DVDs will be obsolete in 10 years: Bill Gates

[ViRaL1]

Maybe it's time for a dish.

[rumplestiltskin]

-snip- DVD is still over the heads of the average person -snip-

Consider all the "12 o'clock flashers" you see, eh?

[Nilfennasion]

The reason nobody has mentioned D-VHS is because it is tape-based and therefore will degrade with repeated plays. It is therefore an unsellable format. The only advantage it has over HD-DVD is that it is currently available and not vapourware. When the HD-DVD camp finally settles on a system, D-VHS will die.

[Madz]

I assume you meant HD-VHS? I found mentions of this new variant for HDTV ATSC recording on Google. If I'm not mistaken, the current D-VHS only records standard NTSC?

[rixware]

I've always thought that Bill's vision of the future is cloudy at best. Some people are visionaries, others are primarily visionless. Bill is NOT a visionary.

And his vision of TV in the future shows a pretty fundamental lack of understanding about people and how they interact with technology. Not only will our houses not be like what Bill describes (knowing us by our voices, showing us just the programs we want to watch) but we probably (most of us) would never want it that way. My house doesn't need a CPU to turn its lights off and on. I don't even have interest in TiVo, or cable.

What Bill is describing, I think, is HIS ideal future. He would like DVD to be obsolete partly because it's a technology in which Microsoft has nothing to gain financially, and partly because it's pretty kludgy -- what with all it's moving parts and lasers and standards wars and crude interface (my guess is that Bill can't figure out his remote control either).

Bill, in making these loony pronouncements, committed a cardinal sin: He did not look to the past to predict the future. He did not consider the people who use the technology. He did not separate his own desires from those of people who are not like him.

Technology will surely change in 10 years, but human nature will not:

- My dad, who is 67 and can't figure out how to get his channels back after a power outage, will be 77 and still unable to figure it out. Maybe by then he'll have a TV that doesn't have this problem, but only if he has to. If his TV continues to work, I can guarantee that he won't upgrade.

- My nephew, who is 10 and couldn't care less about TV (he digs video games way more), will be 20 and still probably care little about TV. What "Gilligan's Island" is to me, SuperMario will be to him. I can imagine that his dorm room won't even have a TV, but he'll have a handheld game box of some sort in his backpack.

- My wife, who is 37 and has just figured out how to skip commercials while watching "The Practice" on tape, will be 47 and just figuring out how to get the director's commentary to come up on a DVD.

- I, who am 40 and tracking technology for a living, will be 50 and an early adopter of Bill's imagined DVD replacement format, while still making DVDs, CDs, and VHS tapes for my customers -- who are NOT early adopters.

Bill doesn't live in our world. A month ago I made some copies of an audio microcassette for a law firm. But I had to talk them into getting it on CD! If they'd had their choice, it would have been onto another microcassette because they don't have a CD player in the office -- only the old dictation machines from the 60s!

Sorry, Billy. Like it or not, DVDs will still be going strong 10 years from now. There will be other formats out there, to be sure, but the tried and true don't die easily. Even vinyl -- a very unfortunate technology -- took nearly a decade to die off after CDs caught on.

But this is not to say it's impossible to predict the future. You just have to be a little more sensible about it. Take a quick look at the past first: 10 years ago, DVDs were still just a concept on somebody's drawing board. Hard drives were 1/1000th their current capacity. Win95 was still called Chicago and spoken about in hushed tones. Satellite TV was on no one's radar. Cable had 60 channels. TiVo wasn't even a glimmer. The Palm fad was still 6 years away. Digital audio and writable CDs were for pop stars only. MP3? MPEG2? MiniDV? CD-R?

So for ten years from now, here are some pretty safe predictions:

1. Windows as we know it will have ceased to exist.
a. There will be at least five versions of successors in the next 10 years, probably including something wildly successful from an MS competitor.
b. Some people in 2014 will still be running Win98SE.
c. Some people in 2014 will still be running MS-DOS.
c. Some people will (GASP) still not have computers.

2. Television as we know it now will have ceased to exist.
a. Analog broadcasts will have mostly ended (if Congress has their way).
b. If there are any analog broadcasts, some people will still have only rabbit ears to pick them up.
c. Some people will not own a digital TV.
d. Many people, without broadcast TV to watch, will watch only DVDs and VHS tapes on the gear they owned back in 2004.

