The Battle between On-Demand, Cinema and Blu-ray Feb 2014 | Page 2
Cinemas offer experiences you can’t get at home. 3D viewing on the big screen, immersive experiences, and
of course first runs at movies. As long as popular movies are released first at the cinema then people will
flock to see them.
DVD’s, Blu-ray, and beyond
DVD’s may indeed phase out but that is because Blu-ray has finally caught on.
But Blu-ray appears here to stay. “Despite the dire predictions about internet distribution making physical
media obsolete, Blu-ray has thrived,” says Andy Parsons, BDA president in an article on TechHive. Sales are
up over 21 percent this year. This reflects the fact people just like to own their own stuff. With a live
streaming services the content comes and goes. Your favorite movie today may disappear tomorrow.
There will always be rural, remote areas that are just not cost effective for private industry to provide
coverage. Governments may still mandate the coverage, but how long that will take no one knows. In the
meantime, people in those areas may rely on Blu-ray.
Blu-ray gets better. At the 2013 consumer electronics show (CES) in the U.S. manufacturers were showing
off their 4k (or Ultra HD) TV sets. The new standard offers a resolution 4 times better than today’s HD.
Looking ahead, some TV shows and movies are already being filmed in 8k (16 times higher resolution than
standard HD). The Blu-ray standard is investigating how to evolve to meet the new standard – and there’s no
reason to think that it can’t. But the file size of a 4k is much larger too. No one knows exactly, but the bitrate
needed to stream a 4k movie is estimated to be around 20-30 Mbps. One two hour movie will likely be tens
of gigabytes – easily exceeding most data plans today. So until there’s a way to efficiently stream that much
data to limited Internet connections or mobile devices, the physical media will stick around.
So it’s likely that all forms will be used for a long time. But when it comes to anything based on technology,
the one thing we can say for sure is that anything can happen. One new invention or application can change
everything. Do you have any predictions for the future of films and how we’ll watch?
For More information on Live Video Streaming and Video Hosting, please see http://www.planetstream.net