What will replace DVD?

[SomeKid]

What will come after DVDs?

My guess, and this really should have happened by now IMO, is the following:

Look at your RAM. Small, thin, compact. Far as I know, it doesn't degrade in 3-5 years. Imagine a player, that plugged into your USB slots, and you simply snapped a piece of what looks like RAM into it. As RAM becomes more able to hold memory, so too could this movie file. There you go. No moving parts, it would be a VERY simple player that would work for a long time. Easy to store/use/can even be removed from the PC and stored easily OR used on TVs as well, all without a mess of cables and crap. Even better, I can see ways to easily hook it to a wireless router, and you could then have multiple TVs play the same move, at the same time.

What do you guys think?

[Manedwolf]

RAM is volatile memory that vanishes when it loses power.

Flash memory is nonvolative, but degrades in about 10 years unless it gets power.

[Firethorn]

Somekid,

First, as manedwolf said, RAM is volatile.  No Power, No Data.  Still RAM -> flash and I get the point.  We can currently fit a gig of flash into a card smaller than a postage stamp.  They're working on technologies with 10X the density and faster write speed.

The problem I see with that stuff is it's just too easy to lose.

Second, move your devices up a step.  Either eliminate the USB reader, placing the reader directly into the computer or dedicated player, or have the devices come with a USB or successor interface.

Just remember that a DVD costs the big boys on the order of 10 cents each to make, before packaging.  Any replacement needs to be on the same scale, otherwise we end up simply switching to CD version 4. (DVD is version 2, HDDVD&Blueray are competing 3's).

As for size concerns - I can see this becoming seen in stores - Look at DVD packaging, then look at HDDVD/Blueray packaging.  Games used to come in huge boxes, now they're being placed in DVD movie type cases.

[Manedwolf]

DVD-5 costs even less than 10 cents now. If you make a glass master and produce them by replication on a mass scale, it's insanely cheap.

[drewtam]

RAM is volatile memory that vanishes when it loses power.

Flash memory is nonvolative, but degrades in about 10 years unless it gets power.

Yeah, but after 5-7 years its time to upgrade to your next level of storage anyway. The 1gb flash now becomes 10gb flash, the 10gb becomes 100gb, etc. Its really not hard to transfer all that data on to a new drive. But it is a time consuming task to sit and make a 100 new DVD copies as the originals get all scratched up.

[SomeKid]

I see what you guys were saying, I want to be clear, Iw as not meaning to say use RAM. I pointed to RAM as the size/way it fits kind of thing. Basically, as you guys hinted, a flash-drive was more or less what I meant, I should have said flash drive.

The reason I do not incorporate it into the computer (though it could be) is because my idea has the piece that holds the data fit into a reader that used USB ports. The reader could be removed easily, and with an adapter plugged into your TV so you could use the same reader to watch the same movie, on a different device. With different adapters, you can watch the movie on anything that can play a movie. Plug it into your cell phone, laptop, etc.

What do you guys think?

[Manedwolf]

I see what you guys were saying, I want to be clear, Iw as not meaning to say use RAM. I pointed to RAM as the size/way it fits kind of thing. Basically, as you guys hinted, a flash-drive was more or less what I meant, I should have said flash drive.

The reason I do not incorporate it into the computer (though it could be) is because my idea has the piece that holds the data fit into a reader that used USB ports. The reader could be removed easily, and with an adapter plugged into your TV so you could use the same reader to watch the same movie, on a different device. With different adapters, you can watch the movie on anything that can play a movie. Plug it into your cell phone, laptop, etc.

What do you guys think?

You mean my iPod Touch with the video-out connector?

[SomeKid]

Yes MW, even that. The idea is have a bunch of adapters a person can buy so they can attach this to whatever device they want to play the movie on.

[jeepmor]

It's actually legit technology. Certain kinds of polymers could be "written" in three dimensions at the point where the X and Y lasers converge inside the block, and read the same way.

Intel spent a couple years on this technology and finally gave up.  We (Intel) were really hoping to make the harddrive a thing of the past.  Unfortunately, the polymer stuff was not mechanically cooperative when performing failure analysis on the devices because the polymer melted under our ion beam milling tools.  And the polymers did not take well to diamond lapping sample prep where we grind back to a known defect location for analysis simply because the polymer was too "gooey" and either melted or deformed because it wasn't hard like silicon, oxides, nitrides, copper, aluminum, lead, tin and other materials the usual semiconductor devices are made of.  I had a friend who worked directly on this project in their failure analysis department and this one problem essentially killed the project.  Sure, there was other roadblocks, but when you can't analyze physical failures, it's hard to know why things aren't working.