3. There will be lots of new technologies, but:
a. Most will be involved in some sort of standards war.
b. Most won't catch on.
c. Most won't provide any real benefits over what they purport to replace.

4. Bill Gates will be 10 years older.
a. He'll probably still be rich.
b. He will have changed his tune on the DVD format.
c. He'll have made several other outrageous predictions which will have not come true.
d. His kids will surprise him because they never took to the gear the same way he did.

5. We will still not have robot butlers. Or video phones. (Not because technology doesn't make it possible, but because these are things people don't really want.)

What Bill does not understand is that advances in technology always come up against human nature. Sometimes they slip through, but mostly they bounce off. And once they slip through, they stay for a long time.

A. Very. Long. Time.

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[Nilfennasion]

Part of this statement implies that DVD-Video had to fight against human nature in order to succeed. This is not the case. Human nature is such that any consumer who has rented a tape from the local outlet that is more than six months old will be wondering why, with all the advances in technology, we still don't have a new video format. DVD answered that for them. It gave them pictures that were pleasant to look at from the get-go and stayed that way regardless of whether the disc was played once or a thousand times. It was inevitable that it would kill VHS dead once recordables were standardised.

The rest, however, is pretty much on the money. Billy Gates does not live in the real world. He has a literal army of programmers at his beck and call who dare not upset him, lest they lose their jobs. The fact that he no longer has a viable mainstream competitor also means that he can do whatever he likes without consequence. What makes today different to 1998 is that the seeds have been sown to change that. All it would take is for a group of Linux programmers to create an alternative that runs everything Windows can, or can run something better. Microsoft would wind up standing in the same space as Commodore, Apple, IBM, and a million other manufacturers who thought they could tell customers what they can do with the stuff they've paid for.

For its fundamental purpose, DVD-Video is actually fairly well-programmed. While it is inevitable that there will be compatibility or performance problems from a format that has to synchronise multiple audio and subtitle streams with a large video stream, a total contrast to Microsoft has been set by most player manufacturers. When an issue is discovered, every effort is made to trace the problem to its source and resolve it. The early Pioneer players used to suffer from horrible audio sync problems, for example.

Where DVD gets kludgy is all that stuff that doesn't need to be there. Seamless branching, multiple angles, or preference-based censorship are things that a video format that only allocates 10 Mb/s to the total content just cannot handle. DVD-ROM has turned into an unmitigated joke because the system used to deliver such content as an extra to DVD-Video is an unmitigated joke (called PCUnfriendly for a good reason). But as I said, all that stuff is optional.

I also said earlier that the idea of a video standard that multiple companies actually sat down and came to an agreement about is anathema to Microsoft. Microsoft's whole attitude to any format has been "we talk, you listen". While the DVD Consortium is also like this to some degree, they are also bright enough to make sure that at a basic level, the standard they lay out actually works. Can you imagine how many players would have trouble playing back content if Microsoft had developed the standard?

If compact discs were coming out for the first time today, Microsoft would be asking Sony why they aren't programming the standard so that only Sony players can play it. The answer to that question was pretty obvious to Sony in 1983 or so, but it seems that Bill just doesn't understand the answer, or doesn't want to hear it.

Having given one Linux variant a try in the last few months, I can predict with confidence that Bill and Microsoft are either going to get an attitude adjustment or slowly fade into oblivion like some of their competitors from the 1980s.

[Marvingj]

When DVD goes away in 10 Years, will go back to Reel to Reel Taping.

[rixware]

Part of this statement implies that DVD-Video had to fight against human nature in order to succeed.

I didn't intend to imply this. In fact, I think DVD has succeeded because it hits human nature just about perfectly. For one thing, even when it was new, it felt familiar -- a CD for video (that's how most of my customers still seem to think of it). For another, it solved a couple of problems: much higher quality picture, more features, and rewinding was no longer necessary. The comfort level of this format is one of the reasons I think it will be around for a very long time.

Can you imagine how many players would have trouble playing back content if Microsoft had developed the standard?

Funny thought! Yes, I can imagine. In fact, I imagine that the scripting language and internet connections MS built into all the players would have yielded DVD viruses by now. And we'd all be very tired of seeing "Buffering..." on our TVs!

