Quote Originally Posted by Mr Peabody
Several months ago I posted a thread in "news & rumors" that CEDIA was cancelled. CES is still happening. I know several dealers who plan to go and it will probably gain more interest this year since CEDIA was cancelled. The story I read said it was cancelled due to the expense of the thing and the dealers/manufacturers were opting for personal training and meetings. Yet, the Rocky Mountain show still goes big guns.

VOD is just a sales option for cable. No one really cared about the PPV portion until the recent advent of VOD where you can go in and pick a show to watch. If my kids wanted to see Sponge Bob at 8 pm just go to On Demand and find it. It was a nice feature. I never watched any movies like that because my cable company was lucky to have the movie in stereo and it wasn't any better than 480i. Cable varies from city to city in quality. There would be a lot of obstacles to over come for VOD to be any threat. One of the big ones is not everyone has, or wants, cable. They'd have to provide so many times the variety they do now and get it offered quicker. You can rent the video long before it ever hits PPV.

The only people who would pay for downloaded movies are computer geeks and maybe gamers. The biggest obstacle here is not everyone has a computer, and those who do either don't know how to download or don't care to, I fall in both catagories. I couldn't even get my firmware upgrade off Samsung's website, and, I really wanted that. Dealing with music on the computer is cumbersome. Be for real, downloading movies will not be mainstream even if all things were perfect. The only way downloading may work is if those behind it come up with another box. Something you can hook to the TV and plug into the wall and all one has to do to get a movie is push a button. Then I might be interested. This going to a website, finding it. clicking this and that hoping it downloads and once it does then knowing what to do with it and how to get it to my TV, forget that crap. I just think if this is my opinion what would be the opinion of most of the people who don't even have a HDTV. I don't see downloading replacing a disc either. I will rent a movie to see if I like it. If I feel it has enough entertainment value that I might watch it again, then I will buy it. The same if I ever downloaded, it would only be for a one time preview. Come on, you are talking about a country that needed a product to make using the VCR easier. You think downloading a movie will be mainstream? Do you think people are going to pay the Geek Squad a couple hundred bucks an hour to come out and download their movies?

I guess this is the way its going to be, I talk about downloads over CABLE and people respond by talking about downloads over the friggin NET.
The space between channel 3 and 4 is the ENTIRE space allocvated to cable modems.
Thats it. What I meant by this is that the REST is available for regular channels, VOD
(what used to be called PPV ) and the like.
The fiber optic system being installed by cable companies has huge bandwidth and is upgradable, my system went fiber less than a decade ago, do you think they spent
millions of dollars for a system that is outdated already?
And mr p you talk about getting the "geek squad" to help with movie downloads, then talk about using the ondemand service, which is basically VOD.
And sure the quality isnt quite up to Blu-ray, who cares? ITS FINE FOR MOST.
Sir t, you old dinosaur, just keep chewing your cud, dont pay attention to that big rock
coming in over the horizon.
Downloading has changed the entire music industry, the only difference between
music and movies is bandwidth.
And maybe the average size of a screen is 40" now instead of 32" , again, who cares?
Its still a far cry from 130", which is almost eleven feet!!!
The quality of my VOD (again, OVER CABLE) IS VERY GOOD, AND THE hd IS 1080I
Really shows what you know when you denigrate HD vod by saying its "only" 720P,
WHICH is actually higher resolution than 1080i
Rear projection TV (with CRT) used to be a major player, I had a panny 47in, paid two grand for it, about what a 15" LCD cost. Who would want one of those?
The time? the distant past? Try FIVE years ago.
HD was a "gimmick" ten years ago, now its the coming thing.
They sold 300 million CD's in 1992, how many did they sell last year?
The future of rental is summed up by one word, SERVERS.
There will always be movie collectors, just like collectors of other things.
But oil has hit over a hundred bucks a barrel, the optimistic prediction for gas this spring is 3.50-4.00 a gallon, if you think they will keep making shiny discs out of this precious
resource so it can deliver something you can get over a wire, you're dreaming.
Movie collecting is going to be the major market for "hard copy" media, and a lot of people who do keep movies will keep them on Harddrive or solid state.
They already have solid state camcorders and laptops.
What I am saying basically is that digital wasnt just the CD, the CD was just a harbinger
of the future, a radically new way of processing, storing, and displaying information.
And the digital revolution is far from over.
Gone are the days when there will be a form of media that everybody will use, like VHS
and DVD, HARD copy media will be strictly for libaries and collectors.
What I have been saying is that the "format" war is like the Falklands war was described,
"two bald men fighting over a comb".
In other words being the next DVD isnt going to be like being the LAST DVD, and after spending hundreds of millions the "winner" isnt going to be as rich as he thinks.
And the phrase , Sir t, "company shill" is a totally acceptable way of describing company spokespeople, get you heart off of your sleeve and pull your lower lip back in.
And finally, you may be surprized that unlike you, most men , including myself, don't wear "panties"