Having done failure analysis in semiconductors for about 7 years now.  I can say with a large degree of confidence that is a large contributor to moving technologies forward.  We don't fix anything, but we can find to specific layers and even what part of a single transistor cell that failed so the development facility and/or factory can concentrate on the segment of tools causing the problem to fix it.  When everything turns to goo, or smears terribly, much like lead, that's a real achilles heel to progress.

I am sure some company still working this gold mine because when it comes through, it'll be yet another significant shift in technology, and lucrative at that.  Right now, there's a move to bond chips together so that compactness can be capitalized on.  Beyond that, I don't think I've given anyone enough info to go out and steal this stuff out from under Intel's grasp for there are a lot of companies that are researching and developing this.  Intel is revisiting optical technology again, but I'm not certain where it's at.  I don't work for the development organization any more and couldn't share anything even if I did.

As for future, whatever replaces the DVD is going to be memory cards in my thinking like the flash drives now.  The network is already stepping in with the netflix example already mentioned.  The main speed limitation of devices nowadays is harddrive access time.  Electronics, with no mechanical limitations from a motion perspective, are waiting for the mass storage devices to catch up.   This polymer technology is that next leap, getting there is proving rather troublesome though, the failure analysis being a major roadblock.

[ilbob]

Anything that has been digitized can be stored on any kind of file storage media from hard drives to cds. The important thing is that you have secure storage of that file.

[Firethorn]

The reason I do not incorporate it into the computer (though it could be) is because my idea has the piece that holds the data fit into a reader that used USB ports. The reader could be removed easily, and with an adapter plugged into your TV so you could use the same reader to watch the same movie, on a different device. With different adapters, you can watch the movie on anything that can play a movie. Plug it into your cell phone, laptop, etc.

What do you guys think?

I was thinking of eliminating a step.  Rather than moving the player around, you move your video memory chip around.  While USB readers may certainly exist to retrofit onto computers, I'd rather see the reader integrated into things like TVs, receivers*, and Game Consoles.

*For those who don't use their television's speakers.

[MechAg94]

Most printers already come with camera memory card slots to print pictures directly. 

[SomeKid]

Fire,

While it could be integrated, where you simply insert the chip into the side of a TV, PC, or whatever, there is no reason not to have a portable version so people can connect them to phones, or other devices. See what I mean?

[Manedwolf]

Again, the problem is shelf life.

If unpowered, flash memory degrades in a decade. If you have media on your shelves, it'll lose data and become corrupted.
Also, static will wipe them out. Ever have an SDcard wipe itself because you picked it up after scuffing across a wool rug? It happens. 

The shelf life of a replicated DVD is about 1000 years, or until enough of the ink from the printed side leaches through the plastic and corrupts the data layer. The shelf life of the glass masters is infinite.

[Perd Hapley]

I have an idea.  We could pay the actors to travel around the country, performing the movie in front of people, probably on a raised platform in a large venue.  There could even be different groups of actors performing the film at the same time, in different places. 

Will that work? 

[RevDisk]

As for future, whatever replaces the DVD is going to be memory cards in my thinking like the flash drives now.  The network is already stepping in with the netflix example already mentioned.  The main speed limitation of devices nowadays is harddrive access time.  Electronics, with no mechanical limitations from a motion perspective, are waiting for the mass storage devices to catch up.   This polymer technology is that next leap, getting there is proving rather troublesome though, the failure analysis being a major roadblock.

I think solid state will be the future.  Eventually.  But I think the CD/DVD/HD-DVD shape will hold on for quite a while yet.  The biggest issue with flash cards is that there are a billion different kinds, all with different interfaces.  That's why you have 51-in-one USB devices to read your memory cards, with a dozen or so different slots.  Until there is some level of standardization, flash devices cannot and will not replace the plastic disk with a hole in the center.  For most users, we're limping by via accessing flash by USB.  (flash drives, card readers, etc)


For my company, disk speed is our highest bottleneck.  We have 10 gigabit ethernet as our backbone, which spikes at maybe 5% utilitization at the most I've ever seen.  Our server CPU's average maybe 10, 15% except for the database servers.  We have plenty of disk space, but the speed at accessing the data is very low when you have to yank it off the platters.   

[Firethorn]

While it could be integrated, where you simply insert the chip into the side of a TV, PC, or whatever, there is no reason not to have a portable version so people can connect them to phones, or other devices. See what I mean?

The problem, as I see it, is how likely is a phone going to have a USB port?  You need an interface somewhere.  Which would you rather have, a chip inserted into your phone, or a larger device hanging off the phone?

