162 Comments

1. You make a lot of sense, but DVD’s are pretty and shiny! On top of that Blue Laser sounds very cool. How are HD’s gonna beat that?

   Comment by Peter Broen — August 21, 2004 @ 6:40 pm

2. Mark, your comments on the growth of HD resulting in the end to piracy seem a bit over simplified. Your argument is based on current download speeds and technology, namely that piracy will cease to be a problem because files will become so large that the time it takes to down/upload them will serve as its own buffer to piracy. Why do you think that the technology affecting the speed off downloading and uploading will not keep pace with other new technology. I don’t know the actual technical limits ,if such things exist, but it seems to me that the growth in use of hard drives as a media container would lead to a cooresponding growth in piracy. Namely that as people have more access to media and greater ease of use, they will be able to share it more easily.

   Anyways that’s my two cents. On a side note I think your Airport kiosk idea is brilliant. I know I would definitely stop and download a movie every time I flew if such a service was available.

   Comment by alex — August 21, 2004 @ 7:16 pm

3. Great post. Many thanks.

   Comment by soccer4ever — August 21, 2004 @ 7:16 pm

4. One of many elements of misinformation from the media companies is that upload and download speed will keep up with filesizes. .They havent.
   We have gone from VHS to DVD and now HD. Even compressed using Windows Media, DIvX , Mpeg4, whatever, will only push to bigger filesizes.
   A compressed DVD 2hour movie can be 900mbs, give or take. A compressed HD 2 hr movie at only Mpeg2/ATSC/1080i equivalency is about 9 GBS, at the low end.
   Thats 10x.. Do you see upload and download speeds increasing 10x in the next couple years? I dont…

   Then not too far beyond that, good content provides will provide lossless uncompressed, and thats at least 30gbs for the same movie….

   Do you see upload/download increasing 30x in the next few years ?

   I dont

   Comment by Mark Cuban — August 21, 2004 @ 7:46 pm

5. I suspect WiFi will become the future for interconnection of all local devices. You have your Wifi equiped television/player (in fact WiFi DVD players are already available and can stream data off Wifi networks).

   We already have 4GB of storage in something small like the mini iPod, so it’s not difficult to imagine similar storage sizes appearing on mobile phones/pdas.

   So how about:

   You go to your local movie provider (movie kiosk, super market, Blockbusters..) with you mobile phone/pda, connect to their WiFi network, browse their movies, download to you phone/pda.

   Watch your movie on your pda if you are on the move (and have good eyesight), or take it home and have your TV stream it off your phone.

   Billing could be tied into your phone bill.

   Comment by TommyA — August 21, 2004 @ 7:53 pm

6. This is a very complex and tough question to answer. There are three
   ways that I look at the challenge.

   You can’t give everyone bandwith? But can you give everyone compression?

   First convetional thinking tells us over the next few years the technology for
   storage will improve greatly. I think that
   the bumps on DVD will be smaller and closer together. Nano solutions are a little bit around the corner; therefore, I won’t even take a stab at some of the new ideas that are currently out there, or might surface.

   We will definitely see someone make a ton of cash creating a more efficient compression algorithm. I am also quite sure that
   polycarbonate plastic will be a thing of the past because of nano technology.

   Another conventional method would be the continued expansion of bandwith
   and lower pricing. Just as TV is free, bandwith will some day be free? I don’t see that really happening in the near future. It makes more sense. There are a number of challenges.

   But, I’ve learned never to say never. It’s a question of how to get Rolla Huff and gang to give it away free? Not gonna happen…

   I think the ordering of movies on hard drives is a little to complex for today’s audience. People tend to view films as a spontaneous action.

   Comment by slw1234@sbcglobal.net — August 21, 2004 @ 8:54 pm

7. I agree with the Wi-fi comment,as we move to low-cost high speed wireless ethernet networks the need for static storage devices is reduced and replaced by internet storage.

   Comment by scott — August 21, 2004 @ 9:31 pm

8. The underlying basis for this article is simply HD quality, and hence file size, is constrained by media type. Right now DVD is the media in vogue, but soon it will be either HD-DVD or Blue-Ray. What Mark is saying is why jump from one constraint to another temporary constraint; we should switch to media that has no boundaries and thus can achieve maximum qualtiy & user satisfaction. In theory its a good idea, but in practice it fails in many places.

   First off, the ideal distribution of content is network delivery, but as Mark touches on, bandwidth will not increase to the point where HD+ quality content is feasible over the public internet any time soon.

   Second best is distribution via media, and with that we have a couple of choices: DVD/HD-DVD/Blueray, hard drives, or solid state memory. Of all these, Mark says we should forget about the DVD and its cousins and should instead switch to hard drives and flash drives.

   Hard drives are bulky and its laughable to think people will be mailing these a la netflix. If the mail is lost, what would you rather lose, a $15 piece of plastic or $150 hard drive?! Other approaches like kiosk refills etc. could be an option, but that doesn’t replace disk-media by a long shot, just a niche service in airports. Also, the interconnect matters as the bus speed can make or break viewing quality. As he says, USB wasn’t up to par, but firewire worked well.
   Flash drives can be seen as hard drives without the bulk and mechanical issues, but it’s far more costly per mb.

   Compare this with simple DVDs (and HD/blueray). They are cheap pieces of round plastic, easily manufactured, easily consumed. People understand the process: buy disk, put disk in player, enjoy. They don’t need to learn about bus speeds, compression formats, connecting PC’s to the tv, etc.

   Right now it’s frustrating for entrepreneurs and geeks alike because we have all this content in digital form and a global internetwork for exchanging digital content just teasing us to develop a better solution yet we’re stuck with trading these little plastic disks. But these plastic it is going to stay until enough bandwidth or revolutionary compression gives us the golden delivery network.

   Comment by Haig Shahinian — August 22, 2004 @ 12:27 am

9. Not to open a can of worms…but.

   I think it will be interesting to watch how commercials and distributers will impact all of this. The cost of Television has always been off set by companies who wished to put there message infront of viewers or companies who charge via subscriptions.

   The technology will move as fast as people are willing to let it. If people will pay for it then it will happen. People will pay for movies and HBO is proving that people will pay for drama and comedy shows. But all of what you talked about Mark is very costly for most of the population.

   Just a thought but if a company who had the media content decided rather than broadcast they would deliver it directly. Content could be sent via media storage devices and if you so desired the entire season of a show could be “on demand.”

   To offset the cost of storage devices advertising could be embedded into the content, Thus creating a revenue stream for the distributer and thus keeping the cost down for the end user.

   PVR’s are gaining popularity because 1. they are great. But more importantly 2. Directv and others were willing to give them away to sign up customers.

   If a company who distibuted conetent via media storage devices gave people who signed up the neccessary equipment and was able to keep the price of the media down. I think that broadcasting as we know it may change.

   Comment by Jerome — August 22, 2004 @ 1:16 am

10. Every media has had to deal with the question of quality vs. quantity, and the winner is always content. LaserDisc players where all about quality, but they never took off against the VHS standard because content was all in VHS. You see it everywhere in the video game industry. No one cares who has the better games, only which platform has more games. Mac vs. PC. Didnt matter if the Mac was a better machine, only who could run more software. Palm dominated the handheld industry because of the quantity of software made for it. Consumers dont care about quality, only quantity. Its about choice. The same is true of every media: Music, TV, Video, Games, Movies…Just a thought, but it seems to me that super quality tv has a place in the ultra-luxury market. For the rest of the world, its all about choice, channels, and more choice. Which is why I think cable companies will use the extra bandwith to give consumers more options and the super quality stuff will go the way of the laser disc, to the graveyard of mass market products - to the homes of those who care about quality more then quantity.

    Comment by E Port — August 22, 2004 @ 2:15 am

11. I’d just like to note that you are one of my heros, for real. The idea of HD VOD is right on the money. I like that idea more than an external hard drive Netflix option. Also, airport vending of USB HD movies is a smooth idea. Not all laptops have DVD players… but they all have USB.

    Christopher

    Comment by Christopher Harbin — August 22, 2004 @ 3:26 am

12. Really thought-provoking post. Thanks. In regards to the limitations of DVD or disc based storage, however…

    I am curious as to what format movie theaters use when showing movies in digital projection. It seems like that format would have to have some serious storage/capabilities and I have been impressed with the viewing experience.

    Another option would be holographic storage. A company called InPhase Technologies is working on holographic technology that can hold 250GBs on a DVD sized disc. I have also read reports that it could be used in hard drives as well. If you haven’t heard about this, the most precise information I have found is at their website:

    http://www.inphase-technologies.com/technology

    Although I could have sworn I read about other companies in the race as well.

