Digital Distribution will never happen...

[QUOTE="Shazenab"]

All this thread has proven is broadband prices, speeds and rules vary way too much for DD to be a viable option.

heretrix

See this is what I dont get. Bittorrent users, steam users. These aren't mainstream consumers. Most people still use limewire and if you started talking to the average person they'd have no idea what steam is.

[QUOTE="heretrix"][QUOTE="Shazenab"]

All this thread has proven is broadband prices, speeds and rules vary way too much for DD to be a viable option.

Shazenab

See this is what I dont get. Bittorrent users, steam users. These aren't mainstream consumers. Most people still use limewire and if you started talking to the average person they'd have no idea what steam is.

are you saying they would have no idea what Itunes is either?

DD won't replace physical for years if that. I see it more of a alternative. Look at movies DD is mostly just used for rentals (don't bring up iTunes or anything, having a movie played on your TV and having a movie played on a iPod are two completely different things). As far as games go. Could you imagine downloading a 5 GB game? Yeah it works with PSN, XBLA, VC, and Wii Ware games but what about full length retail games. The only connection that could handle a 5 GB download would either be FiOS or a business/college connection (which is always shared so it wouldn't be fast anyways). Considering most people with broadband now have either Cable or DSL I find DD very unlikely in the near future. Cable at max could probably have 20 MBPS download and we all know Cable speeds aren't static. DSL probably couldn't even pass 10 MBPS download. Not everyone is going to run out and buy FiOS and it won't drop its price overnight.

Shadow2k6

umm yes you can have a static ip using cable...

i work for a cable company.

for our employees we have 86 mbps (only at work) but for home we can get up to 12 right now.

for one night they did unlock it for customers at around 70 mbps. one of the best nights ever.

"The speed comes with a steep price: nearly $150 a month for residential users and $200 for business customers, who get additional software and services. "

At this steep price I'm sure it will be a while before it becomes popular. No thanks I'd rather keep buying physical copies of movies for now.

robflores370

[QUOTE="heretrix"][QUOTE="Shazenab"]

All this thread has proven is broadband prices, speeds and rules vary way too much for DD to be a viable option.

Shazenab

See this is what I dont get. Bittorrent users, steam users. These aren't mainstream consumers. Most people still use limewire and if you started talking to the average person they'd have no idea what steam is.

[QUOTE="Shazenab"][QUOTE="heretrix"][QUOTE="Shazenab"]

All this thread has proven is broadband prices, speeds and rules vary way too much for DD to be a viable option.

cobrax25

See this is what I dont get. Bittorrent users, steam users. These aren't mainstream consumers. Most people still use limewire and if you started talking to the average person they'd have no idea what steam is.

are you saying they would have no idea what Itunes is either?

Well played good sir. Well played.

But lets be honest here, Vinyl has increased in sales along side download sales, so what does that tell you?

[QUOTE="robflores370"]

"The speed comes with a steep price: nearly $150 a month for residential users and $200 for business customers, who get additional software and services. "

At this steep price I'm sure it will be a while before it becomes popular. No thanks I'd rather keep buying physical copies of movies for now.

cobrax25

you dont need a fast internet connection for DD of movies....movies can be streamed as you watch them.

You are correct, just like you can do this via xbox live, I was just merely quoting this price as the TC used this article for the basis of his argument and left this out. I still prefer physical media though.

[QUOTE="cobrax25"][QUOTE="Shazenab"][QUOTE="heretrix"][QUOTE="Shazenab"]

All this thread has proven is broadband prices, speeds and rules vary way too much for DD to be a viable option.

Shazenab

See this is what I dont get. Bittorrent users, steam users. These aren't mainstream consumers. Most people still use limewire and if you started talking to the average person they'd have no idea what steam is.

are you saying they would have no idea what Itunes is either?

Well played good sir. Well played.

But lets be honest here, Vinyl has increased in sales along side download sales, so what does that tell you?

people only buy Vinyl for nostalgic reasons....and when was the last time you actually saw someone with a CD player?

Music is bassiclly all digital now...people may still buy CD's, but they certainly dont use them beyond ripping the Music to a computer.

and while were on topic here:

apple has just announced that Itunes has become the biggest seller of Music in the world.

http://gear.ign.com/articles/864/864454p1.html

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

Shazenab

while i agree it could and should happen, there are still many problems with it, mainly the fact that without some form of removable media, a breakdown will clear all your data, games and gamesaves alike.darkspineslayer

Steam backs games to the account, not the computer.

[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 soonerrimnet00

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

Wow.

