Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We all took the DVD boom era for granted

filmstories.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 381 posts

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#141

Post by dylan604 »

nemomarx wrote: post #101
dylan604 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing a physical product is not even close to the same as sharing a digital file. If you share a book/VHS/DVD, that physical item is no longer usable by the original person until it is returned. A digital file shared means the both people now have a file for as long as they want it and now each can share as much as they want.

people could make copies of the physical object, right? you should always record a new album onto a cassette or etc.

The vast majority of people can't make copies of books. Just because you could make a copy of something doesn't mean you had the right to. In fact, the small print stated that you could not for the purpose of redistributing it. If you bought a CD but only had a cassette player in your car, nobody cared that you made a tape for your own use. If you gave that cassette away, then that's in the no-go zone.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#142

Post by openrisk »

browningstreet wrote: post #88
openrisk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

since when is the "general public" arbiter of wisdom? The masses will embrace anything that smacks of short term convenience and will tolerate enormous amount of abuse because caring for anything actually requires effort. This starts with thinking, collecting objective information among the torrents of marketing and misinformation, agitating for your rights and (horror, horror) even sacrificing immediate gratificatio…

They're not the arbiter of wisdom, they're the arbiter of commercial success & market viability, which is always a bell curve to the bottom (see Stanley Cups and cupcake, boba, and dumpling retail [in the US]). I worked in the film industry, in DVDs, at the height of that market. Sales of DVDs tumbled. End of story. There was nothing for the studios to do because the ROI was dead, and their previous efforts (which we…

> Calling capitalism's market economics an idiocracy is.. tautological.

Thats definitely not true. The most ardent and smart defender of markets argued that they operate and optimize within the boundaries that society decides. If you legislate that people should be able to repair, own, exchange etc. stuff then markets will deliver exactly that. If you let them race to the bottom thats also exactly what you will get.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#143

Post by acuozzo »

actionfromafar wrote: post #50
maccard wrote: post #28

My biggest gripe with DVDs is how loud they are. There's nothing worse than being in the middle of a quiet scene in a movie and hearing the drive spin up.

You should try LaserDisc :)

My Pioneer LD-S2 is silent during playback.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#144

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

retrac wrote: post #136
codedokode wrote: post #94

The problems with streaming services: - they do not allow anonymous usage (you need to provide a visa application worth amount of personal information) - stupid geographical restrictions - they tend to limit quality, both for copyright and traffic saving purposes As an intermediate result, a generation of people is growing who got used to watching digitally compressed audio and video (social media, especially for mob…

> a generation of people is growing who got used to watching digitally compressed audio and video It is unfortunate how today phone calls are often heavily compressed. Back in the 80s, 90s, 00s the digital phone network would stream uncompressed PCM audio at 64 kbps and the rest was analog; calls often sounded better back then than they do today. Once we accepted the heavy compression necessary to make early digital…

I know effectively nothing about these topics but I recall having that thought the other day.

With Apple users FaceTime audio has far higher audio quality than a "typical" phone call

Wondering what accounts for the difference. I assumed, if anything, audio compression would be more "aggressive" on web-service based calling than "traditional" calling.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#145

Post by openrisk »

infecto wrote: post #86
openrisk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

since when is the "general public" arbiter of wisdom? The masses will embrace anything that smacks of short term convenience and will tolerate enormous amount of abuse because caring for anything actually requires effort. This starts with thinking, collecting objective information among the torrents of marketing and misinformation, agitating for your rights and (horror, horror) even sacrificing immediate gratificatio…

On the flip side, this is one of the best times for people who enjoy movies/media. I can purchase near almost any movie to my hearts content. Streaming is super convenient, I don't have to think about how to store the digital media. I don't need the physical media taking up space. Heck I even love to pay for a 24-48hour digital rental. I can spend $3-4 and get a movie to watch instantly. I don't care about DRM. Its o…

> living in a world of constraints

kinda funny to think you are not subject to constraints when your access to the limitless potential library can be revoked at any moment.

pressumably you also don't own any house, car, books, clothes, etc. as that gives you limitless potential to rent stuff.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#146

Post by reginald78 »

jasode wrote: post #131
jhbadger wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or rent a movie for a couple of bucks. Or check out a DVD for free from a public library.

>Or check out a DVD for free from a public library. Major downsides to that alternative. My 80-year old friend started borrowing DVDs from the local library 6 months ago as a personal protest against Amazon Prime adding ads to their streaming. So far, made 3 trips to borrow DVDs and all had various issues: 1) checked out White Collar tv seasons but library only had seasons 1 to 3. Library didn't have last 3 seasons a…

I used to use netflix DVD as a great supplement to a few streaming services. For awhile they had just about everything and were pretty reliable, which meant the occasional extra media didn't require a separate service just a bit of waiting. But then they let it rot and stopped replacing disks before finally shutting it down. I wish they'd just sold it and let some one else run it for maintenance costs but I guess it was probably also a competitor to their more profitable streaming service.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#147

Post by bluGill »

liontwist wrote: post #67
soulofmischief wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Now instead of losing a yellow folder, a system will lose 1 million people’s records all at once. Aren’t school vaccines registered with the state? Given how many parents cannot keep records, I am surprised the solution would be “get them again”.

Offsite backup needs to always be the answer. Fires have always been a concern in any human situation. Plus lots of other accidents.

Of course the real hard part is how do you mark a record as do not restore anymore. In a medical context this isn't much a problem, but in other cases it is an issue.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#148

Post by iggldiggl »

nemomarx wrote: post #101
dylan604 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing a physical product is not even close to the same as sharing a digital file. If you share a book/VHS/DVD, that physical item is no longer usable by the original person until it is returned. A digital file shared means the both people now have a file for as long as they want it and now each can share as much as they want.

people could make copies of the physical object, right? you should always record a new album onto a cassette or etc.

Analog copies had to deal with generation loss and were orders of magnitude slower than a digital copy, plus you subsequently had to physically transport/mail/… those copies around.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#149

Post by blitzar »

fidotron wrote: post #108

Not mentioning the non-skippable anti piracy noise that ironically made the legit product worse than the pirated one poisoned the well for interactive features later on Blu Ray. Who cares about getting extras if they are hidden behind obnoxious menus and abusive junk when the Internet will tell you anyway? That said I remember that era fondly because of things like the Tartan output. In the UK if you had a multi regi…

Now I pay for the content and get unskipable ads before, durring and after the movie.

Oh how I long for the You wouldn't download a car days

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#150

Post by bluGill »

arp242 wrote: post #32
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"…

How would that realistically work? Because "just use a new codec" would mean you'd end up with old DVD players not being able to play newer DVDs, and a very frustrating transition period. They would be different incompatible discs. That is: a different standard.

Call it blu-ray because that is what it is. If you just want a new codec with the same media you need some DVD2 label and get DVD player manufacturers onboard with the new spec so that players are common before the first disc. Also because consumers are not happy about replacing their DVD players all the time you have to not create new specs too often. (or perhaps you can have a standard decoder cartridge which can be put into your existing DVD players and sells for $5 thus making upgrading to DVD3 not a big deal). there are lots of options, but the point is always don't make it too hard for consumers to know their DVDs and drives are compatible.
Post reply on HN