    Groovy,
    JtK

    Comment by Jason T. Kocher — August 22, 2004 @ 3:37 am

13. Airport kiosks sound like a good idea, but most people have a patience span of about 15 seconds in an airport, and a few minutes would be unbearable. If you could readjust people’s patience for your kiosk, then I think you’ve got something.

    Comment by Kathleen — August 22, 2004 @ 4:36 am

14. After thinking some more, I don’t see the kiosk options as likley. Do we not already have the technology to meet HDTV needs?

    In the UK, Sky satellite TV provides around 100 channels. Now that seems like plenty of capicity to include some HDTV content. What is the bandwidth requirements for good HDTV? I am guessing but maybe 4-6 times a standard definition.

    It appear to me that the future problems for TV/Movie does not seem to be picture quality or quantity of programs, but instead ‘how do I (the end-user) find the content I will enjoy, in the mass that is getting produced.

    There are more movies being produced then I can ever watch, more books written than I can ever read, more music created then I can ever listen to.

    We should be thinking about intergrating into PVR/TIVOs a system to recommend viewing to me. My friends/reviewer/.. could recommend content which gets placed on the Internet (in RSS feeds?) and I subscribe these feeds and my PVR determines and recommends viewing. Alomst the reverse of Spam filtering.

    Comment by TommyA — August 22, 2004 @ 5:45 am

15. I saw at least one software that will be distributed on HD soonish:

    http://vsl.co.at/english/pages/products_%26_shop/symphonic_cube/symphonic_cube.htm

    because of size (will be north of 500 GB last I heard).

    Not really low cost video stuff you pass around though, at $5000 plus a pop you can afford to throw in a $200 drive or 2. But it’s always the extreme stuff pushing the envelope first. Drop the HD price and make it less fragile (dropping one on the floor is no good at the moment), and ya, it’s doable imho, if no other technology betters it in the mean time.

    Comment by Pat — August 22, 2004 @ 9:45 am

16. But you aren’t paying attention to the pricing of flashdrives. You can buy 32 mb flashdrives for under 10 dollars. Soon those will be 256mb, and then 512mbs flash drives for under 10 dollars.

    Then it becomes an easy physical replacement., and there is a physical , cost and flexilbility reason to change mediums

    One of the reasons I did the test of a flashdrie with a movie is to see about ease of use.. Take my word, the flashdrive is far, far easier. Plug it into your USB port and watch. Never skips, never scratches, its reusable for storage if you are done with the move, and its far smaller than a DVD…..

    And as far as bigger hard drives. They are less than cig packs now. Smaller, but thicker than a DVD in size. They will only get smaller and are getting faster

    Its going to happen, just a case of when and by who

    m

    Comment by Mark Cuban — August 22, 2004 @ 11:18 am

17. I live in Tokyo where you can get 100MBps Fiber to the Home (FTTH) for about $55/month. Installation is pretty easy and the performance is incredible. It’s been around for about a year and a half and isn’t limited to just the metropolitan areas.

    The implications for this are that you can download a movie between the quality of VHS and DVD (using WMV or Divx) in <10 minutes with DVD quality within a half an hour. A raw DVD rip could be had in a couple hours. This would have huge piracy implications for DVDs. As a result the studios would be forced to either go higher def or ITunes style moderate cost+DRM.

    As far as the hard disk goes, I’d go ultra wide band wireless for the kiosk idea. Imagine just getting your laptop close to the kiosk and having a movie donwloaded in a 30 seconds. If you could get public libraries to do the same thing for documentaries and other hi-def where you just bring in your computer and download them for a period, it’d probably get people to start understanding the concept.

    Comment by Chris Yu — August 22, 2004 @ 12:28 pm

18. Sorry I phased out reading the rest of your blog on this after you said Key chain usb’s were easier to carry than DVD’s…
    What are you smoking anyway? Disks are small and flat.. and reliable.

    Comment by Mike Verinder — August 22, 2004 @ 9:55 pm

19. By the way.. I loved the Wifi comments..
    WIFI is the way of the future.. build a long-term strategy around wifi and you will win..

    If i had my pick i would center around WIFI and VOIP.

    Comment by Mike Verinder — August 22, 2004 @ 10:11 pm

20. I’ve always leaned towards HD based solutions for things like this. I LOVE my Archose 20gb MP3 player. They run under $100 on eBay and do almost anything you would need an MP3 player to do. Good cheap media PC’s DO exist, but you have to make’em yourself. Modded Xbox’s with monster HD’s added make terrific media PC’s that will do damn near everything you’re talking about. Audio, video and gaming in one, sub $400 package will all the audio video compatibility hook ups you could require.

    Comment by Scott Griffith — August 23, 2004 @ 9:25 am

21. Same thing in Scandinavia, where 100MBps Fiber to your house is a reality already. Being a TiVo-fan and living here in the US, I rarely watch live content (except for sports), so if I could order a whole season of a show in HD and have it downloaded over a couple of nights, I’d go for it. My main problem is storage of the content I own. I.e. DVDs. I’ve run out of shelfspace for DVDs so I need that TB drive soon!

    Comment by Magnus — August 23, 2004 @ 10:19 am

22. Mark,

    “Do you see upload and download speeds increasing 10x in the next couple years? I dont…”

    I do, because the consumers will demand it. Never mind the fact that 100Mb fiber is already available outside the US - the early adopters of broadband stateside were by and large warez junkies who wanted the high speeds so they could download more stuff (or so my experience has gone - the first people I knew who got cable modems were actively trading software and MP3s 7 years ago).

    I don’t think it’ll be long before someone offers 100Mb fiber here. Sure, the price will be steep, but early adopters will probably have little problem dishing out the money. A few years later, technology will allow the price to come down enough that your average Joe will be able to afford it, and content providers will start taking advantage of it.

    Comment by voyage35 — August 23, 2004 @ 11:07 am

23. I’ve heard about your weblog but until now have just passed it off as yet just another blog. However, I now will log on (and comment) often. The DVD vs. larger Media is something I had never thought about comparing. Keep up the challenge to conventional wisdom. BTW, care to share the encoder you used?? I’d love to try it.
    ~GEM

    Comment by GEM — August 23, 2004 @ 11:17 am

24. download speeds will not be increasing in the future. if you look at the numbers, not many households actually have broadband connections
    (23% in 2002 according to http://www.clickz.com/stats/markets/broadband/article.php/10099_1580601).

    you still see ads for AOL and netzero… would they still be in business if people didn’t use dialup anymore?

    of the households that have broadband (cable, DSL), the great majority is probably satisfied with their download speeds. after all, most people just use internet to browse pages and not to download content. thus, offering even more bandwidth would only appeal to a very niche market of extreme nerds (such as myself).

    no demand, no faster internet.

    Comment by larry — August 23, 2004 @ 11:48 am

25. You don’t seem to acknowledge the reliability/durability factor when comparing DVDs and hard drives. Hard drives have moving parts and are prone to failure. Nobody uses a single hard drive to store content they care about. They either copy it to a more durable media, or have redundant hard drives.

    Also, I don’t buy the argument that bigger file sizes will kill piracy. A typical CD audio disc holds about 600MB of data, yet Napster took off because people were exchanging that data in 60MB. Yes, there was some loss of quality, but the piracy still happened.
    When people that are willing to pirate are faced with the question: should I pay for this movie so I can watch it in its full HD glory? or should I just download a free compressed copy, with the full contents of the movie, but at a lower quality? Guess what the answer is, every time?
    Having the best quality is not important to this audience. The only people that care about having the absolute best quality are the people that shell out the bucks to buy the best home theater system to impress their friends. Those are the people that will pay for quality media, instead of the compressed pirated version. But the other audience, that doesn’t buy the top of the line equipment and just wants to watch the movie? Piracy doesn’t go away.

    Comment by Joshua Flanagan — August 23, 2004 @ 12:16 pm

26. Mark,

    Excellent thought all the way around and the portibility of HDTV broadcasts is the most important thing going on in the living room today.

    I’ve written a little about this in the past with two articles on my blog 1. 10 Things That Microsoft and Tivo each Must do to Win the Living Room http://thomashawk.com/2004/08/top-10-things-that-microsoft-and-tivo.html and 2. My little Hughes HR10-250 Tivo HDTV vs. Microsoft’s Media Center Edition Review http://thomashawk.com/2004/07/my-little-hughes-hr10-250-tivo-hdtv-vs.html.

