Overlooked in all of the hoopla about the Warner BluRay decsision was the announcement at CES by Comcast and Panasonic of a co-branded set-top box, called AnyPlay, with a removable 60-gig DVR and 8.5 inch LCD screen (see link). The unit will be available in early 2009 and will support hi-def video. Coupled with plans by the cable cos. and Verizon FiOS TV to add extensive amounts of HD programming, both linear channels and video-on-demand, it means that, in as little as a year, consumers will be able to download HD movies directly to a home unit and view them on any TV in their (or a friends') home, or take them on the road.
The cable industry's research group also announced its solution for an open-source cable platform, called tru2way. In a nutshell, the technology would make all cable systems compatible with each other (currently, there are a number of propriteary standards, led by Motorola and Scientific Atlanta, meaning a set-top box or other cable device that works on one system cannot be used on another). The AnyPlay box uses this technology. The consumer electronic industry has been pushing its own open-platform solution based on the Cable Card, but, given the fact that Panny has de facto signed on to tru2way, the latter seems to have the leg up.
This, of course, is in addition to ongoing efforts to deliver video content, including hi-def films, directly to home computers and media servers via the Net. It's only a matter of time before bandwidth and other issues are ironed out, allowing high-quality video to be distributed over the web in a reasonable download time. Finally, more and more movies are being offered on VOD day-and-date with the home video release, eliminating one of the biggest advantages physical media have had over cable and satellite delivery for the past two decades.
What does this mean for disc-based hi-def video like BluRay? My guess is that it's going to be a fairly short-lived holding pattern until video, like audio, enters the 21st-century download age.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6517425.html
Sorry to widdle on the campfire, but this is all pie in the sky nonsense.
The vast majority of towns/villages in the UK & europe do not even have high speed ADSL at this time, and they seem to be stuck with - at the best - ISDN lines at a whopping 128kbps.
The companies that are trying this download/streaming model are finding they are losing fortunes, as the fat pipes necessary are either non-existent in the real world or else in the case of downloading as you desire, you get limited here with "Fair Usage" usage caps to a riduculous 2Gb or just over every month. That's not even one decent resolution film.
There are millions of people with no internet access at all, and no plans to ever bother.
Move more than 8 miles from the telephone exchange, and it's "goodnight is all she wrote" as you will be limited to ISDN.
Just who, exactly, is supposed to be picking up the bill to rewire the entire world for streaming/download on demand models, and who is going to pick up the internet download tabs?
What type of server farms are going to be required to handle this - IF it ever happens?
In the UK, we cannot even get a national network to reliably stay up & running passing simple documents (ask the NHS who have laid out £32 Billion (that's $75 Billion in dollars) for a network that slows to the point of being utterly useless as soon as more than a couple of hundred people are on it at once) - I know this is all europe, but in the US things are hardly better. You have vast tracts of your country where even cellphones won't work. What chance has this model got of working? Not a snowball in hells.
Wireless isn't going to do it either, as the EM radiation will cause big problems further down the line. If you could see in Infra Red you would be horrified about the constant bombardment of Infra Red & ultra/Sub sonic audio we have been surrounded with.
Channel 4? I assume you're talking about 4oD here?
Problems, problems, problems.
Proprietary player that is loaded with spyware.
Serious (And I mean
serious) limitations on use.
See
http://www.channel4.com/4od/terms/ for the conditions. You get 7 days to watch it, and that is your lot. On the "buy to own" downloads, you are restricted to the system it is downloaded to - believe me, I have managed to (after a heck of a lot of work) get stuff copied to another system, but the WMV system used is so DRM heavy that it is impossible to get it onto a DVD. It goes so blocky - VHS is actually far better.
The downloading/streaming model is still a pipedream.
20 years time - possibly. Not for the forseeable future though. The infrastructure just does not exist.
