It Hit Me Like A Bolt Of Lightning!!!

[orchidsofwrath]

This hit me just now and i just NEED to tell someone (my family is so no with it in technology so they'd be no fun to tell). please feel free to tell me why this notion doesn't work... There must be something wrong with the idea...

If Mini DV tapes store HD video with 48 khz audio (higher than your average cd quality) and are only like 3 bucks each... Then why do we have blue-ray????? Wouldn't it be possible to just sell mini DV players (which are MUCH cheaper than Blue-Ray players mind you) separately and attach them to your TV...

[twoneil]

Cause you can't randomly access all the information on any point on a tape.

So you can't skip chapters/ no main menu /no special features (except maybe in the end of the tape)/ no useless games & softwares.

but would be ideal to have it cheap....
anyway...if many will be produced then it will cost less.
Since there are more MiniDV tapes than people buying it, the price is low.

The blu-ray discs $ should go down soon.

The discs are still limited to two layers. I'll be waiting for 3D memory.

[lordtangent]

The best argument I can think of against MiniDV tapes is that they would never survive as rentals.

While we are getting struck with lightning, my question would be: Why do we even have physical media at all these days? With h.264/AVCHD, broad band and cheap Flash and hard drive storage, I don't see the point of the need to own "disks" at all. I mean, Hard Drive space is 20c a GIG. It's actually cheaper than MiniDV tape, and if you some how managed "ownership" of a particular titles more as a "license" than something attached to a piece of physical media you would not have to worry about your HD crashing or anything like that since you could always just get another "copy" when you needed it.

[orchidsofwrath]

its a sweet idea lordtangent. we would all simply need fast internet. (which would undoubtfully be cheaper and more available if the world were to move over to server media)
I like it. Tomorrow I'll chat it up with a couple people and make the change :)

[twoneil]

Wireless is the way to go then!

The media will be floating anywhere and whoever has a license have access to it. We are the ones to choose which medium we store it into (which is useless since it's already available wirelessly)

So a license should not be limited to a single medium.

[Erik Bien]

Here's an option: a solid-state video player (http://www.akman.com/index.php?p=vr4_hd) that uses either Compact Flash or an optional hard drive and plays out through HDMI, for $295.

[Rikki]

No doubt that will be here by 2010

[lordtangent]

I hope things are moving this direction. Really, appliances like the XBOX and PS3 make this sort of thing quite do-able already.

The biggest impediment is actually the copyright holders. They can't even agree on a single disk format even with the benefit of hindsight from at least TWO rounds of previous "format wars" (VHS vs. Beta, Divx vs DVD). How will they ever agree on a license management scheme for "floating" media?

Well, the other issue of course is the reality of piracy. Of course, "water marking" can help with that. And watermarks are actually much harder to defeat than the lame-ass encryption schemes they have been using. Would you risk legal action by sharing media that was basically serial numbered to your name? The only complication for them is they would have to create a unique version for every person who bought a copy. I've actually developed a system for handling that efficiently. (Can't share details of course...) My point is, there are no real excuses. It's totally doable.

One can dream I suppose.

[RScottyL]

This hit me just now and i just NEED to tell someone (my family is so no with it in technology so they'd be no fun to tell). please feel free to tell me why this notion doesn't work... There must be something wrong with the idea...

If Mini DV tapes store HD video with 48 khz audio (higher than your average cd quality) and are only like 3 bucks each... Then why do we have blue-ray????? Wouldn't it be possible to just sell mini DV players (which are MUCH cheaper than Blue-Ray players mind you) separately and attach them to your TV...

Also, don't forget about DVHS as well!

Anyway, my feel is that once dvd was released, then I don't think people don't want to go back to tape mediums, such as VHS or anything to watch movies on.

As was mentioned earlier, with tapes, you can't skip to certain scenes, or skip around like you can with optical media.

Besides, Blu-Ray players are a new technology, and will come down with time. If you are old enough to remember, VHS/Beta players/recorders were over $1000 when they first came out.

Also Blu-Ray discs have the size (up to 50 GB) and the video and audio bandwith that tape can't match.