Good post. I have always been of the same opinion: high-def DVDs are doomed to the same fate as the high-end audio formats. I assure you that HDCD and DVD-Audio discs sound really great on a high-end stereo system, but they don't sound great enough for the mass market to actually give a damn.
I can’t even guess what mass movie downloading would do to the internet’s overall structure, but I’m sure it will adapt.
It is just not that big a problem. There are only so many movies in the world -- the good ones take time and money to make -- and 1TB hard drives are now cheap. Let's see... Netflix claims to have 90k titles. An HD-encoded movie seems to average 20-25GB. Let's call it 25GB. By my calculations, that means I need something like 2200 TB to hold the entire Netflix library in HD form. That's like $200k worth of drives, and shrinking fast... and that's for one copy of every film in Netflix. I don't think the idea of putting one such server in every city, or even every few city blocks, is particularly radical at this point, and it will seem even less radical in six years when the cost is down to
$13k (with, one hopes, concurrent shrinkage in energy usage and support costs).
We'd have done this already if it weren't for the licensing issues. The BitTorrent hobbyists have been pretty darned successful already, considering that using BitTorrent to swap commercial movies is not only kind of complicated (relative to, say, TiVO) but also illegal.
> I personally own one DVD, because there’s only one movie that I sometimes suddenly feel like re-watching without having to drive to Blockbuster or wait a few days to get from Netflix.
I'm almost paralyzed by my desire to know what that one movie is. Totally irrational, but I MUST know. I've discovered my purpose in life. I suppose there's a little Asperger's in all of us.
I've never been able to relate to Lebowski for some reason. Loved many of the other Coen bros films, though. Using Matt's criteria for movie greatness, I can name several other movies off the top of my head that are much more quotable than Lebowski: Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, Blues Brothers, Airplaine, Holy Grail, Fish Called Wanda, Napoleon Dynamite, Pulp Fiction.
...I must be significantly older than Matt, I guess.
Best quote ever...
"Sometimes I Question Your Commitment To Sparkle Motion!"
from Donnie Darko (cult favorite - if you haven't seen it, rent it, watch it, and spend 2 hrs afterwards reading on the Net to figure out what you just saw)
That movie list is a pretty good snapshot of movies I HAVE watched more than 5 times. I wonder, though, would I be inspired to watch them that much if I didn't have physical media of them lying around? The ease with which I can throw one on while I am doing scut work or something kind of lends them a tendency to be played more, I think.
For example, I just downloaded and watched "Jackie Brown" in a window while I was fiddling with Python stuff for work. My "Jackie Brown" urge is pretty much satisfied, to the point where it is unlikely that I will want to watch it again in the next year or so. For "Jackie Brown", it is simpler for me to just snag it off a tracker than to purchase a copy, since I have no interest in watching it all that often.
Interesting read. Definitely made me think about what films I have on disc, and which ones I download, and what delineates the two.
It seems a little too generous to attribute "It would be bad." to Ghostbusters. Or the last one, which is basically Vaudeville. You might as well say you're quoting Earth Girls Are Easy every time you say the word "the", because it's in that movie at least once.
Vaudeville: True enough. In fact, I can only use that around close friends who are already familiar with the original quote. If I said something like that to anyone else, they'd think I'm being an ass.
It would be bad: You have to use it in the proper context as a gross understatement. As in every atom in your body exploding at the speed of light would be bad. True, the same line has been used as an understatement in other movies, but the Ghostbusters instance sticks out for some reason.
I seem to constantly be quoting John Carpenter's The Thing.
"'Cause it's different than us see? 'Cause it's from outer space. What are you asking me for? Ask him"
"I realize you gentlemen have been through a lot, but if you can find the time I'd rather not spend the rest of the winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!!"
It does occasionally occur to me that perhaps I'm having the wrong types of conversations.
I would not say, that PS3 was a flop. Sale numbers are in the millions. And, since we are talking about high-def video, as high-def player PS3 whoops ass (in sales) compared to any other high-def player.
I also do not agree completely about irrelevance of high-def format. If it's not that important, then why were Toshiba and Microsoft pushing with their own format ?
I can’t even guess what mass movie downloading would do to the internet’s overall structure, but I’m sure it will adapt.
It is just not that big a problem. There are only so many movies in the world -- the good ones take time and money to make -- and 1TB hard drives are now cheap. Let's see... Netflix claims to have 90k titles. An HD-encoded movie seems to average 20-25GB. Let's call it 25GB. By my calculations, that means I need something like 2200 TB to hold the entire Netflix library in HD form. That's like $200k worth of drives, and shrinking fast... and that's for one copy of every film in Netflix. I don't think the idea of putting one such server in every city, or even every few city blocks, is particularly radical at this point, and it will seem even less radical in six years when the cost is down to $13k (with, one hopes, concurrent shrinkage in energy usage and support costs).
We'd have done this already if it weren't for the licensing issues. The BitTorrent hobbyists have been pretty darned successful already, considering that using BitTorrent to swap commercial movies is not only kind of complicated (relative to, say, TiVO) but also illegal.