Digital Distribution will never happen...

/sarcasm

Comcast (CMCSA), the No. 1 residential broadband service provider, Thursday will give residents of Minneapolis and St. Paul the first opportunity to check out a speedy Internet service that CEO Brian Roberts calls "cable's next big thing."
The service, informally called wideband, can transmit a high-definition movie in about 10 minutes. It would take about 40 minutes to do that on Comcast's most popular Internet service and more than an hour on most cable systems.

"An extreme gamer who wants the lowest (delay) that's available would find it interesting," says Mitch Bowling, Comcast's high-speed Internet general manager. "Also, we are deploying this to our business services customers. There are a lot of uses for it there."

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/2008-04-02-internet-speed-comcast_N.htm

As I've been saying for months, HD standardization took too long, Bluray won too late, as even with movies... DD is the future.

People still have download limits. Fast broadband will always be expensive.

People still have download limits. Fast broadband will always be expensive.

Shazenab

They are pretty cheap over here, in Europe.

People still have download limits. Fast broadband will always be expensive.

Shazenab

fail

Telmex will upgrade everyones conection to 6gb fo free starting june, to see T.V. online.

Try this on for size. :)

Ubisoft And Valve To Release Over 40 Games on Steam
Valve recently announced that it would be partnering with Ubisoft to release over 40 titles for Steam - its downloadable PC game service. Far Cry and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell are already available for customers in the United States and Canada. The PC version of Assassin's Creed is also available for pre-purchase and comes with four unique missions available only with the PC port. Heroes of Might & Magic and the IL-2 Sturmovik collection are also set to be released on Steam, as well as many other Ubisoft titles.

People still have download limits. Fast broadband will always be expensive.

Shazenab

I guess you "forgot" to say it cost $150/month ;)

dowloads have been around for years, sure it has been a dent to DVD sales but meh.

im sure adding a price tag and 5 + GB of data will help

[QUOTE="Shazenab"]

People still have download limits. Fast broadband will always be expensive.

Kirlok

fail

Telmex will upgrade everyones conection to 6gb fo free starting june, to see T.V. online.

With the switch to digital coming a few things are going to happen. Cable companies will cut costs because digital transmission is cheaper and more efficient than analog to transmit. The switch will also free up a LOT of bandwidth for them to use allowing for more HD channels, but allowing for faster internet speeds. This will allow faster broadband speeds at a cheaper price, in theory.

/sarcasm

As I've been saying for months, HD standardization took too long, Bluray won too late, as even with movies... DD is the future.

rimnet00

iv heard it all before...'download music in seconds' download movies in an hour, download your favorite tv shows in 20mins max.....fact is its all marketing talk. dont mean much. companies advertise their 20MB connections but fact is you will not reach that speed. sure DD will come but much much later rather than soonersuperjim42

... you do reach those speeds. I max out at 3.5Megabytes a second, which is roughly 30mbit

iv heard it all before...'download music in seconds' download movies in an hour, download your favorite tv shows in 20mins max.....fact is its all marketing talk. dont mean much. companies advertise their 20MB connections but fact is you will not reach that speed. sure DD will come but much much later rather than soonersuperjim42

Hope and pray fiber comes to your town. I got a 20 MB connection that is solid 20 MB almost all the time.

[QUOTE="superjim42"]iv heard it all before...'download music in seconds' download movies in an hour, download your favorite tv shows in 20mins max.....fact is its all marketing talk. dont mean much. companies advertise their 20MB connections but fact is you will not reach that speed. sure DD will come but much much later rather than soonerheretrix

Hope and pray fiber comes to your town. I got a 20 MB connection that is solid 20 MB almost all the time.

I think people will still prefer to have a hard copy of their movies and games for a long time. It's a whole different ballgame then music, which MP3s have been out for years, but CDs still sell well. Or people burn CDs

Also, how do you guys check your connection speed? How do you test it?

lets take for example music sownloads.

even with the big thing iTunes nd amazon are they still are only count for less then %10 of all music sales

why would movies be diffrent?

[QUOTE="Shazenab"]

People still have download limits. Fast broadband will always be expensive.

