DVD is amazing. When it first rolled in, we had quite a few VHS tapes in our home. In fact, there are still some tucked away in the dark forbidden places of this house. If we had the sense to sell these tapes back in 1995, we could have made some coin from what was soon to be a dead medium. Now, these old tapes lie forgotten, too old and too obsolete to be worth anything. Probably no longer functioning either.
It's great, because as the medium became more widespread and affordable, I could amass large collections of movies and TV series. They take up little space and the picture quality is great. The things you could do with them made them light years ahead of the cassette. It was no contest.
The DVD has had a good life but it won't last forever. I mean that in a literal and figurative sense. The data on the disc will degrade given time (estimated at 30-40 years). Nothing lasts forever and your DVDs will eventually become unwatchable. Also, there's the inevitable march of progress.
For ages, I've been tempted to buy a Blu-ray player. I want to have Star Trek: TOS on Blu-ray in my movie/TV collection. Why Blu-ray and not stick to DVD? The new medium has more added features, including the option to switch between classic and CGI effects. This'll probably be the best edition you can get. Remastered and cleaned up, with both classic and CGI effects, plus added featurettes and interviews.
My hesitation has less to do with more than 15 years of love for my good friend DVD, but more with the fear that I could be buying a Blu-ray player and finding out the next day that the medium has been abandoned and left to die by publishers.
It's great, because as the medium became more widespread and affordable, I could amass large collections of movies and TV series. They take up little space and the picture quality is great. The things you could do with them made them light years ahead of the cassette. It was no contest.
The DVD has had a good life but it won't last forever. I mean that in a literal and figurative sense. The data on the disc will degrade given time (estimated at 30-40 years). Nothing lasts forever and your DVDs will eventually become unwatchable. Also, there's the inevitable march of progress.
For ages, I've been tempted to buy a Blu-ray player. I want to have Star Trek: TOS on Blu-ray in my movie/TV collection. Why Blu-ray and not stick to DVD? The new medium has more added features, including the option to switch between classic and CGI effects. This'll probably be the best edition you can get. Remastered and cleaned up, with both classic and CGI effects, plus added featurettes and interviews.
My hesitation has less to do with more than 15 years of love for my good friend DVD, but more with the fear that I could be buying a Blu-ray player and finding out the next day that the medium has been abandoned and left to die by publishers.
Nothing lasts forever and Blu-ray will eventually be consigned to history, but if it lasts for about 10 years then we can call it a success. It'd be sad if something as advanced as Blu-ray were to simply die from lack of attention and poor sales. Sony and Microsoft have spent a fortune equipping their latest consoles with Blu-ray players. That may be an indication of the coming trend for optical discs. If the giants are right then Blu-ray is here to stay.
The internet may be thriving, but movie and TV streaming is still held back by bandwidth limitations. While someone sitting pretty in the suburbs of Los Angeles or Shanghai may have access to super fast broadband (that's affordable as well), there are still so many places in the world where they don't have that luxury. People will still buy optical discs e.g. Blu-ray; for their entertainment needs. There will still be a market catering to people who want physical copies.
Or, civilisation as we know it will end, rendering all of this pointless.
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