    Both of these articles deal with HDTV and the portibility issues. I agree with you on Microsoft unbeliveably tripping over the opportunity to push and promote HDTV with their Media Center boxes. Microsoft has blown a major opportunity here and continue to do so by not addressing HDTV.

    Great read and thanks for the write up.

    Comment by Thomas Hawk — August 23, 2004 @ 12:48 pm

27. In my opinion the key here is mass adoption by “non-technicals”. If my mother and father can figure out how to reload their portable storage device (Flash, HD, etc) then it might succeed. However, if the HD DVD’s come out and are all over Best Buy then you can bet that Joe Blow consumer that doesn’t know anything about technology (99% of the population) will buy the HD DVD’s.

    I am not too sure that on-demand video is going to be that much of a hit. I would assume that to get this service you would inevitably have to pay for each “download”. I would be fundamentally opposed to paying for this service if I could have already recorded said content when it was originally broadcast to me. However, those of us with HD Tivo’s (HR10-250’s) would love to see more HD content. I would definately sign up for a service that would download HD content during off hours so that I could watch in prime time. Things like Discovery Wings, Science channel, etc that lend themselves well to HD but aren’t currently available in HD format. I just don’t want to pay extra for EVERY extra HD show I grab. I would consider a monthly fee. So, offer high quality (HD) content for off hour downloading and then regular content under the standard $$$/mo subscription.

    Another issue is advertising support of television. Why would any media company that makes a living selling advertising support content distribution methods that make it easy for consumers to skip commercials? If everyone had a Tivo (and who the heck watches non-superbowl commercials if you have one?) why would you pay to put an ad on TV if you were a business?

    Hey Mark,

    I am surprised that your portable USB 2.0 HD wouldn’t keep up with the HD content. Even if you were pulling 15Mbit/sec or so (more or less) you should have no problems. It sounds like XP was using the USB 1.1 driver for that port. Keep in mind that pre XP SP1 USB 2.0 wasn’t supported. I am sure you are post SP1. BUT - if you didn’t RE-DETECT hardware after installing SP1 then you are probably using the pre SP1 USB 1.1 driver. This has happened to me numerous times in the past.

    Rick Smith

    Comment by Rsmith — August 23, 2004 @ 12:54 pm

28. I liked the article, a few nitpicks though:

    HDTV on the go is a wonderful concept, however it’s flawed by the cost and usefulness for the average person. On a 7″ screen, HDTV and DVD quality look very similar, certainly not worth the large price increase mobile HDTV screens require.

    Have you seen the flipstart PC? it’s funded by Paul Allen’s vulcan ventures, now that has an “HDTV-quality screen” and a large hard drive. Couple it with proper internet access and your HDTV mobile project sounds very interesting. However, the PC is likely to cost about the same as a mid range laptop $2000. For most people, that is out of the price range.

    Noticed the Slingbox? http://www.slingmedia.com it’ll be in the stores by xmas at around $200, this thing will “place shift” your cable/satellite box. Really it just encodes your signal to a useable bit-rate but it means you can watch live TV on your laptop/PDA and cell phone, well when 3G technology is properly adopted. I’m predicting big things for that, I’ve already found a use for me.

    Since I’m in the UK and don’t get access to a full selection of NBA games (I get maybe 1-2 a week). I’m going to be able to install a slingbox into the datacenter and get them to whip in a directv line. I pay the directv bill and I get home access to all of directv’s programming from another country. The slingbox’s GUI allows me to use a laptop (or a crestron programmable remote) as a long distance remote control. I can even use my home hard drive as a Tivo to schedule recordings.

    I’m with you on the hard drive technology in the home, it has alot of potential but I think it’s up to the cable/satellite companies. Few people actually paid for a standalone Tivo (I think the figure is around 2 million). Directv has launched an HDTV ready tivo box. The 250GB hard drive is nice but $1000? we all know the hard drive costs about $120 and the HDTV circuits are not that obscene.

    One of my ideas is PPV movies on-demand, we’re years away from HDTV on-demand throughout the USA, until a better compression technology is found or a cheaper way to mass install large bandwidth (IE better wireless range and speed). But how about utilizing those HDTV tivo boxes? Basically the movie is sent out multiple times during the day, people can book the movie on their tivo scheduler. The next time the movie is player, the tivo downloads the movie to the hard drive. Then when the user gets home they have an on-demand HDTV movie. I think it’s very basic but I’m sure some people would be interesting in pre-booking a movie for a certain evening’s viewing. Not a great idea but it’s a start.

    I think the technology is slowly getting there, but full VOD and HDTV movies are 18 months away. One thing I do forsee is alot of movie theatre closures, here’s why:
    If HD-DVD is implemented with proper DRM, movie companies will be racing faster to bring out their release to save lsot money from bootleg movie rips.

    Seen the wireless home theater setups? great idea, getting rid of those speaker wires will make alot more people able to use home theater. All you have to do is hook up your S-VHS cable, and perhaps optical out (alot of them have a DVD drive built into 1 unit) and layout your speakers. Not Wilson Audio quality sound, granted but a vast improvement over those built in speakers. All for $350

    Did you read Clive Davis’ rant on music sales and the threat of digital distribution? an interesting piece (quite obvious though) but atleast it didn’t go down the familiar alley of blaming piracy for falling sales.

    I’ve spent the best part of 2 years working on models and prototypes for future digital distribution using home-grade equipment with some interesting results (and failures). If you ever want to chat, you have my email

    Comment by Kanes — August 23, 2004 @ 1:47 pm

29. Keep on working to deliver high quality picture in formats that store a lot of GB and you’ll have me as a consumer. Honestly, once you get to a certain level, it doesn’t matter much. Good luck!

    Comment by NBA Rumors — August 23, 2004 @ 2:46 pm

30. … Just a quick point or N:

    * I _have_ downloaded seasons of TV shows on broadband. It takes awhile and it’s inconvenient, but it works. I’ve downloaded DVD rips and TV encodes, courtesy of standard P2P stuff as well as Torrents. Torrents can saturate a cable modem depending on the popularity of the series in question.

    * Convenience, special content and quality are key. It’s a PITA to download, even with 3-5Mbps shared, or with a 100Mbps office connection for that matter. Quality of illegal downloads is random, averaging low. To get the DVD ‘experience’ (menus, bonus items, angles, etc) you essentially have to rip a DVD ISO and compress it, which few do, though I have and it works pretty well if you have a 250GB drive or two.

    * Offering a range of content compression (from zero to MPEG4 high) ala Audible is a really neat idea, especially if you have a large enough optical medium to support it.

    * Optical is not dead: it’s better than tape for handling large amounts of static data, especially through snail mail. Fedex next-day with 20 HD-DVDs is pretty impressive bandwidth!

    * Lack of HDTV-enabled Tivo IMHO holds back HDTV somewhat, though upconverted DVDs probably make up for that (and then some).. 480p->720p can be done quite well with even moderately-priced line processors, though there’s no substitute for actual pixels..

    There are things to learn from what Apple has done, though I would add making the store accessible for other content providers (charging rent on the infrastructure, client access, and software) instead of keeping it exclusively Apple.

    Comment by Otis Wildflower — August 23, 2004 @ 3:01 pm

31. … I would theorize that Early Adopters (those who would be most interested in HD cable boxes and dishes) are probably the largest constituency of DVR owners. The fact that cable HD doesn’t work fully digitally with DVRs (for a myriad of reasons) is going to hold back HD adoption.

    There is a standard for keying 3rd-party HD receiver equipment to DVR/PCs (not off the top of my head :p), it needs to be used and pushed out so Tivo (or someone else) can come out with a proper fully-digital HD/5.1 DVR that can be used with any digital cable or dish system.

    That’s the rub: those who aren’t into TV watching don’t need HD, those that _are_ into TV hardcore enough to get HD have Tivos. Otherwise you’re hoping to sell into the DVD crowd, and anyone hardcore enough to build a HT with DVD upconversion is gonna have a Tivo to boot.

    Comment by Otis Wildflower — August 23, 2004 @ 3:09 pm

32. Sorry, if this was brought up, but I didn’t have time to read everyones responce. But the simple fact remains that it doesn’t matter how huge the source is, it could be 10TB, all you have to do is have one person who gets the source and they just recompress it to an almost-HD or HD quility and it will be the same size as any other movies people download today. New kinds of compression could allow for HD quility in something that is only a few gigs.