ProudLarry

The uk. the average connection speed is still only 8mb. Most mainstream companies policies (Virgin, AOL, Sky, Yahoo) charge you £16 for a 3GB download limit in peak hours (4.00pm to 12.00am).

iv heard it all before...'download music in seconds' download movies in an hour, download your favorite tv shows in 20mins max.....fact is its all marketing talk. dont mean much. companies advertise their 20MB connections but fact is you will not reach that speed. sure DD will come but much much later rather than soonersuperjim42

Uhh...You realize Itunes replaced Walmart as the no1 music retailer, online movie rentals are a multi million dollar business, and the big networks are moving their entire lineups online (hulu.com), right? You did realize that right?

So whats all this talk about "marketing talk"? Either you live under a rock, or under a heavy cloud of denial.

Broandband prices will drop. With the immense popularity of Steam, the VC, XBLA, and PSN, digital distro is already here and primed to explode.travt-down

DD will for the most part JUST be an alternative to a physical format. There are to many problems with dumping physical formats for DD altogether anytime soon.

1. Sites are not read for the flood of downloads if that was the only place to get new movies in the first days of its release. They would crash.

2. HDD crashing losing all your movies and having to spend time to redownload them again. Not to mention the cost of a HDD that can hold a movie collectors entire collection.

3. The fact that people still value box sets, collectors editions and special features that will either not be possible on DD or just a pain to maintain (special Features)

4. Piracy, just saving them one step

5. Playing your purchased movie on something portable like a DVD or Blu ray player that you installed in your car. Or just trying to take the movie over to your friends house.

DD will hurt the RENTING market but people will still wanna purchase real physical movies with cover art and special features without worrying about how much space they have on their HDD and such.

And as for broadband prices dropping, this kind of tech. is not gonna dramatically drop anytime soon. Not to mention that its currently no available everywhere either. They still have to get it to everyones house then convince them to upgrade their HDD to store all their movies. Not happening anytime soon.

DD works for music because everyone is sick of paying 16 dollars to get that one or two favorite songs from an album, but there is no true benefit to having movies on DD.

[QUOTE="superjim42"]iv heard it all before...'download music in seconds' download movies in an hour, download your favorite tv shows in 20mins max.....fact is its all marketing talk. dont mean much. companies advertise their 20MB connections but fact is you will not reach that speed. sure DD will come but much much later rather than soonerTeamR

Uhh...You realize Itunes replaced Walmart as the no1 music retailer, online movie rentals are a multi million dollar business, and the big networks are moving their entire lineups online (hulu.com), right? You did realize that right?

So whats all this talk about "marketing talk"? Either you live under a rock, or under a heavy cloud of denial.

in the uk its very different my friend. i have a sky 16mb connection and it is not as fast as they make it out. sure its quick but not that quick. also if you want to download games of gigs upon gigs of size go right ahead im not stopping you i just prefer a hard copy without the hassle of waiting to download.

[QUOTE="heretrix"]

[QUOTE="superjim42"]iv heard it all before...'download music in seconds' download movies in an hour, download your favorite tv shows in 20mins max.....fact is its all marketing talk. dont mean much. companies advertise their 20MB connections but fact is you will not reach that speed. sure DD will come but much much later rather than soonersuperjim42

Hope and pray fiber comes to your town. I got a 20 MB connection that is solid 20 MB almost all the time.

That is because you are likely only using one connection when downloading. When you have one connection for a download, you are only going to get like 60% efficiency on the download. Get a "download manager" which essentially creates like 5, 8, 10 different connections, downloading different pieces of the file... then finally when it's all downloaded, it puts it all together. This will, or will get close to, maxing out your connection.

DD > Blu-ray. When I want HD movies, I go to xbox live marketplace, not best-buyshadow8585

Great and what happens when you Xbox 360 dies, or you wanna play that movie at someone elses house. Or what if you wanna play that movie in the car on a long trip. Or even more importantly what happens when the next Xbox comes out will they let you transfer all your movie collection to your next system, FREE?

