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We all took the DVD boom era for granted

filmstories.co.uk

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Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#51

Post by dspillett »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #17

I still prefer to own movies I like and I have many of them. (no, not SO many as YOU have, my adversary). I think that having them will allow me one day to stop paying constantly more and more expensive subscriptions. By the way, for me, the DVD standard was very strange. I think that the engineering industry works differently than IT/CS guys. They think of "a product" which consists of the medium AND the "protocol"…

> When new codecs were created, the DVD could have been enhanced in terms of better quality,

That wouldn't work for such a mass market product made by many manufacturers, many of them cutting every corner that they can. Newer codecs often require a bit more power or memory to run so even if there was an upgrade path many players would be locked out of newer discs or disc makers would be forced to put two formas on the disc, one for better players and one for those capable of only the baseline, reducing the amount of space available for actual content.

DVD players, and consumer devices like them, are intended to be “black boxes” to the user, not something that they need to service by applying updates, and there wasn't the connectivity available back then that there is now for that to be done automatically – people would have had to bring something to the machine incurring a distribution cost. This couldn't be “just download and stick it on a USB drive” because many people didn't have much by way of Internet access at all at home, or often didn't even have a computer (or had one that wasn't recent enough to have the fancy new fangled USB thingies, and USB drives weren't the cheap throw-away trinkets they've since become). Remember: the standard was invented in 1995, first available to the public in 1996, and rose to significant adoption in the early 2000s.

You could include the update on the DVDs themselves, but that adds two problems. First there is security/stability: something could accidentally (or maliciously) brick the user device. Second is compatibility: they would have to constrain the hardware options considerably, rather than it being “anything that can run this codec” many more implementation details would need to be fixed in the standard. You also run into the earlier problem: there is a limit imposed by the lowest common denominator in hardware, either you have to dictate better hardware in the standard which makes things more expensive for the public (that would have massively slowed the early adoption) or you are only adding a little flexibility not enough for the process to be worthwhile.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#52

Post by DoctorOetker »

Ekaros wrote: post #21
p0w3n3d wrote: post #17

I still prefer to own movies I like and I have many of them. (no, not SO many as YOU have, my adversary). I think that having them will allow me one day to stop paying constantly more and more expensive subscriptions. By the way, for me, the DVD standard was very strange. I think that the engineering industry works differently than IT/CS guys. They think of "a product" which consists of the medium AND the "protocol"…

It is perfectly sensible to consider data and medium to be single product when you cannot update the software running on products that read it. It was not great sell to tell people to go get new player each time new codec was released. Or tell that these new movies do not work anymore. Have to remember that DVD was released in pre-always-connected world.

could have been accommodated by putting executable codec files ON the DVD.

A good brand would buffer compute and memory capacity by a decent factor at time of sale in order to support future codecs needs...

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#53

Post by DoctorOetker »

soulofmischief wrote: post #20
p0w3n3d wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, DVD is still a standard in medical imaging, which baffles me, because many people do not own drives anymore, but I think this is as close to "owning your own test results" as possible. I cannot imagine someone saying "sorry, you have not extended your subscription to our health-cloud and your results are gone"

When I was 15 I discovered that my local doctor lost all of my medical records. Poof, all gone. Whoops, next patient please. My last doctor no longer had a copy of my files, either. I had to receive all of my vaccinations again over two sessions before attending public school.

did you by chance undergo any operation you never consented too?

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#54

Post by dspillett »

guappa wrote: post #16
grahamlee wrote: post #10

It seems to me that the extra features on DVD were originally part of the marketing benefits driving people to adopt the format because the studios preferred it to VHS because of CSS and region-locking. Then they found they had painted themselves into a corner making all these extra features that people came to expect, until finally streaming let them get back to “just the movie”.

VHS were dubbed… no need to do region locking.

Many VHS were subbed instead. Sometimes two versions of a popular film were released, one dubbed and one with baked-in subs. This did limit the desire to copy between regions a bit, though not as much as you might think given how many people speak one of a few languages as a second language.