+

[Nilfennasion]

The comfort level of this format is one of the reasons I think it will be around for a very long time.

Indeed. It gives so much for so little, and aside from legacy technology issues, will be very hard to improve upon.

I can just see the Microsoft-propietary version now... "the DVD player you are trying to play this software on has too little RAM..."

[mikesbytes]

Technology improvements alone are not a driver to replace a format. Quad vinyl didn't replace stereo vinyl.

One must remember why DVD was invented. The cost of manufacturing a pre recorded VHS tape was something like US$4 a copy. A pressed DVD was less than $1. Therefor they could make a fortune on the video rentals. However, the needed to produce a better product to make us drop VHS. Hence DVD.

I'm guessing that the HD versions we may see soon, may be an attempt to prevent copying....

[holistic]

.........I'm guessing that the HD versions we may see soon, may be an attempt to prevent copying....

GOLD STAR - good observation.
If i can watch it, I can copy it. The game will continue.

I agree with Billy (and big business) but for different reasons. They (the suppliers of the content) wish it protected, and the best way for them is with solid state media such as the SD cards. It could work, and technically should work because the media has a built in security check. Media capacities will be sufficient 10 years from now to store 32+ Gb (as suggested by www.sdcard.com)

Of course the Copyright Protection can and will be broken (as all things are), but is there a need if the big business criminals come to the party and say "if it breaks, is unreadable ....and so on - FREE Exchange"

I for one like the idea : No moving parts, Small storage needs.

The only issue I can forsee with this is the corporate greed factor of not allowing people to exchange media between devices.
It has already begun with MP3 players so be warned.

][

[Nilfennasion]

The only people who make fortunes on video rentals are the rentailers. That is why Warners tried to segregate the market with a two-tiered pricing system and then eventually decided to just stop giving the rentailers windows. Now, if the studios were willing to work together and start their own rental outlet chain...

The problem with SD cards is that players need to offer some reasonable level of backwards compatibility. HD-DVD players absolutely must be able to play back SD-DVD, just like the PS2 can do PS1 games all in the one unit. On the other hand, if manufacturers were willing to buy back old discs for part-exchange on the new SD cards...

[mikesbytes]

What I was pointing out was that changes in format arn't driven just by technicalogical change, they are also driven by strategic marketing and sometimes the consumer.

Gates has a tendancy to say, because theres a better way to do something, the current way is doomed. History is littered with better ways to do things that didn't replace the previous.

At the moment we are headed towards having one physical shape (aka the cd) replacing most others, with vhs, vinyl, 3.5 floopies, audio cassettes, leaving only MiniDV and flash (in its varous formats). With higher storage capacity around the corner, perhaps the CD will only be challenged by having no external media at all. I rather feel that my aging VCR's will be replaced by hard drives and a network, in around 2 years when they fail to proceed.

[vitualis]

I personally don't think that something like SD will replace pre-recorded content simply because it is TOO small.

I don't know about you, but SD is a little bit TOO fiddly and easy to loose ... imagine dropping an SD card inside your car while driving!

Regards.

[tag]

I personally don't think that something like SD will replace pre-recorded content simply because it is TOO small.

I agree. Don't know about anyone else but around my house, a lot of this kind of stuff gets lost unless it's slightly larger than your average size bull moose. Great example would be the two CF cards that have been missing for about a year and a half.

[SatStorm]

Another reason DVD succeed, is because DVD Video IS the best solution for our TVs.
It is the only video format the consumer has and offers the 100% of the PAL / SECAM and NTSC system. I mean, the NTSC users for the very first time saw what NTSC is capable to do for real (something only few could see, in studio enviroment). And for the PAL / SECAM users, it was an opportunity to see for real any benefit of those 96 extra lines they had (compared NTSC). PAL / SECAM users awlays had to suffer realtime convertions. But thanks to DVD, the average PAL/ SECAM costumer could see video without realtime convertions.
No more realtime NTSC to PAL convertions, neither PAL to SECAM or NTSC to SECAM nightmares....