Sorry to many limitations with DD.

comcast is the same company that filters traffic. i don't trust them for a second.Ontain

in the uk its very different my friend. i have a sky 16mb connection and it is not as fast as they make it out. sure its quick but not that quick. also if you want to download games of gigs upon gigs of size go right ahead im not stopping you i just prefer a hard copy without the hassle of waiting to download.

superjim42

Uhhh....I'm from the uk, my friend. Living in an overseas territory at the moment. Our internet connections here are actually a few years behind the mainland. I'm currently on a 4mb cable connection, but I have no qualms with letting HD movies or large games download overnight. It's not a hastle for me. I don't sit inside all day, so it's no big deal for me to let downloads go while im out doing stuff or at work. If you sit inside 24/7 then I can see how it might annoy you, but I don't.

But even if I did have to wait 3 hours (oh dear god no!!), I'd still choose DD because I detest cases and flakey optical disks.

[QUOTE="shadow8585"]DD > Blu-ray. When I want HD movies, I go to xbox live marketplace, not best-buyJavy03

Great and what happens when you Xbox 360 dies, or you wanna play that movie at someone elses house. Or what if you wanna play that movie in the car on a long trip. Or even more importantly what happens when the next Xbox comes out will they let you transfer all your movie collection to your next system, FREE?

Sorry to many limitations with DD.

google: RAID,eSATA, USB, mutating encryption

That's a simple solution to those who don't want to redownload their libraries overnight, while they sleep....

[QUOTE="travt-down"]Broandband prices will drop. With the immense popularity of Steam, the VC, XBLA, and PSN, digital distro is already here and primed to explode.Javy03

DD will for the most part JUST be an alternative to a physical format. There are to many problems with dumping physical formats for DD altogether anytime soon.

1. Sites are not read for the flood of downloads if that was the only place to get new movies in the first days of its release. They would crash.

2. HDD crashing losing all your movies and having to spend time to redownload them again. Not to mention the cost of a HDD that can hold a movie collectors entire collection.

3. The fact that people still value box sets, collectors editions and special features that will either not be possible on DD or just a pain to maintain (special Features)

4. Piracy, just saving them one step

5. Playing your purchased movie on something portable like a DVD or Blu ray player that you installed in your car. Or just trying to take the movie over to your friends house.

DD will hurt the RENTING market but people will still wanna purchase real physical movies with cover art and special features without worrying about how much space they have on their HDD and such.

And as for broadband prices dropping, this kind of tech. is not gonna dramatically drop anytime soon. Not to mention that its currently no available everywhere either. They still have to get it to everyones house then convince them to upgrade their HDD to store all their movies. Not happening anytime soon.

DD works for music because everyone is sick of paying 16 dollars to get that one or two favorite songs from an album, but there is no true benefit to having movies on DD.

That's why. A worthy post that all should read. It's not that DD won't happen (it kind of does right now), It is that the physical medium will still exist as the norm in the near future. In the long run DD may be the norm (most probably), but the physical medium will still exist for all the reasons in the above post.kentaro22

Of course it will. People still buy record players, and i'm sure you can even find a floppy disk or an 8-track if you look hard enough...

dd will never replace medis but it will exist. just like every other type of entertament. (cd/itunes ect)

viruses the internet will never be free of them. what if you download a movie with a virus and your hd get wipe out all your movies gone ect.

DD will for the most part JUST be an alternative to a physical format. There are to many problems with dumping physical formats for DD altogether anytime soon.

1. Sites are not read for the flood of downloads if that was the only place to get new movies in the first days of its release. They would crash.

Why wouldn't they be, it's not like the technology isn't there. There are plenty of datacenters that push large amount of data, just look at usenet providers that host terabytes of data, allow 20 connections, and virtually unlimited data transfer speeds.

2. HDD crashing losing all your movies and having to spend time to redownload them again. Not to mention the cost of a HDD that can hold a movie collectors entire collection.

You can redownload them at night while you sleep, or simply buy a box that has RAID'ed drives. Problem solved.

3. The fact that people still value box sets, collectors editions and special features that will either not be possible on DD or just a pain to maintain (special Features)

I understand people like to collect garbage, but I hardly see how that can be considered a major deterrent from DD

4. Piracy, just saving them one step

It's easier to pirate hard media, versus digital downloads with mutating encryption. Especially when you are downloading directly to an STB... and have no way for an amatuer to tap into it.

5. Playing your purchased movie on something portable like a DVD or Blu ray player that you installed in your car. Or just trying to take the movie over to your friends house.