I have 256k

People forget that millions of people don't even have access to broadband. Rural customers, for instance, have no choice but to use dial up which maxes out at 56K for standard use (112K if you use two phone lines and what used to be referred to as a "shotgun" modem).

Beyond that, many people who have access to broadband don't purchase it due to cost.

Beyond even that, everyone having the form of broadband mentioned which would be used for all digital media distribution would require massive upgrades to the architecture of the very internet itself (New wires, heftier and potentially more backbones, etc). And these requirements will continue to grow as the size of the media continues to grow.

DD is viable for a segment of the market (which will continue to grow), but it has decades to go before it completely replaces hard formats.

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

Shazenab

[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.

Yep, Time Warner upgraded our connection from 6mbps to 10mbps for free. And I dont think your getting a 6gb connection lol. Thats 750MB a sec.

physical formats aren't going to just keel over over night. napster/mp3's was supposed to be the end of cd's like 10 years ago or some crap. but still cd's sell like wildfire. hell even with ipods being sold on the scale they are cd's still continue to dominate the market. Digital distribution is still FAR from being a reality and even farther from being mainstream. I believe physical formats will still be dominant for at least another 20 years or so.enygma500

CD sales have been declining year over year for years now and iTunes is now the #1 music retailer in the country.

People forget that millions of people don't even have access to broadband. Rural customers, for instance, have no choice but to use dial up which maxes out at 56K for standard use (112K if you use two phone lines and what used to be referred to as a "shotgun" modem).

Beyond that, many people who have access to broadband don't purchase it due to cost.

Beyond even that, everyone having the form of broadband mentioned which would be used for all digital media distribution would require massive upgrades to the architecture of the very internet itself (New wires, heftier and potentially more backbones, etc). And these requirements will continue to grow as the size of the media continues to grow.

DD is viable for a segment of the market (which will continue to grow), but it has decades to go before it completely replaces hard formats.

mattbbpl

In all honesty though, if you're still on dial-up are you even a person who has a HDTV and wants hd content? Do you buy DVDs? Do you even have a TV?

Physical media won't die anytime soon, but I think the "people still on dial up" is a bad argument because clearly they aren't the least bit tech savvy. They probally don't even get that much physical media.

DD is not only held bac k by internet speeds but also for the fact that people like to go out and shop and actually lay their hand son the things they buy DD yes will get bigger but i think people will still perfer to buy stuff at a storeGen007

they'll die out in time; give it 8 years after DD is introduced mainstream and teenagers will lap it up, just like cellphones.

[QUOTE="enygma500"]physical formats aren't going to just keel over over night. napster/mp3's was supposed to be the end of cd's like 10 years ago or some crap. but still cd's sell like wildfire. hell even with ipods being sold on the scale they are cd's still continue to dominate the market. Digital distribution is still FAR from being a reality and even farther from being mainstream. I believe physical formats will still be dominant for at least another 20 years or so.Senor_Kami

CD sales have been declining year over year for years now and iTunes is now the #1 music retailer in the country.

People forget that millions of people don't even have access to broadband. Rural customers, for instance, have no choice but to use dial up which maxes out at 56K for standard use (112K if you use two phone lines and what used to be referred to as a "shotgun" modem).

Beyond that, many people who have access to broadband don't purchase it due to cost.

Beyond even that, everyone having the form of broadband mentioned which would be used for all digital media distribution would require massive upgrades to the architecture of the very internet itself (New wires, heftier and potentially more backbones, etc). And these requirements will continue to grow as the size of the media continues to grow.

DD is viable for a segment of the market (which will continue to grow), but it has decades to go before it completely replaces hard formats.

mattbbpl

In all honesty though, if you're still on dial-up are you even a person who has a HDTV and wants hd content? Do you buy DVDs? Do you even have a TV?

Physical media won't die anytime soon, but I think the "people still on dial up" is a bad argument because clearly they aren't the least bit tech savvy. They probally don't even get that much physical media.

I'm the only one of my extended family with broadband. I live in chicago and they live in rural areas in the central part of the state. Other members own HDTVs and one even has an SACD player.

Broadband isn't available everywhere. Many places in fact.

As for the quote "Do you even have a TV?", I'm not sure what that's meant to imply, but these aren't technically illiterate people you're talking about. They're tens of millions of everyday people. Two of the previously mentioned family members are even in the IT industry - one a System Software Specialist (Mainframe Programmer) and the other a Systems Security specialist.

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

I'm on a standard comcast connection, and I get download speeds of upwards to 1.4 meg/s.. Not to mention I am quite sure you will be able to play movies and such while downloading at the same time.. Games would take an hour at best.. Its here to stay buddy.

