A reply to 'disks are old hat, sorry.' MOVIES and BOOKS WORLD, 20150830.
I would strongly agree with this, but as part of a larger question of ownership.
1. Kindle/Amazon. When one pays for a book, one gets the virtual copy immediately, and one can start reading. Cool? Sure. However, if Amazon gets in a huff with a title's author, the book can disappear from your Kindle just as quickly as it showed up. If someone hacks your Amazon account, and does bad things posing as you, your Kindle inventory might just all disappear.
Do you own purchased Kindle content? No, not at all.
2. MMO video games. These days, one
a. buys into the game for a certain one-time price
b. pays a monthly charge to keep playing.
Your game client is refreshed at every logon. If anything goes south on your account (hacking, false complaints, game server belch), then your client will not longer work. Your privileges and database records are sealed off from you. Only direct telephone contact plus authentication plus straightening things out will restore this.
Do you own such a game? No, you do not. The days when one bought a disk, installed from the disk, and repaired/recovered from the disk are gone.
3. Upscale software tools for individual users.
Professional tools have long been sold on a subscription basis. A corporation (individuals or small companies could not afford this) would pay a fixed purchase fee plus a monthly fee for technical support, documentation, training, and upgrades. For example, at one corporation where I worked, the build/version control tool we used cost 100,000 USD per seat plus monthly fees. It was a dynamite tool, though.
At the other end, one had consumer tools like Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Access, etc) and Adobe image tools (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, etc) that could be purchased on disk. One owned these. They could not be taken away. One could bite the bullet and actually own these. Tech support and training might be extra, but were available at prices much less than the giant corporation tools.
In the years 2014/2015/2016, the private ownership by individuals of such products is being phased out. Even individuals have to buy a subscription (monthly fee) to continue using the latest tools from MS and Adobe. If one stops paying the fees, one is locked out. There are no disks, there will be no functionality that you own.
So, ownership of such products will completely end in a few years. The earlier versions that one owns on optical disks will eventually not work with current operating systems.
4. Movies.
Wow. This is one of the last, if not the last, frontier of consumer ownership in media. There are hundreds of millions of optical disks out there for movies and music. So there is more inertia to keep it that way. However, stuff changes. Do we still use 8-tracks? No. Laserdiscs for movies? Probably not. Cassette tapes for music? Not too likely. Try buying a cassette player! VHS tapes for movies? Cringe!! DVDs? Passe, and they have such low resolution. Blu-ray? Hm, I would have to buy a 1080p monitor, a blu-ray player, and, well, all those damned disks, again.
When my wife and I saw that DVDs were outmoded, we started our transition to streaming rather than blu-ray. We bought a 1080p monitor and an AppleTV. At first we were mighty disappointed at the small amount of content that actually justified the move. After a while, though, we got hooked on 1080p, and are continually disappointed at DVDs, VHS, and at least half of cable television.
About two years after that decision, we moved house, this time a compression move (downsizing?), and we had to trim our belongings. The 8-tracks left, as did the VHS tapes, some of the cassette tapes, and some of the DVDs. We owned that media, and we still had players, but...the results are so disappointing!
Going forward, we did not want to invest heavily in anything that takes up space. Further, blu-ray 1080p will be replaced in ~5 years by blu-ray 4k. Do I want to buy a whole galaxy of 4k blu-ray disks? No, I have space constraints.
5. Movies and ownership.
As opposed to Kindle, video games, and software tool packages, it seems there will still be a path to continued ownership of movies. That is, owning
a. VHS, DVD, blu-ray 1080p disks, plus owning an appropriate player that likely cannot be replaced or serviced
b. blu-ray 4k disks plus player--for the best there is.
However, I'm not sure these routes will do all that well.
Smartphones and tablets do not have optical drives. Yet one still sees movies on them through streaming services. Phones and tablets are used quite a bit in watching films, despite the small screens, and neither device uses optical media. These devices naturally cut into the market penetration of disks.
When I look forward with trepidation to replacing my Mac laptop, I see that my next one will not have an optical drive. Personal computers will not play movies from disks without the purchase of an external optical disk reader.
Why would Apple make a decision like that about their Macintoshes? Well, they would like to sell you content that resides on their servers. Even better, they would like you to rent movies that reside on their servers. If you want to see a film multiple times, you will need to rent it multiple times.
It's not just Apple. Microsoft (see above), Adobe (see above), Amazon (their instant video), and Google (see Barry Ward's post) are all into streaming rentals, not selling optical disks. This is one of the biggest reasons that disks are old hat for movies.
Then there is Netflix, which offers only rentals. One pays subscription fees and gets on demand properties...but only when Netflix offers them. You do not own them since you do not have disks for the properties.
So, the big media corporations are clearly moving toward the 'we own it, you never will' model with movies. Amazon and Apple have some options for 'buying' media content, but these are somewhat difficult to trust. Your 'owned' content resides on their servers somewhere. Whenever I switch devices or have some OS update event, I often have to download the property again from the servers, which is a pain for HD content. I imagine UHD will be much worse. Also, if the corporation hosting your movie gets hacked, one might just not be able to reclaim your content.
6. Summary
Disks represent a cut in profits for large companies. So they are doing their best to move forward the phasing out of disks, and the ownership of copies of films.
5. Movies and ownership.
As opposed to Kindle, video games, and software tool packages, it seems there will still be a path to continued ownership of movies. That is, owning
a. VHS, DVD, blu-ray 1080p disks, plus owning an appropriate player that likely cannot be replaced or serviced
b. blu-ray 4k disks plus player--for the best there is.
However, I'm not sure these routes will do all that well.
Smartphones and tablets do not have optical drives. Yet one still sees movies on them through streaming services. Phones and tablets are used quite a bit in watching films, despite the small screens, and neither device uses optical media. These devices naturally cut into the market penetration of disks.
When I look forward with trepidation to replacing my Mac laptop, I see that my next one will not have an optical drive. Personal computers will not play movies from disks without the purchase of an external optical disk reader.
Why would Apple make a decision like that about their Macintoshes? Well, they would like to sell you content that resides on their servers. Even better, they would like you to rent movies that reside on their servers. If you want to see a film multiple times, you will need to rent it multiple times.
It's not just Apple. Microsoft (see above), Adobe (see above), Amazon (their instant video), and Google (see Barry Ward's post) are all into streaming rentals, not selling optical disks. This is one of the biggest reasons that disks are old hat for movies.
Then there is Netflix, which offers only rentals. One pays subscription fees and gets on demand properties...but only when Netflix offers them. You do not own them since you do not have disks for the properties.
So, the big media corporations are clearly moving toward the 'we own it, you never will' model with movies. Amazon and Apple have some options for 'buying' media content, but these are somewhat difficult to trust. Your 'owned' content resides on their servers somewhere. Whenever I switch devices or have some OS update event, I often have to download the property again from the servers, which is a pain for HD content. I imagine UHD will be much worse. Also, if the corporation hosting your movie gets hacked, one might just not be able to reclaim your content.
6. Summary
Disks represent a cut in profits for large companies. So they are doing their best to move forward the phasing out of disks, and the ownership of copies of films.
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