You do realize SSDs are really cheap... what's stopping cars from supporting SSDs... its easier and cheaper then Bluray players...

DD will hurt the RENTING market but people will still wanna purchase real physical movies with cover art and special features without worrying about how much space they have on their HDD and such.

And as for broadband prices dropping, this kind of tech. is not gonna dramatically drop anytime soon. Not to mention that its currently no available everywhere either. They still have to get it to everyones house then convince them to upgrade their HDD to store all their movies. Not happening anytime soon.

It has already been dramatically decreasing... 5 years ago 2mbit lines were unheard of. Today even crap cable companies offer 20mbit. Most people already have the bandwidth to support this. Even more so a year from now.

DD works for music because everyone is sick of paying 16 dollars to get that one or two favorite songs from an album, but there is no true benefit to having movies on DD.

Javy03

dd will never replace medis but it will exist. just like every other type of entertament. (cd/itunes ect)

viruses the internet will never be free of them. what if you download a movie with a virus and your hd get wipe out all your movies gone ect.GARRYTH

That's pretty unlikely. First the virus makers would need to invent some way to attach an executable to a movie file, then they would need to find a way to have the company distribute the file.

Heck, I think we'd see a major music label infecting customers computers with root kits on legit CD/DVDs before we see that....huh, wa? Sony already did that? Oh yeah...

If Comcast has their way, they will charge triple for this service compared to standard internet, and if you download too much they will restrict your access to slow you down.

Comcast is the #1 company right now pushing to restrict the internet and essentially tax you if you do something they don't like.

So, while I applaud a company FINALLY advancing internet delivery...I don't think this is going to be "the future" people are hoping for.

[QUOTE="superjim42"]

in the uk its very different my friend. i have a sky 16mb connection and it is not as fast as they make it out. sure its quick but not that quick. also if you want to download games of gigs upon gigs of size go right ahead im not stopping you i just prefer a hard copy without the hassle of waiting to download.

TeamR

Uhhh....I'm from the uk, my friend. Living in an overseas territory at the moment. Our internet connections here are actually a few years behind the mainland. I'm currently on a 4mb cable connection, but I have no qualms with letting HD movies or large games download overnight. It's not a hastle for me. I don't sit inside all day, so it's no big deal for me to let downloads go while im out doing stuff or at work. If you sit inside 24/7 then I can see how it might annoy you, but I don't.

But even if I did have to wait 3 hours (oh dear god no!!), I'd still choose DD because I detest cases and flakey optical disks.

And you are the minority, most people rebuy the movie they already own because its in a new box set and love displaying their collection.

And as for waiting the ONLY way that DD would appeal to people is if it was somehow better then watching movies the old way. If you have to wait three hours to watch a movie you want to watch now, well guess what, the mainstream audience wont buy it. Why be forced to free up 5 hours of your day (3 to wait for the movie and 2 to watch) when you can go to the store and back in 30 and be watching your movie.

[QUOTE="kentaro22"]That's why. A worthy post that all should read. It's not that DD won't happen (it kind of does right now), It is that the physical medium will still exist as the norm in the near future. In the long run DD may be the norm (most probably), but the physical medium will still exist for all the reasons in the above post.TeamR

Of course it will. People still buy record players, and i'm sure you can even find a floppy disk or an 8-track if you look hard enough...

No it will be like people currently buying CDs when they can easily buy mp3s. MP3s have not killed CDs yet and thats where DD works best, not with movies.

If Comcast has their way, they will charge triple for this service compared to standard internet, and if you download too much they will restrict your access to slow you down.

Comcast is the #1 company right now pushing to restrict the internet and essentially tax you if you do something they don't like.

So, while I applaud a company FINALLY advancing internet delivery...I don't think this is going to be "the future" people are hoping for.

ZIMdoom

Comcast isn't the only ISP that will be rolling out these high bandwidth speeds. They are simply the first cable company to roll out this technology, as they are the biggest and have the most amount of money to deploy such equipment. Comcast still has Fiber-based ISPs to compete with, whom already have the ability to push 50mbit connections to houses.

While they have been very bully like, they aren't going to slow down progress, as they would only lose their buisness to companies like Verizon in the future. This is very much why they settled with the BT issue, as they were losing customers.

