When I purchased my Bluray player almost a year ago I thought I was investing in the next, preferred format of digital media. The technical malfunctions of my player put aside I can say the format (when it works) delivers excellent quality video and audio. Bluray is marketed as the next step in home entertainment but based on my experience the next step won’t involve any disc or handheld media at all. It’s all going to be streamed to our homes over the web and much sooner than we realize.
History is repeating itself and history, in this case, is less than ten years ago. There seemed no apparent battle between MP3 formats and CDs. The mind share of CDs was so high that few people considered MP3 a valid competitor. There were few legal sites that provided high quality recordings and most people didn’t feel compelled (or understood how) to convert their CD collection into this new format. Several factors speeded the shift (past tense).
Memory dropped in price. Almost all portable music players are now exclusively based upon solid state, non-volatile memory chips. Ten years ago the best players could only hold two or three CDs worth of music. MP3 players also offered models that utilized laptop hard drives. This boosted capacity and, very quickly, people realized partial (or entire) collections of CDs could be stored at a reasonable quality.
Availability became widespread. The iPod cannot go without mention but the crucial component of the iPod became the iTunes Store. It opened up a market of digital music. By including plenty of locks against piracy, called digital restriction/rights management (DRM), record labels felt safer when distributing new and existing music titles. The masses arrived with cash in hand, ready to download.
Listeners accepted lower quality audio. The convenience of obtaining digital music and not carrying a stack of CDs seemed to outweigh any marginal benefit of sound quality. A generation raised on FM radio realized that having the music on hand was most important. Another benefit offered by MP3 players was displaying tagged information on artist, album, and song. Consumers liked knowing the information available on the CD covers they could no longer hold.
The previous three factors are not the exclusive reason for the downfall of CDs but certainly hastened it. Cost, which is always influential in decision making, was omitted. Why buy a CD full of music you might like when you can spend $1 and get a single track you know you’ll enjoy? There are analogous situations that will undermine the development and spread of Bluray. Indeed, the mere distribution of more Bluray players could be speeding its demise. More will be discussed on that later. Now, the previous three issues need substantiation in terms of Bluray (future tense).
Viewers will accept lower quality video. If Neflix’s quality is any indication, then streaming video is off to a great start. Compression algorithms, which squeeze bits into an internet-friendly size, are getting better. HD-like video is now possible. It doesn’t match Bluray but it comes close. Separate information for subtitles and alternate audio tracks are still a problem for streaming sources. The benefit, clearly, is getting the movie you want, when you want it. There’s no waiting except an initial period of buffering so the video doesn’t stutter when played. My prediction is that streaming services will offer tiered pricing for the quality level you prefer.
Availability will become widespread. The limitation now is the pipe for streaming video. Not everyone will have a fast enough web connection (initially), thus, the tiered pricing. The hardware for playing these videos is also a limitation but, as mentioned earlier, Bluray may be killing itself. Each Bluray player runs a very small computer, which decodes the various features of the format. Also critical is the network port built-in to support the BD 2.0 or BD Live features. Currently, BD Live is not used for streaming, just retrieving movie extras from the web. Finally, most Bluray players have the ability to update their internal software via the network port. Essentially, this means is that each Bluray player has everything necessary to make streaming movies its primary feature: software, the ability to update that software, and networking. Video streaming features are being added to the Playstation 3, Wii, and the X-Box 360, well after they were manufactured and delivered.
Memory will drop in price. Because Bluray players have very little need for internal memory (data is stored on a disc or streamed on-demand), the primary consumer of memory will be the distributors of the streaming video. To offer tiered video quality, it will mean multiple copies of the same movie are stored on a server somewhere. That data quickly adds up when you consider storing thousands of feature films. When a cost analysis says that storing that video and delivering over the web is more effective than disc delivery, Bluray’s end will approach even faster.
The latter part of this essay is, of course, speculation. When momentum keeps an industry moving in the same direction (think CD to DVD to Bluray) such a change is not like flipping a switch. Yet we’ve seen this very switch happen with CDs and MP3s in less than a decade. When choosing between buying a Bluray and renting a streamed movie, consumers will weigh the benefits, evaluate which one is cheaper and easier, and go with it. Technology be damned.
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