Heck, you could even go wireless with much of this stuff - your computer or media center provides data access to stuff within range, or over some flavor of ethernet.

Then we're kinda back to my subscription service idea - no postage stamp sized movie cards to have to worry about, unless you're going mobile somewhere you don't have much of a link.

Manedwolf, given that we're talking about future storage methods, I think that we'd be allowed to assume that the ten year thing might be overcome.  When users talk about 'flash' they're actually talking about a range of technologies that present the same experience to the end user - essentially it's a short word for 'Non-volatile RAM'.  Heck, if you're selling them in the stores, we could be talking about almost going back to the cartridge - straight ROM, not flash.

That might have a longer shelf like, just as how pressed DVDs have a longer lifespan than burned DVDs.

[Manedwolf]

Solid state ROM has always been durable, yes. You can pick up a 30-year-old Atari cartridge and it will play just fine.

[Vodka7]

Moving to solid state doesn't make any sense, mainly for the reason Manedwolf has brought up (ten years?  when every other type of media life span is measured in decades or centuries?), but also for the reason of price.  Really though, another reason is you can't sell small flash drives in a "sexy" manner without slapping them in a much bigger box.  Advertisers don't want people to have to squint to read the title on a small 3"x1" box, so they'll slap the drives in a box the size of a DVD case or (worse) a computer game box.

And really, by then, what's the point?  You've got media that doesn't last as long, is more expensive to produce (especially on a per-gig scale compared to BD/HDDVD), and takes up the same amount of physical space.  And the plusses are what, exactly?

Media will stay disc based until something we can't even imagine today raises the possible capacity exponentially.

As for VOD, two things are working against it--the ability to archive, and the ability to share.  The truth is, you wouldn't have twelve bookcases full of books, movies, and CDs if you didn't really love *owning* things.  And yeah, I'm an avid reader, but even I rarely go back to a book more than once every two years, and that's only for my favorites.  I'd say 50% of my collection only got read once (by me), and that was it.  Another 25-40% only get read twice, and the rest are the only ones it really makes fiscal sense for me to own, as I've already read them multiple times and will keep reading them.  So why do I own hundreds of books when I really only get full use out of 10-25%?  The rest I could have checked out from the library once or twice.

Well, the answer is, I like people coming over to my house and going through my book collection.  I like them picking up a book and us having a conversation about it.  And I really like being able to send them home with a small stack so that we can talk more when they've finished reading them too.  Instead of a big inviting bookshelf in a nice warm room, you'll have the equivalent of a spreadsheet on a monitor that they'll have to wade through in alphabetical order.  And more importantly, you won't have the ability to lend out your VOD license rentals--a friend wants to watch your copy of Band of Brothers?  Well, they get to go home and rent the entire thing themselves, giving the studios even more money.  Or they can camp out in your house for the next thirteen hours and watch it there.

Either way, leave me out.  I have no problem with VOD putting Blockbuster out of business, but I don't want it ever to replace a collection of physical media.  (Although, I do throw away my DVD cases and covers now and put all my discs in binders.)

[Manedwolf]

Moving to solid state doesn't make any sense, mainly for the reason Manedwolf has brought up (ten years?  when every other type of media life span is measured in decades or centuries?), but also for the reason of price.  Really though, another reason is you can't sell small flash drives in a "sexy" manner without slapping them in a much bigger box.  Advertisers don't want people to have to squint to read the title on a small 3"x1" box, so they'll slap the drives in a box the size of a DVD case or (worse) a computer game box.

Some analysts have found that one of the things that worked against the Sony UMD discs used for movies on the PSP is that they were "just too small to be real movies". (!)

That's been a longheld perception. People want their devices to be small, but, oddly, larger size of a media item means more quantity. For the most laughable example, unscrew one of the original NES cartridges...the huge ones. There is, inside, a small chip on a small board, a 72 pin connector...and a whole lot of AIR. It was perception that you were getting more, so they made them more than double the size of the Japanese Famicon cartridges.

[Perd Hapley]

Solid state ROM has always been durable, yes. You can pick up a 30-year-old Atari cartridge and it will play just fine. 

No, actually they're much clunkier and slower than I remember, and pretty cheesy, too.   

[Manedwolf]

Solid state ROM has always been durable, yes. You can pick up a 30-year-old Atari cartridge and it will play just fine. 

No, actually they're much clunkier and slower than I remember, and pretty cheesy, too.   

Oh, just take your square, and stab the duck with the arrow. At least there wasn't load time. 

[Perd Hapley]

There was Duck Hunt for Atari? 

[Manedwolf]

There was Duck Hunt for Atari?