People still have download limits. Fast broadband will always be expensive.

Shazenab

you act like technology won't advance. remember when expensive dial up was the only thing around? of course internet speeds will increase and become cheaper. companies are already laying fiber optic cable.

And you are the minority, most people rebuy the movie they already own because its in a new box set and love displaying their collection.

And as for waiting the ONLY way that DD would appeal to people is if it was somehow better then watching movies the old way. If you have to wait three hours to watch a movie you want to watch now, well guess what, the mainstream audience wont buy it. Why be forced to free up 5 hours of your day (3 to wait for the movie and 2 to watch) when you can go to the store and back in 30 and be watching your movie.

Javy03

I'll tell you one area where i'm not in the minority: People with things to do.

When you reach a certain point in your life where work comes before most other things, you cant exactly take off whenever you want and go movie shopping. Especially if the nearest place is 30 minutes away. The last thing anyone I know wants to do on their lunch break is to drive 20-30 mins to pick up a movie.

Now, in my last post i'm quoting times on a reasonably slow broadband connection. Right now im on a tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic. I'm sure everyone in this thread has a faster connection than me, and even I can finish a 2gb download in about 45 minutes.

But if you really think that taking an hour out of your day to go movie shopping is more convienient than letting a download finish at home, then you are either very young or just misinformed. That's why malls are filled with kids on weekdays. They are the only ones with the freedom and enough lack of responsibility to go jotting about in the middle of a work-week to goof off and look at the latest releases at BestBuy.

No it will be like people currently buying CDs when they can easily buy mp3s. MP3s have not killed CDs yet and thats where DD works best, not with movies.

Javy03

No one is claiming that physical media will become obsolete. There will still be people, but they will be in a minority. Just as MP3s have stomped on CDs... some people still pick them up. In the same way, it is being suggested that DD games and movies will stomp out physically distributed formats like Bluray and HDDVD.

[QUOTE="Javy03"]

And you are the minority, most people rebuy the movie they already own because its in a new box set and love displaying their collection.

And as for waiting the ONLY way that DD would appeal to people is if it was somehow better then watching movies the old way. If you have to wait three hours to watch a movie you want to watch now, well guess what, the mainstream audience wont buy it. Why be forced to free up 5 hours of your day (3 to wait for the movie and 2 to watch) when you can go to the store and back in 30 and be watching your movie.

TeamR

I'll tell you one area where i'm not in the minority: People with things to do.

When you reach a certain point in your life where work comes before most other things, you cant exactly take off whenever you want and go movie shopping. Especially if the nearest place is 30 minutes away. The last thing anyone I know wants to do on their lunch break is to drive 20-30 mins to pick up a movie.

Now, in my last post i'm quoting times on a reasonably slow broadband connection. Right now im on a tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic. I'm sure everyone in this thread has a faster connection than me, and even I can finish a 2gb download in about 45 minutes.

But if you really think that taking an hour out of your day to go movie shopping is more convienient than letting a download finish at home, then you are either very young or just misinformed. That's why malls are filled with kids on weekdays. They are the only ones with the freedom and enough lack of responsibility to go jotting about in the middle of a work-week to goof off and look at the latest releases at BestBuy.

Exactly... I rather just VPN into my home movie player. Click "Buy and Download" on a New Movie release. Then when I get home, it's sitting there ready for me to watch. OHHH nOES but but the Plastic case is teh miss!

[QUOTE="GARRYTH"]

dd will never replace medis but it will exist. just like every other type of entertament. (cd/itunes ect)

viruses the internet will never be free of them. what if you download a movie with a virus and your hd get wipe out all your movies gone ect.TeamR

That's pretty unlikely. First the virus makers would need to invent some way to attach an executable to a movie file, then they would need to find a way to have the company distribute the file.

Heck, I think we'd see a major music label infecting customers computers with root kits on legit CD/DVDs before we see that....huh, wa? Sony already did that? Oh yeah...

[QUOTE="Javy03"]

DD will for the most part JUST be an alternative to a physical format. There are to many problems with dumping physical formats for DD altogether anytime soon.

1. Sites are not read for the flood of downloads if that was the only place to get new movies in the first days of its release. They would crash.