    Comment by Matthew — August 23, 2004 @ 3:26 pm

33. Download speeds won’t increase signifigantly over the next 20 years. Having done tech support for various forms of broadband services, with some insight into the architecture (It’s good to know if you’re serious about your job, which I am) the problem with the adaptation with faster-than-broadband, has to do with the limits of infrastructure.

    Over phone lines, the speeds do have a theoretical limit. Furthermore, companies have absolutly no incentive to offer more/raise them. Why? Because people are limited to the speeds by the QUALITY of their connection. This is for both cable and DSL. And in certain areas, the quality is VERY lacking.

    To put it simply, someone who’s getting 600 of a 640k connection is happy. Someone who’s getting 800 of a 2000k connection is NOT happy.

    And until that infrastructure is upgraded to allow for higher speeds…which will never happen, you won’t see it.

    Comment by Karmakin — August 23, 2004 @ 3:28 pm

34. According to the above information, a typical HD movie that is 2 hours in length would be 18 gigabytes. Given the availability of broadband connections in the US that support either 1.5 megabits/s or 3.0 megabits/s download speeds, you are looking at:

    ~17.5 hours to download at 3.0 megabits/second (~300 kilobytes/second)

    ~35.0 hours to dnowload at 1.5 megabits/second (~150 kilobypes/second)

    The question is ‘Are these times small enough to make piracy an option?’. I believe that the answer is clearly ‘YES’.

    Think about how many P2P download apps work - You select the file you want to download, start the download, and walk away. The application manages retries, dropped peer connections, etc. Given enough time, the download will complete. Even with much smaller music files, consumers are accustomed to working in this manner- select file, begin download, do something else while download completes.

    Given the ‘always on’ features of broadband connectivity and the ability of P2P apps to continue working in the background, I see no reason why files in excess of 18 gigabytes would not be ripe for piracy.

    Heck, local ISPs here in the Bay Area are now starting to roll out 6 megabits/second DSL service, which would drop that download time to 8 hours- a no brainer for an overnight download.

    So although storage capacity-to-cost ratios are improving more quickly than broadband bandwith-to-cost ratios, there is no reason to believe these file sizes will be prohibitive.

    Comment by Jason Buberel — August 23, 2004 @ 3:33 pm

35. ESP: By the time you wrote that you capture HD at higher quality than you broadcast, I had jumped to the same conclusion you had about pre-distributing content at night- PREvo, if you will. Kudos for also jumping to what I thought was an obvious conclusion.

    The Public: I don’t see the lack of adequate distribution media as the biggest hindrance to HDTV. Public apathy is a major problem. NBC is _barely_ able to get HD coverage of the Olympics and it only appears to bother those of us with HDTVs. I was the first person in my extended family and friends to buy an HDTV almost 4 years ago. I’m still the only one. As much as I’d like to see new technology and new solutions, I’m skeptical that HD-DVD (flashdrives, cig-pack HDs, etc.) is going to tip the balance either.

    Handwringing: But I’m troubled by the amount of “Who is going to develop the next generation of x?” comments in your blog and responses. Why are next-gen hardware and distribution media/systems someone else’s problem? For example, you write “Why haven’t the Media Center PC companies and the cable and satellite industry gotten together to put set top box capability in mediacenter PCs?” You, more than most people/corporations, have the resources to make a significant contribution. But I’m not telling you something you don’t already know.

    Comment by John — August 23, 2004 @ 3:35 pm

36. They have 100mbps to the home in SK, Japan, throughout Scandinavia.

    We may leapfrog them in the next 2-5 years, imagine port limited gigabit copper from the pole (fed by fibre).

    Over 50% of American net-connected households have broadband.

    Comment by Otis Wildflower — August 23, 2004 @ 3:36 pm

37. I’ve been downloading HD movies and tv shows recently from HDTV newsgroups. Matrix Reloaded 720 is about 4.5 gigs. LOTR TTT EE 1080 is 18.5 gigs. I’m using an unlimited downloading monthly account.

    Hard drive size growth has been slowing down because they are reaching the areal density limits of platters. storagereview.com has a blurb about this.

    Comment by blah — August 23, 2004 @ 3:40 pm

38. Here’s some more discussion on Mark’s blog for those interested:
    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/23/1655224

    Comment by J. Robin — August 23, 2004 @ 3:46 pm

39. Back in the early nineties I had a 486 with a 250MB hard drive running over a 28.8 modem. Assuming a transfer rate of 0.25KB/sec (2kbps), that’s a storage to bandwidth ratio of 1:1,000,000 (250,000KB/0.25KB).

    Fast forward to 2004, I have a 150GB drive and a 5mbps cable connection. Assuming a transfer rate of 625KB/sec (600kbps), my storage to bandwidth ratio is now 1:240,000 (150,000,000KB/625KB).

    My example may not be entirely accurate (upstream/downstream differences for example), but I think it serves to at least make a point: bandwidth is in fact keeping up with storage. It is very true that bandwidth increases in a few large steps, while storage grows at a very regular rate, but don’t underestimate the huge interest in higher bandwidth availability for home users.

    So you say: “Yeah, but the infrastructure for the next generation of WAN speeds just isn’t in place yet.”

    Wrong. With Verizon ready to roll out 30mbps DSL in the next few years and Japanese companies pushing 300mbps through cellular phones while driving down the street, WAN links are poised to jump to the next level.

    Piracy is not the problem. Give the people a reason to buy your product and they will. High resolution video? While that’s a good start, it certainly does not provide a sustainable business model. Are you going to increase resolution by 100x or 1000x in the next 10 years? Bandwidth will.

    Trying to fight technology with technology is pointless. You’re wasting your time, money, and effort.

    Carriage makers were put out of business by the automobile, scribes outraged by the printing press, and now media giants fight against the digital age. Only one thing remains the same: technological innovation is always victorious. Only those who change to adhere to the new rules survive.

    Comment by Nathan — August 23, 2004 @ 3:56 pm

40. I believe this to be a little pie in the sky. While consumers really want to ability to be able to copy content to recordable media — the industry wants anything but. HD, doubly so. It’s technically possible to put a 200+Mb pipe into people’s homes, but regulations make the cost of doing so high, and the margins demanded by service providers (at least in the US) are rising.

    Media companies are crusading against the ability for consumers to record digital content in ANY form. With copyright legislation augmentations, the leaning towards granting police-like powers to industry groups (BSA, RIAA, MPAA), etc. and the advent of arbitrary length copyright and media company-written IP laws, I don’t see it ever happen.

    What you describe is not only technically feasible today, but where it not for legal issues making various aspects of your suggestions cost-prohibitive or out-right banned, it would probably be the norm.

    Comment by Ronald Dumsfeld — August 23, 2004 @ 3:56 pm

41. …who don’t give a rat’s a*s about any of this stuff as a computer/software engineer, i still can’t stand cell phones (don’t own one and have never needed one), i don’t watch enough tv/movies to waste money on a real home entertainment system, i rent maybe 2 or 3 movies a month, buy maybe on average 1 movie a year, have no need for a dvd burner (even the one i have at work collects dust mostly).

    as for movie piracy, the major deal i think is the pack rat mentality of hoarding movies. personally while i can download any movie i want, i don’t, only because the number of movies i would want to see more then once i can count on one hand, and those i went out and bought for very cheap online. why waste my time downloading today’s drivel?

    anyway, i’m probably one of a dying breed of bs-hype-immune humans left. the more people hype things up the more i yawn.

    but heck, give me a 6800gt and a long RPG and i’m drooling

    Comment by amdu — August 23, 2004 @ 3:56 pm

42. If anything the compressed movies traded online will have better quality because instead of ripping from DVDs they’ll rip from even higher quality content.

    Comment by A Richardson — August 23, 2004 @ 3:56 pm

43. Mark I have some answers to your questions.

    You raise some good points, and ask some good questions. However, there are answers that are already staring you in the face.

    (Let’s look at your questions first)

    # 1. There’s no single answer to this one. I’d say at issue are: piracy, no Sat or PC manufacturer wants to be held liable against a cash cow Congress-lobbying MPAA or RIAA. That’s why Sat & Cable DVR’s are largely crippled so that you can’t offload recorded content, and why even though you have great projects like MythTV which can serve all the purposes you talk about and more easily - few will release hardware to really make it shine (e.g. digital sat or cable decoder card, QAM cards, etc.). Sure, you have an over-the-air HDTV card you can use with it, but be realistic how many people in the US solely survive off of OTA signals? Moreover, Cable/Sat providers like being the ones who handle the decoding, since they can sell you the equipment and make it harder for you to “steal” their signal.