I suspect the cost of physical distribution and good copying equipment was the key issue until fairly late on in the life cycle of VHS as a common tech. Region locking just wasn't thought of because by the time it might have made significant difference other limitations of tape based media format were readily apparent and new systems were being designed and implemented.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#55

Post by Cumpiler69 »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #52
Ekaros wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is perfectly sensible to consider data and medium to be single product when you cannot update the software running on products that read it. It was not great sell to tell people to go get new player each time new codec was released. Or tell that these new movies do not work anymore. Have to remember that DVD was released in pre-always-connected world.

could have been accommodated by putting executable codec files ON the DVD. A good brand would buffer compute and memory capacity by a decent factor at time of sale in order to support future codecs needs...

>could have been accommodated by putting executable codec files ON the DVD

You probably don't want that kind of capability since it ends up being used for nefarious purposes by the rights holders and media companies.

For example the keys on your BluRay player can be revoked just by playing a BluRay disc, as the drive first reads the code on the disc and executes the appropriate code to "update" your player according to the wishes of the DRM overlords. It's a very anti-consumer feature. Sony was also distributing their music CDs with rootkits to try to prevent piracy.

I think VHS and Laserdisc were better since they had little DRM and you could freely rewind and view whatever parts you want at your own discretion. The advent of tech also meant the advent of anti-user DRM that dictate how the (paying!) user must enjoy the content.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#56

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

thrw42A8N wrote: post #48
smolder wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution of the day would have been to put a .jar on each disc and it would have been a nightmare, I think.

There's a JAR on every SIM and payment card and it works fine. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Card

That Java runs on the SIM, not on the AP. The DVD equivalent would be the Java running on the DVD itself, but a DVD is an inert plastic and aluminium sandwich. And even if it looks portable, it’s not. In practice there’s just enough quirks that code written for one Java Card won’t reliably install and run on all others. Actually portable Java Card that would work like DVD codecs would need to work didn’t come until eSIMs, which is decades later.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#57

Post by vouaobrasil »

I wish there were a way to just pay for a movie on a site and download it as an mp4 in 1080P or 4K. I hate streaming because I only want to watch 1-2 movies per month and they are very specific (like a specific martial arts movie or action movie). Streaming interfaces often have DRM and horrible interfaces and I don't want to pay a monthly fee for something I'll rarely use. Don't understand the DRM because pirates get a better copy anyway.

Right now, there is no better and more convenient interface than piracy and I wish that weren't the case.

Edit: there is such an interface for classical music, e.g. Hyperion. DRM free and one-time payment, and I've used it a lot.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#58

Post by paxys »

eru wrote: post #26
Ekaros wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is perfectly sensible to consider data and medium to be single product when you cannot update the software running on products that read it. It was not great sell to tell people to go get new player each time new codec was released. Or tell that these new movies do not work anymore. Have to remember that DVD was released in pre-always-connected world.

You could stick the codec on the DVD itself? They are relatively small programs.

That would mean letting the disk execute arbitrary code on your machine. No way that ends well.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#59

Post by doublerabbit »

sourcecodeplz wrote: post #45

Why bother with DVDs when you have torrents and russian streaming sites...

I enjoy watching movies without having to wait four hours to download a Blu-ray rip on my 2mb ADSL.

"I feel like watching a movie, NAS" vs "I feel like watching a movie, ETA: 4 hours"

And besides my TV is dumb enough that I'm proud of it. It supports DNLA and works well.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#60

Post by doublerabbit »

guappa wrote: post #15
cladopa wrote: post #9

I didn't like DVD. Those screens and advertisements that only made you loose time. I used those to "learn" French and German and the subtitles never matched what was said. When you are advanced in the language you don't care, but when you are learning it is a big flaw. The DVD usually only had English (and another one) audio tracks, subtitles in several languages, but not audio. You had to buy another DVD from Amazon…

Eh at least on linux you could skip the ads. On windows or hardware players it was annoying. Not that VHS didn't have ads. I remember my little mermaid VHS that had a few minutes of promo for disneyland before starting.

You still had the copyright warning: "this video could be a fake, mum the quality is all fuzzy, check for the shiny sticker thing" on Disney movies.

But at least you could skip past it.

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