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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

#41

Post by liotier »

Ekaros wrote: post #29
eru wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well yes, on other hand there is also hardware acceleration case which make lot of sense when you are manufacturing devices at scale. And with codec. What code it is in? For what architecture or operating system? What is system constraints it has to operate in? Do you have some specification? Do you need to due something beyond it for new codec. And from security viewpoint running some arbitrary code from disk sounds…

Easy: ship source code and the whole compiler toolchain, also in source form, with bootstrapping instructions for a generic machine that future archaeologists will trivially port to whatever architecture is in vogue in year 32768 !

Joke aside, this question is close to the file format obsolescence problem in long term digital preservation: the longer the term, the closer to bootstrapping the answer is.

In the shorter term, detailed metadata, widely used containers and choice of codecs that have well-known open source implementations is a good start.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#42

Post by smolder »

lukan wrote: post #22
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"

They could offer you a download link, that is valid for 10 days. Or since storage is cheap, stays valid. But why change a running system (and I have an external USB DVD device).

Offering USB flash versions would make sense, too, given the low cost presently. There's probably a market for write-once flash drives.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#43

Post by cubefox »

soulofmischief wrote: post #19

On the other hand, the rise of longform independent games and film journalism/criticism on YouTube has filled the gap pretty well. The other aspects of DVDs, the materialism/commercialism, DRM, I don't miss. My ideal consumption format is a fucking file.

I'm pretty sure DVDs didn't have any DRM. Netflix & Co do.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#44

Post by robinsonb5 »

Ekaros wrote: post #29
eru wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well yes, on other hand there is also hardware acceleration case which make lot of sense when you are manufacturing devices at scale. And with codec. What code it is in? For what architecture or operating system? What is system constraints it has to operate in? Do you have some specification? Do you need to due something beyond it for new codec. And from security viewpoint running some arbitrary code from disk sounds…

> Well yes, on other hand there is also hardware acceleration case which make lot of sense when you are manufacturing devices at scale.

This. In those days any general-purpose CPU with enough grunt to do realtime software decoding of MPEG2 and hypothetical newer codecs would have needed a fan - which would have been a dealbreaker for a living-room appliance.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#46

Post by mkesper »

cubefox wrote: post #43
soulofmischief wrote: post #19

On the other hand, the rise of longform independent games and film journalism/criticism on YouTube has filled the gap pretty well. The other aspects of DVDs, the materialism/commercialism, DRM, I don't miss. My ideal consumption format is a fucking file.

I'm pretty sure DVDs didn't have any DRM. Netflix & Co do.

Pretty sure they have. It's just been broken long ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#47

Post by zxexz »

no92 wrote: post #30
lukan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could offer you a download link, that is valid for 10 days. Or since storage is cheap, stays valid. But why change a running system (and I have an external USB DVD device).

Depending on the jurisdiction, the minimum required storage time for medical data varies - but it needs to be kept around usually. Patients can, within that time frame, request that data to be provided, but may be required to pay some fee to cover the material costs. In my jurisdiction, this time frame is 10 years, and radiology data is usually provided as a paper slip with a link and password, valid for 1-2 years, o…

FWIW, I'm in a jurisdiction with a 10 year retention requirement, and also have had no issues getting imaging data from beyond that (on DVD, of course - one department even had a side hustle selling external DVD drives for $50 on the side; they even offered to drop the files onto a USB drive for free).

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#48

Post by thrw42A8N »

smolder wrote: post #33
Ekaros wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes, on other hand there is also hardware acceleration case which make lot of sense when you are manufacturing devices at scale. And with codec. What code it is in? For what architecture or operating system? What is system constraints it has to operate in? Do you have some specification? Do you need to due something beyond it for new codec. And from security viewpoint running some arbitrary code from disk sounds…

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

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#49

Post by cubefox »

That fact that all the bonus material on DVDs (documentaries, audio commentaries, story board drawings etc) was hardly appreciated at the time until it went away in the Netflix era is something that also reminds me of movie awards.

Many film classics were only really appreciated years later, and we are left to wonder why they didn't won an Academy Award at the time while some other totally unremarkable movie took it instead. I think it's this: Often we assume that certain things (e.g. certain types of movies, DVD extras) just will be as good or better in the future, and often they do, but if they unexpectedly get worse, we realize that we did hit a high water mark in the past without noticing at the time.

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