    #2. I’ve seen high end LCD & Plasmas hooked up to ‘media PCs’ showing HD content, but is that really a boon for PC makers? Most TV’s your average-joe would hook a PC up to are likely to have no better inputs than SVideo. While any PC + Monitor could probably easily display HD content these days, that’s not going to sell PC’s. Moreover, joe-consumer is probably less wowed by HD Content than he would be with cool-looking demo, just toss in a Matrix DVD and well dang it LOOKS high tech and futuristic (even if the picture isn’t anything spectacular).

    #3. This decision has been made for YEARS already, they want quantity. TV quality (and not just on a resolution angle) has been plummeting in favour of shoving more crap at the viewer. I doubt carriers like VOOM will survive when people look at how few channels they carry, vs the premium paid. Meanwhile, Cable & Sat will continue to add channels, and not necessarily even much more content (most non-premium cable channels have maybe 8 hours of programming, repeated at least once during the day, and then they have infomercials in the middle of the night. Adding 3-4 channels with the same content as one traditional channel’s worth of content is hardly unusual nowadays). They don’t care about picture quality, and by in large most consumers don’t pay enough attention to care either. Sadly, most consumers don’t even notice the hours wasted on poor content, which has also been suffering. It’s a lose-lose for the consumer, but if their receiver goes up to channel 1000, hey at there’s got to -SOMETHING- to watch, right?

    #4. I don’t know if VOD was ever a good business save for in cable/sat closed loop systems where it’s not -really- on demand, it’s just selectively tuned (e.g. “You are ordering a film 15 minutes after start time? Are you sure” is NOT on DEMAND). Bringing it into terms of an internet like network, non-closed loop…. broadcasting becomes “unicast” as you said regardless of what it is. There are two solutions to this (again, the answers are out there). Either use multicast networks, to send the same content to everyone in the network simultaneously (e.g. http://www.backspace.tv does this), but that requires that your ISP route multicast traffic to you, which most don’t - and it’s still going to hammer your pathetic home DSL/cable connection. Or the other solution is p2p content distribution, which so far only bittorrent has done in a bandwidth maximizing way, such that it becomes closer to a -broadcast- speed. Projects like torrentocracy (combining RSS & torrent feeds with MythTV) are really the best direction for the latter to take. The former solution, of multicasting - is hard to find, even though it could be more effective. But again, that just brings it closer to the closed-loop modality of traditional cable/sat where things aren’t really on DEMAND, you just receive simultaneously with everyone else.

    #4 is really an issue going back to the root of the term BROADCASTING. People don’t really even think about it these days… and for whatever reason, they think fast network connections are the panacea. Most plebs don’t even realize that their 3M/384k cable/DSL is not only pathetically slow, but that by being asynchronous - it cripples the potential for really good workarounds with limited bandwidth (e.g. p2p is crippled severely in asynchronous networks). That said, even with affordable ‘high speed’ networks, the like of which you could build yourself at home (since gigabit switches are now under $100 a pop) and maybe link with your neighbours, or more likely - move to Japan and subscribe to a 100Mbps fiber ISP (e.g. usen.com) for about the same as you’d pay for DSL in the US - the problem is, when dealing with “unicasting” VOD issue you’re talking about, it’s still the same problem. And it’s the same problem even at 10x the speed or more.

    Case in point. The “fastest” file transfer over great network distances (100+km) recently recorded was something like 4Gbps. Wow, that’s incredible raved the news stories - you could transfer a whole DVD (4.7GB) in about 7 seconds! AMAZING. Ok, for the sake of argument, let’s say that this is a full 4.7GB DVD with just two hours of content on it. Now let’s say you want to “broadcast” that to a million people - nothing big, 60 minutes or the simpsons probably get more viewers on a given week, and they’re not even two hours long. Now, assuming your max speed takes you 7 seconds, if you’re unicasting to a million people that’s 7 million seconds. That OVER 80 days.

    How long does it take NBC to broadcast 2 hours of the Olympics to a (again, for the sake of argument, let’s just keep it at the same figure) a million viewer? Gee, two hours!

    Who wins? The high performance point-to-point network? Or the traditional broadcast 1-to-many medium? Does bittorrent solve this problem? Not entirely? Does multicast? A bit better - but none that effectively that I’ve seen. Moreover, it goes back to the closed-loop not really on DEMAND content.

    The answer, looking forward, should be a hybrid. Where most content is still broadcast/multicast - and on DEMAND takes a small portion of the bandwidth and is on demand to many viewers, not just one. This is very similar to the existing closed-loop sat & cable already.

    Looking to some of the other points you raise… you’re COMPLETELY missing the picture on some counts. You’re cost per GB is one.

    You seem to assume that what a consumer pays for a hard drive, and what a consumer pays for a DVD, relative to the consumer’s cost per GB is all that matters. Get real, from a manufacturing point of view - a CD (and DVD) being a pressed disc cost pennies (sometimes less than even one penny) to manufacture. Hard drives (and flash memory I might add) cost substantially more to manufacturer, and the lowest rung (in your example the $10 keyfob, be it 32MB or 2GB whenever we are in time) is often sold to consumers at such prices as a means to clear out warehouses, and not at a profit (I have a friend who designs flash and DRAM and they keep making bigger chips, because only their highest end really break even and make them profits, their lower offerings they want to get rid of ASAP because of the financial drain they are). So, a DVD may be a static 4.7GB, and Let’s say prices “drop” to $10 a new DVD across the board. Do the manufacturers care? No, that’s still $9.50 of profit. Well, of course minus packaging, shipping & handling and marketting, which what might be half? so $5 of profit? How much profit does my friend make on that $10 keyfob? Answer: pennies? Hard drives, (with all their moving parts and prone to failure and so on) are just as bad. Don’t believe me? Go find me a new 5gigabyte IDE drive and you’ll see what I mean, surely you’re $.25/GB price comes into play? NOT.

    Consumer costs are NOT the same as manufacturing costs. Consumers can be sheep and spend t

    Comment by grey — August 23, 2004 @ 4:00 pm

44. You want to prevent people from copying files that they will always be able to copy faster than you can stop them from doing it.

    Goodluck with your fantasies of corporate control.

    Comment by Corey — August 23, 2004 @ 4:12 pm

45. If you have a good usenet news server, checkout alt.binaries.hdtv. HDTV is being shared.

    I believe the best way to combat piracy is to make content available at high quality and at a reasonable price. If that isn’t done, people will copy.

    Comment by Sean Kennedy — August 23, 2004 @ 4:13 pm

46. Given the current requirements for video streaming (e.g. 15MB/sec for broadcast hi-def) and the current wi-fi speeds (at unrealistic best 100Mb/sec = 12.5MB/s) there’s no way that you’d be able to use wi-fi connectivity to stream clean/clear mid- or hi-defininton feeds to your TV/DVD/etc. without experiencing hiccups. I know that my wi-fi network, albeit a mere 11Mb/sec, gets nowhere near enough throughput to stream video reliably.

    The specialized wireless networks that are available are going to be priced out of range for most all resonable consumers.

    I’m a little concerned with the thought of a movie on something as small and misplacable as a USB dongle, but I think the idea has some very explorable possibilities

    – My 2c worth

    Comment by Chris — August 23, 2004 @ 4:15 pm

47. HD Quality TV shows ARE being shared over the internet. Not sure if that was stated in the previous comments, but I’ve seen them on various networks and services. They are big, but lots of people are willing to spend the time to get them to see it in higher quality.

    another statement. the netflix approach to mailing USB/FW memory sticks is a good idea, if only that you can package the devices much more securly then a cheap envelope for the DVD that always breaks.

    Comment by anony. — August 23, 2004 @ 4:28 pm

48. All this talk of HD delivery is interesting, but I have a few observations.

    I consider myself mostly on the bleeding edge with regards to technology and live in Anywhere, USA but I don’t know anyone personally who owns an LCD flatscreen TV (could you spare a 55″ one Mark? ha). Or a Tivo. Or a Media Center PC. Heck, I just bought a DVD burner a couple months ago (for home movies and data backup!). Other than myself, I know of only one person that uses WiFi in their house. And only a few that have broadband (but do they do use it for more than e-mail and light surfing?). I have a few friends that own iPods and buy tunes occasionally online. I can’t even say I know many people who spend more than an hour a day online. About the only thing I’ve noticed that is catching on with the average joe I know (other than cell phones) is digital cameras. And few really use them to their potential or know what to do with them.