In a way, DVD (and DVB) is the best video quality we ever had and ever saw outside studios and technology exibitions. So the real problem is that the big ones have to determine standards beyond the analgue broadcasts to move the market. I can understand the NTSC to HDTV: There is a difference indeed. But PAL to HDTV? It is quastionalbe...
IMO, HDTV compared a good PAL DVB transmissions today, is not so much impressive. I mean, 1080i compared to full PAL, looks like PAL VHS vs PAL SVHS in a good 29" 4:3 Sony TV. There is a difference, but to really feel it, you need big TV Screens.
And here is the problem with HDTV vs full PAL/SECAM: To see a difference you need big screens. But to use big screens, you need big rooms. And the nature of the houses in Europe is that the rooms are really small compared the average North American homes, the ones that the big ones have in mind when they design technology. When the average family (parents and 2 kids) in south Europe live in a 3 1/2 room houses (about 85 square meters), and a typical room is about 25 square meters, you can't watch TV on screens larger than a 4:3 36" screens. Even if you say that you can use flat screens nailed on the wall, I don't believe that screens more than 16:9 45" could be used without problems... You can't watch TV on so big screens and so small rooms. If you have the space yes, but who has the space that is needed for this, in the Europeans houses? Only some few lucky ones. I wouldn't said rich ones, because those who leaves at the country side have the needed space. We, the city boys have the problem....
Just imagine: More than half TVs in Europe, are still 21" ... And still sell like cookies... Now, how HDTV would look on a 21" screen?

[MOVIEGEEK]

If they released a CF/SD card the size of a 3.5" floppy it could be large enough to hold 10GB and difficult to lose.The players could have a CF/SD slot and a DVD/CD tray for backward compatibility.
Imagine recording photos,audio and video on one card,listen to it in your car on the way to work then take home to watch a movie or slideshow.
Wishful thinking though if you look at the 6+ CF cards there are now there's no way the manufacturers can agree to any standard.

[mikesbytes]

There already are 12Gb Compact Flash in existance. I wonder if they have minature hard drives in them?

Cost ways, they wont come near competing with two blank DVD DL disks.

[ViRaL1]

$10k for 12GB of storage seems a bit steep compared to other non-flash technologies. But this also illustrates that although there are re-writeable formats such as DVD+/-RW and DVD-RAM, DVD for the most part is still considered as a WORM media vs RAM. Any DVD burner released within the past couple of years at least rewrites some format of DVD media, but the time involved as well as the disposability of the media keeps it in an entirely separate class. Production costs will likely never compare with solid-state to the point where there's any REAL competition between the two families. By the time flash has respectable quality at reasonable prices, the digital video formats we expect, will more than likely be too large to be stored on them, at least if you want DVD (and in the future HD-DVD) quality. 1gb cards have gotten somewhat reasonable by now, but for practical purposes, it's as good as having a 2-3 song MP3 player. Who wants to spend the time re-ripping or reloading images right now? I think in the foreseeable future, smaller hard drives will be the closest thing to a cost-effective reasonable replacement.

[jolo]

What I think is more likely to occr , and I am hoping.
Is that Bill Gates will be obsolute in less than 5 years.
If we can get a new administration which dumps the idiotic Attorney General who is obsessed with Janet Jackson and women's hospital records and get one that is actually focused on corporate crime and will prosecute those corporations that steal from every one of us and opens up the free enterprise system and a competitive market place, goes after companies the efade taxes by offshoring, ignores HB-1B regulations.

Then the illegal and nasty way Bill and is Corporate band of merry thieves will become obsolete.

Jon[/quote]

[Sam Ontario]

I guess BG meant in ten years time no more new movies will be released in the form of DVD. Anything like a 10GB or 50 GB flash memory card can hold one or more movies that can replace DVD. People can download a movie to a 10GB movie from a store, a supermarket or from many Websites etc. With this downloaded movie you can watch with any portable TV, in a car, a pocket TV from your school bag, anywhere.

I would say it is possible!

[jolo]

Bill Gates will never say anything that is not in the interest of Microsoft. So ... he must be counting on people download all products from his XBOX or some other technology the Microsoft R&D is investing in.

For example, Bill has said the same type of thing several years ago. What Microsoft was planning to get rid of Media and that everyone will be renting MSOffice from the Internet and that all of software would be on a "lease" or "rental" basic that of course they would own and control.

Always watch the devil and his words, they will be an attempt to push some momentem for self-interest.

Jon

[Sam Ontario]

IMO, to be fair (I don't have an MS share), he is a business man accountable for Microsoft's investments, shares, share holders etc. Of course, all his statements are for MS. Unless proved guilty of his manipulations or any other illegal activities, he is just like any other business men doing business under the provisions of the present laws, just my 2 cents.

