyped up DVD as being "perfect" were those who didn't know any better. The more sensible ones simply stated that it was as good as current consumer technology could support (true), and that it would be a long time before something better came along (also true). The assumption that DVD = perfect pictures was started by people who have no understanding of how MPEG-2 compression works. I've never encountered an ad from Warner Bros., Columbia-Tristar, or Fox that uses the word "perfect" in connection with DVD-Video.

2) Explaining what an interlacing artefact is takes all of ten seconds. Just show them a spot where it is particularly bad (any panning shot in the Region 4 version of The Thing will do), and explain how it comes about. The rest is a simple affair.

3) 720p is more than just a 25% increase when you consider that it takes far less picture-processing to convert a 4000p film into 720p. All you need is to downconvert it. No interlacing means even more resolution, simply because things like edge enhancement and anti-aliasing no longer need to be done. The natural result of this is a clearer, smoother picture. I estimate that the final difference between 576i and 720p would be more like 50% once you really take all that into account.

In the beginning of HDTV, it was thought that HDTV would be a fixed standard all over the world. Every country would have it in 1080i or 720p (that was yet to be sorted out at the time), at a certain framerate (again, they're still fussing over that one), with a certain way of handling colour. I think a lot has changed since then, but the results of all this arguing won't be known until HDTV is more widespread, really.

[SatStorm]

HDTV one global standard?
This is a joke, unfortunatelly...

In Europe we skip mpeg 2 for HDTV transmissions and we move on direct to mpeg 4! The French gonna lead the way and unfortunatelly, this time, the Germans gonna follow at the same direction....

[miksu]

I think this same guy said about seven-eight years ago something like there's no need for Internet and it's never going to be thing everyone wants and uses

[Nilfennasion]

Well, standards being conceived with the best of intentions, I think the use of a global system would eliminate a lot of transnational hassles.

[flaninacupboard]

1) The only people who hyped up DVD as being "perfect" were those who didn't know any better. The more sensible ones simply stated that it was as good as current consumer technology could support (true), and that it would be a long time before something better came along (also true). The assumption that DVD = perfect pictures was started by people who have no understanding of how MPEG-2 compression works. I've never encountered an ad from Warner Bros., Columbia-Tristar, or Fox that uses the word "perfect" in connection with DVD-Video.

There wer e afew ads to this effect over here. if i run across one i'll post a transcript.

2) Explaining what an interlacing artefact is takes all of ten seconds. Just show them a spot where it is particularly bad (any panning shot in the Region 4 version of The Thing will do), and explain how it comes about. The rest is a simple affair.

Explaining it is one thing. someone actually SEEING it and then CARING are something else. most people can't see macroblocks, remember, even after you tell them about them. Digital cable used to look good to me until i started working with mpeg.

3) 720p is more than just a 25% increase when you consider that it takes far less picture-processing to convert a 4000p film into 720p. All you need is to downconvert it. No interlacing means even more resolution, simply because things like edge enhancement and anti-aliasing no longer need to be done. The natural result of this is a clearer, smoother picture. I estimate that the final difference between 576i and 720p would be more like 50% once you really take all that into account.

but what about 576p versus 720p? again, it's a perceptual difference. given i watch tv half the time without glasses, 720p or 576p, it rapidly becomes 200b (that's blurry :P ) Even if you can persuade me it's half as good again, i'm not going to spend thousands on a new TV for it when i'm happy with the quality of my dvd's, and my lasers.

[Nilfennasion]

There were? I'd call that irresponsible advertising, then. IA happens to be one of my pet hates. [yes]

Whether people care or not is irrelevant. Those that care should not put up with something if they don't have to. I was comparing progressive to colour for a good reason. Were it to be introduced to television, it would be the biggest revolution since colour. It would be a far greater revolution than 1080I or indeed any form of digital TV, in fact.

Even that won't hide the difference. I'm not kidding. Going progressive will improve all forms of home video to such an extent than even a blind retard would be able to see what a boon it is.

There is also the factor that it will make the work of the guys carrying out the transfers a hell of a lot simpler. Which means faster turnaround times on video releases.

[DereX888]

Not to be nitpicking, but I remember Philips ads regarding VCD or CD-i discs, ca. 1994, where either both "sound and picture" (or one of them)were described as of "perfect" or "near pearfect" digital quality
I may still have it somewhere on old discs...

[DTSL06]

"Gates' vision of television of the future was: "TV that will simply show what we want to see, when we want to see it. When we get home, the home computer will know who we are from our voice or our face. It will know what we want to watch, our favourite programmes, or what the kids shouldn't be allowed to see."


MY GOD...All I need in the future is to come home and be automaticly faced with a Windows Blue Screen of Death the minute the computer comes on my holo deck....

[ViRaL1]

From a consumer standpoint, I blame part of the slow HD adoption on retailers who offer HDTVs or HD ready TVs and don't bother to pipe in an appropriate HD signal or don't bother setting them up to look good. Why would anyone want to spend $700+ on a 30in TV when the picture quality looks horrible? Sure, a salesman can explain that HD will look better, and I personally know the difference from seeing it places where they DID bother with a good signal, but your average consumer probably doesn't.

[spiderman2k1]

Bill is little wacky VHS will still be around in ten years and DVD format is going to die to LOL. Im not saying there not going to be a HDDVD or some thing better. But people are not going to run out a buy new machine's everyfive to ten year's.

[ViRaL1]

Surprised no one has mentioned D-VHS. HD quality, shows a bit of promise, still expensive though.

[handyguy]

Naw, HDvcrs are reasonable now since no one seemed to buy them.

"From a consumer standpoint, I blame part of the slow HD adoption on retailers who offer HDTVs or HD ready TVs and don't bother to pipe in an appropriate HD signal or don't bother setting them up to look good."

True, then they get them & then they find out their cable company doesn't offer hdtv yet--mine sure doesn't.