    My point is that with HD, you’re talking about a very thin slice of the population that is savy enough to take chances on new technology until it is very affordable. The vast, vast majority of average people either can’t afford the latest gadetry, or find it too daunting to use. Perhaps you can support a business with 2-5% of the population (see Apple), but new delivery methods could take decades before adoption levels meet expectations.

    Not only are there new technologies emerging every day, the consumer is bombarded with so many options for content that few can or want to keep up. While I would love to have HD content at my disposal, everyone I know is perfectly satisfied with DVD quality and traditional forms of content.

    From a business aspect, what would HD delivery mean? You would certainly have to charge more for it (either per month or per selection). Or sell more to each of your customers. Why else get into it? I doubt consumers could rapidly increase their monthly digestion of content (heck, I had to cancel my WSJ subscription because I had no time to read more than an article or two daily). Just because I COULD select from 2 gazillion movies on demand, does that mean I’m going to exponentially increase my movie-watching time per month? I doubt it…our lives are too busy and only getting busier.

    Sure it would be great for travellers who want to view a quick movie (besides laptops with DVD’s and hotel PPV), but I think the great majority of the public will only dabble with these things until a clear winner emerges. And guess what? The more fish in the pool, the harder to attract the keeper! Meaning it’s going to be more challenging for consumers to wade through the endless choices in the next five to ten years. Most will stick to what they are familiar with.

    Comment by Howard Wright — August 23, 2004 @ 4:30 pm

49. Maybe this would be enough incentive.
    TV’s come out with Firwire/USB ports.
    Block Buster sells keychains for $10-20.
    Cheap enough to break and not be a biggie.
    Bring the keychain in put a movie on it.
    Watch it but not have to bring it back.
    Never pay a late fee again.
    Reuse it as many times as you want.

    Comment by Sean Fisher — August 23, 2004 @ 4:52 pm

50. I completely agree with what you are saying in the article and the future of media is something I’m facinated by. I have strived for the last few years to reach “Media Nirvana” trying every cobination of storage, quality, price, conveniance that I could find and afford to play with. My conclusion was to purchase the now incredibly cheap xbox’s for every room in my house and mod them to solely run Xbox Media Center. This allows any room to connect to a central MediaPC with all music, photos and DVR content. The media PC has front USB2 ports and firewire for easy access to video files or music to go.

    Between portable mp3 players with FM tuners, thumb drives and portable HD space, I no longer have CDs or DVD with me at any time - and it feels great.

    I also agree with your HQ files to stunt piracy. I used to download the occasional movie from a P2P program but, since HDTV and HiRes DVD - I prefer now to wait for quality and purchase it.

    It’s a shame there are not more companies trying to stay ahead of the curve instead of always playing catch-up. As for the future, I see more PDAs being used. These could carry movies, TV News segments, music collection that could dock in your vehicle, cell phone, all personal information - the list goes on.

    Again, thanks for the refreshing article.

    Comment by Joe — August 23, 2004 @ 5:31 pm

51. We could take advantage of the nightly drop in bandwidth usage in the US. We pay for peak usage during the day and “waste” capacity by not using it at night. What about an On-Demand movie delivery service that pushes movies out to the consumer during off peak hours?

    The main problems facing IP movie delivery are … how can the average person watch it on their TV … and how to digitally protect the movie (DRM) . You spoke about both in your blog, but they must be addressed before this medium will take off as a material business.

    Comment by Justin Madison — August 23, 2004 @ 5:33 pm

52. “The biggest decision facing HD cable and satellite distributors today is quality vs quantity. Right now most are looking at using compression to squeeze more channels into the existing space they have rather than squeeze a better picture into the same bandwidth that channels take today. The reason it’s a huge decision is that once they decide to fit in more channels, they can’t go back. You can’t all the sudden decide you need 15mbs per channel to deliver a picture that compares to a competitor’s better picture after compressing down to 6or 8mbs per channel.”

    True, but better compression codecs are coming down the pipe and will allow satellite and cable operators to better utilize the bandwidth they have. The real problem is there still is not all that compelling programming on HD. The Olympics are a day late and a dollar short and many HD channels are merely simulcasts of their SD counterparts with little real HD content. Only a few channels, such as HDnet, are dedicated to bringing the viewer the most HDTV programming possible, and even then the channels worth having are not available on every provider (bring HDnet to VOOM Mark!).

    Comment by oscar chen — August 23, 2004 @ 5:44 pm

53. You’ve obviously never given a talk around my cirlce of friends. I have downloaded more than one full quality HD movie–LORT:Return of the King and The Fifth Element. I’ll agree that the availability of such media is much less than DVD rips, however bandwidth is not a completely limiting factor. With my cable modem it takes less than 24 hours to download 18 gigs, and I typically do 4-10 overnight. I think your assumption that larger file sizes will thwart pirating are ill founded.

    Comment by Jason — August 23, 2004 @ 5:44 pm

54. I work in the film industry. My company (Digital Ordnance http://www.digitalordnance.com) sells the Frame Thrwoer, an uncompressed 2k playback system for film and HDTV. It is really designed for use in the post production industry. You can store up to 85 minutes of uncompressed 1920×1080 at 30fps. It hold multiple clips and be shared among a number of users.

    It is amazing what a difference in quality the higher resolution and lack of compression makes in the images. The key is to have a system that can really show you the results. Computer monitors have better resolution than TVs in both color space and pixels. Most CRTs have about 10 bits per component of color resolution and can support 2048×1556 resolution. Projectors are typically lower than that unless you’re droppping a lot of cash.

    Film has a lot more resolution. We’re talking about 6k by 4k with probably 16 bits of descernible color resoluion. Film grain also makes it quite noisy so it isn’t quite the same comparison as video. This is why real film bufs aren’t happy about the conversion to HDTV. It really isn’t up to the same quality. Perhaps 75%, but that’s good enough for most viewers and better than 95% of the display systems.

    Several people mentioned compressed. My uncompressed image streams require 220MB/s. That’s a lot of data to stream over any network or store on most devices. Compression can get you huge savings in space, but the quality really isn’t there. If you’re watching a film on an airplane you may perfer the small size, but what you’re seeing pales in comparison to the original source. If you’ve got the display technology it’s worth the extra bandwidth to show great looking images, but if you don’t you might as well compressed it a lot.

    Comment by Daryll Strauss — August 23, 2004 @ 5:45 pm

55. I completely agree with what you are saying in the article and the future of media is something I’m facinated by. I have strived for the last few years to reach “Media Nirvana” trying every cobination of storage, quality, price, conveniance that I could find and afford to play with. My conclusion was to purchase the now incredibly cheap xbox’s for every room in my house and mod them to solely run Xbox Media Center. This allows any room to connect to a central MediaPC with all music, photos and DVR content. The media PC has front USB2 ports and firewire for easy access to video files or music to go.

    Between portable mp3 players with FM tuners, thumb drives and portable HD space, I no longer have CDs or DVD with me at any time - and it feels great.

    I also agree with your HQ files to stunt piracy. I used to download the occasional movie from a P2P program but, since HDTV and HiRes DVD - I prefer now to wait for quality and purchase it.

    It’s a shame there are not more companies trying to stay ahead of the curve instead of always playing catch-up. As for the future, I see more PDAs being used. These could carry movies, TV News segments, music collection that could dock in your vehicle, cell phone, all personal information - the list goes on.

    Again, thanks for the refreshing article.

    Comment by Joe — August 23, 2004 @ 5:46 pm

56. I agree with those that say the common man, which is by far the majority of the population, number one cannot afford what you suggest and secondly, wouldn’t even be able to figure out how it works. I work in the IT industry and what I’ve learned over the years is you have to dumb it down for the common user. I love what you suggest, but reality says it’s too complicated to work.

    How about HDNet becoming the new Blockbuster? HDNet becomes a bank of movies and all you need is cable or satellite TV. Cable and satellite companies currently have pay-for-view channels, but only limited. Why does it have to be limited???

    I wish my satellite provider would offer an interactive system that allows me to browse hundreds of movie titles. I could then find the movie of my choice and watch it on the spot. No needing to drive to blockbuster or wait for the Netflix package in the mail or drive batch to blockbuster before the late fees kick in or return the Netflix movie(s).

    Take your broadcast.com days and compare that to my suggestion. You brought a streamlined audio to the public via the web, PURE GENIUS. Why not bring streamlined video to the public via an HDNet channel with an interacive browser without forcing people to buy new TVs, Media PCs, HDs, PVRs, etc. Each movie would go for $2.99 to view it. How hard could it be?