[tag]

....he is just like any other business men doing business under the provisions of the present laws.....

OR otherwise! :P

[jolo]

Sam,

I enjoyed your reply, but I believe that you made Gates sound like a mafia leader.

First you would hope people of the human race have a conscience to guide their behaviors as well as ethics, values and morals to guide them. Doing whatever you can and paying off whoever you can so you are not caught and especially charged with illegal activity is Al Capone, John Gotti type of ethics. The ultra-rich, as you can see from the trials of the corporate criminals who have stolen from taxpayers in the billions like Tyco, Enron, Quest, Adelphia, Worldcom, Arthur Anderson, Halliburton and so, so, so many others either get off or get a small slap on the wrist.
Did you know that two weeks ago, Halliburton purchased an insurance policy for V.P. Cheney so that when he leaves office and is arrested for his activity as CEO and currently, any fines assesed against him for his crime will be paid for by the insurance company !!

Microsoft's legal fees for being taken to court in most states, other countries and the feds, competitors, almost always end in multi-million or billion dollar settlements. They are guilty every time, but use their resources to pay off their crimes.

Of course Bill, to make sure that his profits and humungous value of his stocks took full responsibility to get the income back he has had to pay all over the world for litigation, fines and payoffs by offshoring American workers as much as he can as well as a major drop of benefits for his loyal employees. What a guy. Why doesn't he sell some of his stock to pay this illegal actions off instead of brutalizing the people who work their butt off for him.

Larry Ellison won contracts in several states, California most notably, where he got caught. By bribing the sate legislature as well as lying about what Oracle will do for the state. He was caught in California, I believe that they dumped Oracle. A large number of IT people were fired due to the erroneous claims that Ellison made about Oracle, the taxpayers of California were shafted, yet .........I haven't seen Ellison or the California state legislators on COPS, have you ?

Gates's illegalities has lead to more companies being bought out or being forced out of business. It has limited work for thousands and thousands as well as reduced the tax base by billions.

With no or little competition their is no free enterprise system. Look what has happened to the U.S. media, airlines, phone companies, cable companies, operating system companies, successful software companies and last week Microsoft announed they they are now at war with Sony and will get total control of the gaming market. Great.

Gates is a bully and a sociopath without the ability to have a conscience or empathy for other humans. It is a game and he cannot conceive or feel for all of the people whose financial lives are destroyed as well as their hopes and dreams. Just look what he is doing to his own employees currently.

Here is the quote from the creators of the last American multi-national company who values people first and was driven by ethics, morals and values.

Read Gates letter!

Read Gates payoffs

Read More Gates family values

Jon Temple

"Please Lord, bring back Hewlett and Packard whose number value was to value their employees and created incredible employee loyalty and incredible engineering equipment with ethics, values and morals. "

[jolo]

rixware,

I just wanted to tell you that I find your posts and predictions very thoughtful and interesting.

I would just like to comment that I will not pay to download the crappy formatted music that Microsoft is dominating. I will if they are in Ogg Vorbis, APE, MP3 or MP3plus.

The best way to help each other and keep creativity and freedom in the market place is NOT to use Microsoft products when possible.

My video backups and home videos are in Divx format mostly, I do not ever use Microsoft Media Player. I will never have a media file in my home that starts with a W.

I do use Office 2000, but my company purchased it for my years ago. I will not upgrade, UNLESS .... anyone can tell me about a viable alternative to Office. I looked at the Sun product, then they went and offshored their support and tech staff and made some kind of agreement with Microsoft on their software development. Too bad, another competitor that could not afford to compete. This of course means, less jobs, less creativity, less products, smalaler market place, more money for Gates.


Jon

[Nilfennasion]

Microsoft is like a web. Once you have their stuff installed on your computer, it is very hard to break free. I've tried some of the competition, ie Linux distributions, but there is an inescapable level of lost productivity and migration time involved. Not to mention the fact that there is no garantee that everything you try to do on Windoze will be easy to do on Xandros or the like.

Microsoft's rental-use strategy is only a matter of time if they are allowed to continue their forced-upgrade policy. The fact is that there is so much that could be done about them. Simply fining them a mil every time a consumer complains that Microsoft tried to force them to buy something they don't want could make a big difference. With the number of complaints some people I know would send, they'd be up for billions in no time.