An IT specialist thats still on dial-up is clearly one who comes home and wants to get as far away from anything technical as possible. Like those CEOs who live in log cabins rather than a mansion and act like they hate money.Senor_Kami

It isn't available where the IT specialist lives.

[QUOTE="rimnet00"][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.

Javy03

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.

Well i agree that Hardmedia won't go away, I dislike having DRM attach to my purchase that i know i cannot get rid of. However hosting large movie sized files with bit torrent type programs is already common, most of the bandwidth burden will be unloaded onto the users.

Sharing DD will not be simple and there will always be more restrictions where and how you can view your media. The fact is all the movie studios and entertainment industry holds the general public under suspicion, im not going to buy into that.

An IT specialist thats still on dial-up is clearly one who comes home and wants to get as far away from anything technical as possible. Like those CEOs who live in log cabins rather than a mansion and act like they hate money.Senor_Kami

Here is the thing they are the minority.. Businesses do not care for you, when the majority of the market is moving to cable modem..

Of course it'll happen. It's just a question f how far into the future it'll be. I don't think it'll be happening next generation..or maybe even the one after that... bt it will happen.darkslider99

I garentee it will happen next gen.. On the xbox360 alone you can download full movies and watch them.. Same goes for the PS3 and some of their games.. Then fast forward to PC's.. Stores like Gamestop are dropping their pc inventories because of their DD system they now have at their sight.. The majority of new games out there for the PC you can download.. AND sights like Netflix now have direct download movie watching...

Take into account that storage is becoming insanely cheap.. Flashcards are up to 32gbs of space in the commercial market.. Thats LUDICRIOUS amount.. Take in account that 1 terabyte (1000 gigabyte) hard-drives are being sold on the pc for just over $200.. Add that up and in a few more years when next gen consoles come out.. There will not be a space issue.. I honestly think 500gb would be fine for a next gen console..

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.

SecretPolice

the only problem with dd is the stupied regonal junk. ubi, thq, rockstar, atari etc need to get the head around releasing games dd everywhere. I can buy their games in the shop but not through steam which is stupied

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

well steam is doing to retail pc games sales what itunes has done to cd sales, dd is killing the retail pc market and if consoles had dd, games store would be hurting really bad

[QUOTE="Shazenab"]

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

ProudLarry

well really conections aren't that bad, here in nz where conections are pretty bad, you can easily get your game downloaded over night

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

PBSnipes

if you internet is good enough for online gaming its good enough for dd

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?

niall077

I haven't bought cds for years now, dd owns in music, and it's awesome now digirama offers most songs in mp3 with no copy protection

[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.

Exactly, people who thinks movie market works the same as music market is simply naive and needs a reality check.

Physical format will be around another century. The only thing that I would see physical data cease to exist is when everyone has personal nano computer at the size of a wristwatch with hundred terabytes and hologram tv screen.

[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.

well steam can handle the hl2 flood most of the time so there isn't a problem there, you can always get you game unlike retail when often new release games are sold out

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.

hdd's are very reliable now, just back it up to another drive if you must

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)

box are a waste of space and what says you can't do making of the game dvd through dd?

4. Piracy, just saving them one step

dd steam is very hard to crack so saves devs lots in piracy, and no need for devs to get a publisher, they can just load it straight to steam with no evil, ea, ubi, thq etc

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.

physicak media is a waste of space and resorces, renting games is a waste for most games

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.

current broadband is fine for dd, leave a game downloading at night, its done by morrning

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.

well buying one or two songs is a waste as it costs as much for 5 songs as the whole album and I have never downloaded a singe song. one thing dd has over retail is no need for putting disk in, keeps all your games together, automaticly updates etc etc

[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.

did you know you can put you whole steam folder on a external hdd, take it to a friends house and it will work just like putting a disk in? though not and you can download the games at your friends by loging into your account, steam is tied to the id not the hardware

[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.

exaclty here in nz telecom who owns the phone lines has annonced it will be replacing the copper cable with fibre optic to the main centres by 2011

[QUOTE="rimnet00"][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.

Javy03

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.

steam and d2d are already big and require huge capacities and work fine 95% of the time

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.

Imagine if your house burnt down and lost all 300 movies, ouch, with dd you can always get them back and the servers can cope, look at steam, it could handle when the orange box came out and all versions of the game has to run through steam, retail or dd

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.

with dd I wont buy retail unless its really cheap or it not for sale through dd, I don't want cases wasting space. I big list of games on my steam account is much better, when you have pc games you don't really ever look at the cases.