    If you like my idea, contact me and I’m sure we can work out an arrangement.

    Comment by John — August 23, 2004 @ 5:47 pm

57. Except it was in reverse. When Napster first came out it usually took me several hours to download one song, granted, this wasn’t at full bandwidth capacity, but P2P never is. Very few people had cable or dsl…and until high speed internet exploded I never heard anyone even talking about ‘music piracy.’ Once there was the speed, it became widespread (and the RIAA began making all of its noise). I think that if sizes actually do increase beyond bandwidth, the amount of downloading will decrease as well. Though…the one thing I think is missing from consideration in this post is the fact that to a lot of people free is better than high quality. I am just fine with DVD quality movie…so the fact that I can’t get HD quality over the internet wouldn’t matter to me. If no smaller content was available, that would be different, but I think that lower quality or highly compressed content will continue to be available for download even if the standard rises to a very high quality HD picture.

    Comment by Rabbit — August 23, 2004 @ 6:18 pm

58. I’ve been playing with an EyeTV 500 Firewire Mac-only DTV tuner from El Gato for the last month. It basically saves OTA transport streams to the hard drive based on the schedules at TitanTV and is a really cool device, if a bit over priced.

    One thing you didn’t mention regarding piracy is that if someone wanted to transcode HDTV transport streams into something smaller that could be transferred over the public internet then they better be real patient. It’s possible for me to transcode in close to real time, i.e., a two hour movie takes around two hours to resize and recompress into something that can be exchanged over the net. Most people’s computers aren’t as fast as mine so it’s going to take much longer.

    Processor speeds have hit a small road block that no doubt will be overcome soon enough. But it’s still going to be years before raw recorded compressed HD content can be convenient enough for the average person to want to re-encode it small enough to send to their friends across the country. Personally, I don’t have hours to deal with making stuff smaller for my friends.
    Like all the other things you cite, this too will be worked out, but by then we’ll be talking about much higher resolutions and even better formats. People always use the technology that’s available…

    Dennis

    Comment by Dennis Whiteman — August 23, 2004 @ 6:29 pm

59. I don’t think large file sizes will do a lot to slow down piracy. Right now on the internet, DIVX and DVD images co-exist as the most popular video formats for pirates. Obviously the Divx movies don’t look as good but they’re good enough for most people. We will also eventually see technology such as Fiber to the Curb or Fiber to the House take over and consumer level broadband will see a massive increase in speeds.

    As for VOD, I work at a small cable company that is planning to deploy VOD in the future and I believe it will be a combo of DVR/PVR devices combined with a large data center at our head.

    Comment by Morbo — August 23, 2004 @ 6:37 pm

60. On your question to others at speeches… I download HDTV episodes daily. The pirates just re-encode them into xvid files with almost no loss in quality. The file sizes are 350MBs for a 45 minute show. I can fit two HDTV episodes on 1 CD and then watch them on my KiSS DVD player.

    Bigger file sizes aren’t the answer because pirates will simply re-encode them into xvid or divx and then distro them.

    Also, for those of you who think broadband isn’t going to at least double in speed anytime soon… think again. Countries like Sweden and Holland already have optifiber with speeds of 10mbits both ways. Granted, it’s easier to network small countries. But don’t forget about WiMAX or WiFi. WiMAX has the potential for awesome speeds cause you don’t have to lay a lot of cable down. WiMAX already operates at 54mbps+ Don’t be surprised to see 10mbps speeds in 5 years people.

    Comment by Jesse — August 23, 2004 @ 6:41 pm

61. Anyone that says you can download an HD movie over night is full of it. If any of you have ever downloaded a large file you know that your not getting a full 3 meg a second download speed. Any p2p network is run by us people with regular broadband connections and our upload speed isnt 3/6 mb/s its more around 128-256 kb/s. That sounds like its going to take a LONG time to download.

    Comment by John Paul — August 23, 2004 @ 7:47 pm

62. Hard drives are expensive and fragile. Flash memory can hold data for only a decade. An ideal system would be cheap, fast, and robust, and capable of reliably storing content permanently.

    Something very similar to a USB2 pendrive or SD card could be made using a conductive polymer such as PEDOT. This is write-once, very much cheaper than flash to produce, and requires less power to read. like flash, it is silent in operation.

    Becasue manufacture and writing are separate processes, each copy could be individually encrypted, watermarked, etc.

    Becasue they would be so cheap, you wouldn’t have to take your hard drive to the airport kiosk, it could burn the content on a blank one.

    Comment by meredith octothorp — August 23, 2004 @ 7:49 pm

63. If it wasnt for DVD backup software I wouldnt own DVDs. Dvds scratch so easily and become unplayable if not pampered, i just hate them. Putting movies onto small harddrives or cartridges like the nintendo 64, would be a great idea. It would also get rid of minute scratches that affect the quality of movies. But I believe Mark has made alot of great points.

    Comment by ramd0g — August 23, 2004 @ 8:11 pm

64. I like the kios idea. I whole Blockbuster store inside a vending machine. What would happen to the file though, would it self destruct?

    Comment by Kevin — August 23, 2004 @ 8:12 pm

65. This is my first time on this blog. I really enjoyed the discussion. I think there are some good insights as well as recognition that it is very difficult to change the status quo! Like Mr. Cuban, I enjoy HD content. I think it is truly amazing! What I like the most about the Internet and content on television is that I don’t have to think about it! Sending disks back and forth, going to the store is inconvenient. Although I love HD content, I am still a big fan of instantly available content. I like sitting down at the computer and typing in http://www.espn.com or turning on the TV set and watching the MLS on HDNet. As much as I am an advocate of technology, and as much as I believe Mr. Cuban, that storage will have a revolutionary effect on the video content industry, I believe that the delivery infrastruture is the place where all the action will be! Pushing light-based infrastructure technologies closer to the home is where it is at! The infrastructure industry is every bit as revolutionary as the storage market. Every leap in networking is also exponential! 10Gbps Ethernet ports are coming down in price dramatically. The power of fiber is nearly immeasurable.

    Yes, getting massive pipe to the home is a tough nut to crack, but it is also the ultimate nut! It is going to take a pretty big squirrel to get that nut open! Innovations and entrepreneurs will finally collide to create the right product. One thing is for sure light-based technologies represent the powerful leaps in service. Broadband is where it is at!

    Already broadband hungry countries like South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan are getting 10+Mbps at home! The balance between compression and quality will soon be reached in these countries. Keep your eye on them for what we should be doing.

    Finding ways to integrate the online experience with the television experience is where the big entertainment is. Broadband is the key to exploring this!

    Storage technologies will hopefully make the biggest impact in ‘converged’ appliances. The fight for the living room is heating up. I think Mr. Cuban has some good insights in some of the shortcomings of the Media Center. There is a lot of redundancy right now in the living room. Less is more to me. I would love to be able to have less equipment, rather than more. I wish my television, could be my monitor, and my computer could be my pvr, stereo, fm tuner etc!

    Finally, I would like to add that the gaming industry is exploding as a source of entertainment. I think there will be a ton action here. I became a much larger fan of the NBA after playing NBA Live. This is as close as I’ll ever be to being an NBA owner, and I enjoyed the fun without having the payroll. I think for many, gaming, is becoming a great source of entertainment!

    Comment by Sean — August 23, 2004 @ 9:11 pm

66. Todays’s DIVX quality movies (As you demonstrated on your plane trip - with whatever compression you were using) are quite watchable.

    Why does someone need a 10gig+ file to enjoy a pirated movie? When they look fine now at 512mb?

    I think you’ll find nothing much will change, aside from non pirated movies will see a nice quality improvement.

    Apart from that, why couldn’t piracy continue as per usual. If the files too big… drop the resolution and up the compression. 2 hours video is still 2 hours of video. It just won’t be HD quality video.

    I’m sure the majority of people pirating on their P2P networks couldn’t care less.

    Very interesting blog entry tho.

    I think rabbit probably said it best with “free is better than high quality”.

    Not everyone is a high paid CEO.

    I love my Google Mail, it’s free for me, yet they make money off me with their _UNOBTRUSIVE_ advertising.

    I found the promotion of products in I-Robot interesting… considering we PAID to see the movie, not a converse/audio avert But we will try to make more money thru _any_ avenue, won’t we.

    I don’t think filesize is the solution to piracy. I just don’t see it I’m afraid.

    Comment by Will — August 23, 2004 @ 9:32 pm

67. Todays’s DIVX quality movies (As you demonstrated on your plane trip - with whatever compression you were using) are quite watchable.