[jolo]

Nilfennasion,

Very well said and a cool avatar !!


First I want to thank all of thoise participating in this thoughtful string. There are more important things than frame rates, quality differences of video that you can only see under a microscope, etc.

I just saw a show on Bravo, the Actors Studio and the interviewee was asked about what word she hates the most and her answer was "apathy". That is my feeling as well.

I do not understand so many users just falling over and using Microsoft codecs that are "free". I don't understand the apathy of thinking past the marketing job and how Microsoft is starting to control that market and of course all of the legal downloads of music that are in that poor 128 quality and not screaming for choices. For every one that uses those Microsoft codecs, it destroys the dream of open code, it is an additional step to monoply of all technology, it is a step backward for innovation, creativity, jobs for IT folks, etc. They complain, then keep going.

Especially right now, when no matter what Microsoft's marketing and those who are influenced by it say, there are absolutely superior options. So tell those people at Apple, etc that you will won't download until there is a choice and another format is used.

Don't go purchasing DVD players, audio players especially that use that garbage. Let the vendors know that you want to use Ogg Vorbis (a personal favorite), MP3 (the improvments in Lame have kept that sucker going), MPEplus (very good product).
Ogg is free and open code, but if there are small fees, like in Divx, BIG deal. So people can get paid for their work. But their is pressure on all of those to keep improving their products and allowing others to improve theirs.

Give in to Microsoft, screws you in the long wrong and allows technology to get totally politicized.

Don't buy their Xgame or whatever the name is. I know Microsoft stopped production of it for a while when some people started to figure it out and allow for enhancements like better video output. Then Microsoft made a change in the firmware and started distributing again.

Don't get their overpriced keyboards and other crap they are pushing.

I do not think they will ever figure out the huge security gaps in Explorer especially win Windoz.

I am looking forward to see what China is going to come up with when theu said no to Gates and refused to use Office.

By the way, Apple I am afraid to see is as bad and probably worse than Microsoft. Just not as big. Steve Jobs made over 400 million dollars last year and was picket by Bloomberg.com as the CEO whose salary increase was in opposite relation to his performance as CEO by just looking at the numbers. Remember Apple is a totally closed operating system and when they allowed Apple clones, they closed the clonemakers down when Apple saw that the clonemaker could make a PC with a Apple OS for a lot less money and was a superior product. They want to keep it all, consulting, hardware and software. Besides they stole the OS from Xerox.

My dream would be an association of IT professionals, who instead of getting screwed by Corporations and the U.S. government, would get together and make our own line of hardware and software and then sell the software for way less than Microsoft does. Hardware and software open, non-proprietary and sold to other IT Professionals at cost. We could change the market is their was some unity. This is not to destroy, but to build and encourage and use our knowledge instead of being at the mercy of the the multi-nationals and governments.

Jon

[thecoalman]

I'll have to agree with Bill, maybe not the time frame. At some point in time all audio, video communication etc is gioing to be consolidated. It nearly is now, the only thing holdong it back is lack of broadband in many homes and lack of a system that can handle it. At some point in time having a computer for your house is going to be like having a furnace to heat it and/or mutiple computers all nicley tucked away where we can't see them.

With the particular exception that CDs offered better quality than vinyl and compactcassettes...

FYI CD audio is no comparison to vinyl. That's like comparing an original CD track to a MP3. Now DVD audio on the other hand......

[lordsmurf]

What I think is more likely to occr , and I am hoping.
Is that Bill Gates will be obsolute in less than 5 years.
If we can get a new administration which dumps the idiotic Attorney General who is obsessed with Janet Jackson and women's hospital records and get one that is actually focused on corporate crime and will prosecute those corporations that steal from every one of us and opens up the free enterprise system and a competitive market place, goes after companies the efade taxes by offshoring, ignores HB-1B regulations.

Then the illegal and nasty way Bill and is Corporate band of merry thieves will become obsolete.

Jon

"Please Lord, bring back Hewlett and Packard whose number value was to value their employees and created incredible employee loyalty and incredible engineering equipment with ethics, values and morals. "

Isn't it a shame we're now stuck with that c--- Carly Fiorina?