4)Easier Piracy

lets see what easier to pirate gears of war, crysis (retail), cod4 (retail) or the orange box, hymm good luck trying to get anything but the original hl2 working without steam. steam is the best copy protection ever. when did hl2 ep1 come out? oh 2006 still no real cracks for it, tf2, portal, ep2 nothing what so ever in the way of cracks, steam is 1000000000x harder than retail to crack

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.

[QUOTE="shoeman12"][QUOTE="Shazenab"]

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

Javy03

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?

hard drives are dirt cheap, 500gb is cheaper than the 120gb 360 drive and 750gb is only a bit more and that's alot of video. even the 20gb 360 drive is more expencvie than a 500gb hdd so your point being? and talking bout digital tv only a couple and years and the anolge tv is going to be turned off

In my opinion I hope DD never becomes the stanadard, its much better to own a physical copy.Re5ident_Evil

I think dd is much better no disks to find somewhere to store, no need to get the disk to instal/play the game.

[QUOTE="rimnet00"][QUOTE="Javy03"]

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

well the cd store here in nz are dying off rather fast, one of the biggest chains when bust last year, and this is basicly due to itunes/digirama

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.

MP3s are still not the majority in music sales, and DD for music is not the same as DD for movies. It makes sense to get music with DD because it takes a couple seconds and you arent FORCED to buy the entire CD for 16 dollars when all you want is one or two songs. Not to mention the fact that music is easily enjoyed either at home or even more popular on the go with MP3 players.

Movies are not the same. Its not very convenient to watch a 2 hours movie on a 4 inch screen on the go. Downloading it, especially if its HD is not nearly as convenient and currently the new thing is HD sound and video which would be hurt with compression for DD.

And look at games, the most popular systems so far, WII and PS2 have some of the worst online capabilities.

Again I see DD working for music, short mini games and DLC, but not for movies. There just isnt any perk, disks dont take up that much space at all, especially if you are the minority that doesnt want to display them, by a CD case and just store them all there and put it in a closet without their boxes. But of course most people want the boxes and want to display them.

also...why do you assume that movies have to be downloaded before they can be watched?

you can watch movies while they are downloading...or just stream them alltogether.....

cobrax25

that's a very good point, look at all the game videos now offered in hd streaming, movies can easily be streamed, so not much waiting time

[QUOTE="TeamR"]

[QUOTE="Javy03"]

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

Itunes launched in 2001.

electronichouse.com/article/apple_takes_over_no_1_music_sales_spot_for_january

"On the whole, digital downloads made up nearly 30 percent of total music sales, which just highlights more of the music sales trend that the NPD Group has been tracking. It found that 48 percent of U.S. teens didn't purchase a CD last year, Ars notes."

No, Music CDs arent dead, but they are on about the same timeline as cassette tapes when music CDs first launched. And 8-tracks when cassette taps came on to the scene. Nothing dies out immediately, but older technology gives way eventually.

NPD...key word. You are talking about one region. One regions capabilities and habits do not reflect the rest of the world. Again overall these are stats that still say, most people buy CDs. MP3s have been around alot longer then itunes has and still CDs are here.

well here in nz dd is dominating

[QUOTE="TeamR"]

[QUOTE="Javy03"]

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

Itunes launched in 2001.

electronichouse.com/article/apple_takes_over_no_1_music_sales_spot_for_january

"On the whole, digital downloads made up nearly 30 percent of total music sales, which just highlights more of the music sales trend that the NPD Group has been tracking. It found that 48 percent of U.S. teens didn't purchase a CD last year, Ars notes."

No, Music CDs arent dead, but they are on about the same timeline as cassette tapes when music CDs first launched. And 8-tracks when cassette taps came on to the scene. Nothing dies out immediately, but older technology gives way eventually.

NPD...key word. You are talking about one region. One regions capabilities and habits do not reflect the rest of the world. Again overall these are stats that still say, most people buy CDs. MP3s have been around alot longer then itunes has and still CDs are here.

well here in nz dd is dominating

DD will be the death of specail edition edition packs, which will then be the death of hardcore gaming.

Come on fellow PC fans, theres nothing wrong with leaving your house and buying a copy at the store.

Re5ident_Evil

there is when steam as the game for $50usd when the store has it for $100nzd ($78usd) plus dd is just much more convenent and the special edtitions are nothing special and can easily be done through dd

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?

niall077

Actually I think movies will be even less for the immediate future. TC is wrong DD maybe the future but it won't be used by the majority for at least another 50 years..

[QUOTE="niall077"]

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?

-Renegade

Actually I think movies will be even less for the immediate future. TC is wrong DD maybe the future but it won't be used by the majority for at least another 50 years..

50 Years? Technology doesnt move that slow .. 10 years tops.