Why wouldn't they be, it's not like the technology isn't there. There are plenty of datacenters that push large amount of data, just look at usenet providers that host terabytes of data, allow 20 connections, and virtually unlimited data transfer speeds.

2. HDD crashing losing all your movies and having to spend time to redownload them again. Not to mention the cost of a HDD that can hold a movie collectors entire collection.

You can redownload them at night while you sleep, or simply buy a box that has RAID'ed drives. Problem solved.

3. The fact that people still value box sets, collectors editions and special features that will either not be possible on DD or just a pain to maintain (special Features)

I understand people like to collect garbage, but I hardly see how that can be considered a major deterrent from DD

4. Piracy, just saving them one step

It's easier to pirate hard media, versus digital downloads with mutating encryption. Especially when you are downloading directly to an STB... and have no way for an amatuer to tap into it.

5. Playing your purchased movie on something portable like a DVD or Blu ray player that you installed in your car. Or just trying to take the movie over to your friends house.

You do realize SSDs are really cheap... what's stopping cars from supporting SSDs... its easier and cheaper then Bluray players...

DD will hurt the RENTING market but people will still wanna purchase real physical movies with cover art and special features without worrying about how much space they have on their HDD and such.

And as for broadband prices dropping, this kind of tech. is not gonna dramatically drop anytime soon. Not to mention that its currently no available everywhere either. They still have to get it to everyones house then convince them to upgrade their HDD to store all their movies. Not happening anytime soon.

It has already been dramatically decreasing... 5 years ago 2mbit lines were unheard of. Today even crap cable companies offer 20mbit. Most people already have the bandwidth to support this. Even more so a year from now.

DD works for music because everyone is sick of paying 16 dollars to get that one or two favorite songs from an album, but there is no true benefit to having movies on DD.

rimnet00

1) Right now the internet has not had to deal with the flood of hundreds and hundreds of millions of people downloading LARGE files from one site at the same time. Imagine everyone who buys movies or goes to BEst Buy, Walmart, Circuit CIty or any other movie store on the release day of the movie to buy it. Now imagine all of those millions of people downloading from a couple sites HD sized movies. These sites would crash.

2)Again imagine a movie collector who has 300 or more HD movies. Imagine them having to redownload all of them at once. It take longer then a nite and the inconvinience is not worth the step DD takes away which is, Going to the store. Not to mention they might have to select every single movie they have to download one at a time.

3)Its a deterrent because while you consider it garbage they consider it their physical collection. Also not having a physical hardcopy will be a very hard thing to sell to people. People like to hold what they purchased in their hands or display them. YOu cant do that with DD.

4)Easier Piracy

5)Again if they allow this what stops the person from just taking their whole movie collection and giving it to their friend. Movies studios will lose so much money this way.

6) Not dramatic enough. Most internet users still dont use broadband, and an even smaller amount have any kind of rig to download all their movie needs onto it.

what there are virusis attach all kinds of movies on the internet (porn) why not a regular movies. GARRYTH

LOL no they don't. Those viruses you are getting when visiting malaware sites are seperate from the movie itself. Those are viruses that are attaching by exploiting your browser, or installing trojans on your machine by tricking you into doing it.

REGARDLESS... you are speaking of downloading porn from a no-name sites, versus downloading off secure servers run by big corporations.

[QUOTE="Shazenab"]

People still have download limits. Fast broadband will always be expensive.

Supafly1

They are pretty cheap over here, in Europe.

[QUOTE="Shazenab"]

People still have download limits. Fast broadband will always be expensive.

shoeman12

you act like technology won't advance. remember when expensive dial up was the only thing around? of course internet speeds will increase and become cheaper. companies are already laying fiber optic cable.

Not at the rate people on this topic are suggesting. Even with Broadband a little cheaper most internet users still dont use it. Then on top of that you have to convince people to all upgrade their computer with Terabytes worth of HDD and buy a super high speed internet connection just to play movies they are used to paying 20 dollars for and popping it in their 30-100 system. Not gonna happen anytime soon.

All the tech is not availble to everyone yet, and even when it finally is sometime in the distant future you have to convince everyone to upgrade. Heck we just got TV to be standard digital, do you know how long it would take for what people suggest here to be the norm?