DVD: The Short Goodbye?
By Harry McCracken | Friday, October 9, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Over at Yahoo Tech, my friend Chris Null blogged about an interview the Motley Fool did with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings in which the DVD-by-mail tycoon says he thinks DVD has two years left as the primary delivery format for movies. That’s a little like hearing the president of McDonalds opining that burgers are on the way out. But it also sounds like as sensible a prediction as any.
As Chris says, Hastings didn’t make clear what he thinks will replace DVD, but the likely scenario presumably involves the format suffering at the hands of both digital downloads and Blu-Ray short-term, and virtually all distribution being digital over the long haul. (At least I’m assuming that we’ll all look back at Blu-Ray as a stopgap.) There’s still lots of work to do–relatively few of us have any way to watch content from the Internet on our TVs, for instance–but an awful lot can happen in very little time.
I suspect that I’ll still pull out DVDs from time to time for years to come–for one thing, I have hundreds of them and no interest in repurchasing or recreating all of them in purely digital form. (Hey, I even watch VHS from time to time.) But I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if I buy my last new DVD in 2011. And I look forward to seeing how Netflix works to reinvent itself as the neat idea the company was founded on becomes obsolete. (Its Watch Instantly feature is a fun start.)
Your forecast, please:
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A Screen Near You » Blog Archive » Why DVD Still Reigns Supreme Says:
October 13th, 2009 at 5:54 am[…] write a post about why I think DVD still outsells any other medium for video media for a while and this post over at Technologizer gave me a bit of a […]
October 10th, 2009 at 8:21 am
If Netflix offers a plan where you can watch Instantly (either on the computer, Roku box or Xbox 360) without having to pay for the DVD delivery, then it will accelerate the demise of the DVD delivery. The DVDs from Netflix currently sit on the entertainment system, yet we don’t want to cancel the service because we enjoy the Watch Instantly feature.
October 10th, 2009 at 8:54 am
I can see Bluray pulling ahead as the dominant physical medium for movies by 2013 (see http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=3494), but whether or not online distribution takes off really depends on the selection. Currently, Netflix streaming is no substitute for physical media distribution due to its paltry selection.
October 10th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
1. DVDs are cheap. Blu-ray disks are not.
2. Broadband speeds/access in the USA are lousy.
3. 5+ years, but it is the last physical medium for motion pictures.
October 10th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Heck, you can still buy videotape(blanks anyway). The point is bluray is not growing as fast as DVD, and direct download or streaming just doesn’t work. I think Netflix is talking out of their A**es. so at least 10 to 15 years.
October 11th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
I think DVD has less than 2 years. Blu Ray players are getting cheaper and cheaper. Once burning with Blu Ray becomes cheaper DVD will be a distant memory.