    Why does someone need a 10gig+ file to enjoy a pirated movie? When they look fine now at 512mb?

    I think you’ll find nothing much will change, aside from non pirated movies will see a nice quality improvement.

    Apart from that, why couldn’t piracy continue as per usual. If the files too big… drop the resolution and up the compression. 2 hours video is still 2 hours of video. It just won’t be HD quality video.

    I’m sure the majority of people pirating on their P2P networks couldn’t care less.

    Very interesting blog entry tho.

    I think rabbit probably said it best with “free is better than high quality”.

    Not everyone is a high paid CEO.

    I love my Google Mail, it’s free for me, yet they make money off me with their _UNOBTRUSIVE_ advertising.

    I found the promotion of products in I-Robot interesting… considering we PAID to see the movie, not a converse/audio avert But we will try to make more money thru _any_ avenue, won’t we.

    I don’t think filesize is the solution to piracy. I just don’t see it I’m afraid.

    Comment by Will — August 23, 2004 @ 9:46 pm

68. I think your NetFlix-like HD/Flash drive scheme can work in another way too: even though many regular series are schlock, if people want them, they want them. Let people choose to receive X hours of programming a week, by setting up their own program grid - I can pick what show airs when, store those choices via web site (ala NetFlix), and each Monday you ship those to me. This would include series television AND movies. Once I get the disk, of course, I can rearrange the schedule of that content if I want, but each week I know I’m going to receive a disk with my favorite shows.

    This works because it plays to the same reason people love PVRs - they’re not at the mercy of the broadcasters’ scheduling anymore.

    Also - if you can make this compatible with older equipment, to ease the transition for folks who can afford a hard drive but not a super TV, you’ll get incredible customer loyalty when that person finally gets his/her HD television.

    Comment by Tim — August 23, 2004 @ 10:51 pm

69. sneakernet: /snee´ker·net/, n.

    Term used (generally with ironic intent) for transfer of electronic information by physically carrying tape, disks, or some other media from one machine to another. “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with magtape, or a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.”

    Also called ‘Tennis-Net’, ‘Armpit-Net’, ‘Floppy-Net’ or ‘Shoenet’; in the 1990s, ‘Nike network’ after a well-known sneaker brand.

    Comment by andrew morton — August 23, 2004 @ 10:51 pm

70. There’s quite a bit of HDTV copying/piracy in the underground, or so I hear. Movies, clips, live music is all there, it’s just that it is not even close to the amount of DVD piracy going on today, and really, not many people are into it at this time… Give it a few years, or perhaps when more of the US has connections like they do in South Korea and can afford to waste bandwidth on HDTV content…

    Comment by dan wu — August 23, 2004 @ 11:14 pm

71. Mark,
    as always, good thoughtful piece on how harddrive prices and capacity will outstrip broadband penetration and speeds. I have been tracking hard drive prices/capacity for a couple years. You can see the latest graph at: http://www.martinandalex.com/blog/archives/2004/08/hard_drive_pric_3.html

    Comment by Martin Tobias — August 24, 2004 @ 12:13 am

72. The part you’re missing is the fact that the entertainment industry is worried about people having or sharing any of their content without going through their avenues.
    It’s worse if pirates can duplicate a copyrighted work in exactly the same quality. But people will accept a loss in quality for accessability. The music industry is still after piracy of their albums because the capability to transfer full cd audio over p2p exists, but people dont do it because its not convienient in relation with the loss of quality.

    Comment by Jakesus — August 24, 2004 @ 12:31 am

73. a couple things…. anyone know any FREE Usenet Providers that will let you know HD files from alt.binary.hdtv I dont

    Any I have ever seen costs 10 bucks per 10GB…EasyNews is 10bucks, GigaNews, probably the best is 25bucks for unlimited bandwidth for 1 single month….

    And the ever opening and closing bittorrent locations are hit and miss at best and still kill hosts bandwidths and collapse before completion enough of the time to make downloading more entertaining than the movie you are watching….

    if someone has a place to download hd that is free, i want to see it…
    So few if anyone is getting HD files for free… now it is possible to get files that used to be HD and have been compressed to maybe DVD quality…. but you are still paying for bandwidth, and so is the person/company hosting the server with the files….And they are going to

    Comment by Mark Cuban — August 24, 2004 @ 12:43 am

74. Brilliant! But it better have 200GBs when technology allows.

    Comment by Chris McCaw — August 24, 2004 @ 1:08 am

75. I really like the idea of movies being put on USB HDs. I really don’t like DVD’s becasue the skip a lot and get damaged way too easily. You’d have to hit a USB drive with a freaken hammer to break it. With a USB HD, you plug the thing into your laptop and BAM it’s there - no waiting around for the hitting eject/disc read times/etc. There is just some sort of satisfaction about plugging a cartridge in N64 style. I never liked having to go through the irritating processor ejecting the tray, placeing the CD in the tray, hitting the eject button again, and then waiting for the disc to read. I wish they would make games on USB no CD’s.

    I don’t think it will stop piracy though. I mean true, it will take a whole day to download a 10 GB high definition file on road runner, but a lot of people have college connections with 100MPS speeds which will make the DL speeds an hour or two. Either way DivX makes the files really small, and with great quality too, so I think that their will always be piracy, becasue the quality difference in DVD’s and DivX isn’t that big.

    Comment by jon_k — August 24, 2004 @ 1:08 am

76. So if bandwith is the limiting factor, the fastest way to send lots of bytes will still be via USPS! What difference does it make whether the platform is a HDD or DVD? If anything, it’s a helluva lot cheaper to press a DVD than it is to make a HDD.

    I too am excited about the prospect of virtually limitless random-access storage, but that all by itself doesn’t make me want to trash my DVD player. I think you’re on the right track, but you’re not quite there yet.

    Comment by Cancerdoc — August 24, 2004 @ 2:17 am

77. I live in Sweden. I get 10Mbps full duplex Internet access thru an Ethernet jack in my apartment wall. This is connected to a switch in the basement of my apartment building, which is connected to a city-wide fiber ring. My ISP peers with other ISPs at interconnects in the major cities, so cross-network bandwidth is also good. For this I pay 320 SEK/mo, which is about $43. If I wanted, I could upgrade to 100Mbit, which would cost me $80/mo.

    Now, not everyone can get these speeds as it takes an installation of a LAN in the building, but ADSL/VDSL is also quite widespread here. 71% of the Swedish population can get 8Mbit/0.8Mbit ADSL at a cost of $60/mo. If you live in one of the bigger cities, VDSL with speeds varying from 8/8, 12/9, 13/13 to 26/26 is also available.

    P2P filesharing is huge here, and the preferred method is via Direct Connect. New releases appear very fast and are most of the time of good quality.

    All of this combines to make this a very tough market for the traditional media companies, and it will grow even tougher as the young generation grows up, being used to the ease of downloading that they are. It will be very interesting indeed to see how the corporations plan on tackling this. Hopefully, it will be in a different way from what they’ve tried up until now. Your ideas are some of the things that could work.

    Comment by Mattias — August 24, 2004 @ 3:55 am

78. While I agree that the DVD is rapidly becoming unattractive in comparison to hardrives in terms of quality doesn’t negate the fact that Dvds have an inescapable advantage-they are stamped mechanically in a fast cheap and content independant manner. Once mastered the current cost of manufacture( a few cents of aluminum, some polycarbonte resin and voila a stack of shiny discs) is going to impede higher quality alternatives.
    Currently pre recorded hard drives ( os on computer etc) means hooking up the drive, formatting recording and unhooking- labour/ capital intensive compared to a stamper in a dvd plant- espcially as content producers tend be wary of any business model thats not an analog of successful pre-existing businesses

    Comment by Neil — August 24, 2004 @ 4:08 am

79. Increasing the quality of file formats will have zero effect on piracy whatsoever. Here’s something else that hasn’t been changing at the rate of data storage: video resolutions. If current Divx/Xvid compression can take a movie to 700 MB at 640×480 and still looking great, then that’s 2.8 GB at 1280×960 - a perfectly respectable download. Are there going to be any monitors released in the near future on which a full screen movie at that resolution will not look fantastic?

    I frequently watch movies on my TV using an Xbox (streaming across a network to XboxMediaCenter), whose native resolution is only 640×480, and they look great. I download rips of HDTV broadcasts at 350 MB per hour of video, and they look great. Are they HDTV quality? Probably not (I’ve never seen an HDTV broadcast in all its glory), but from how watching compressed movies on a TV looks, it doesn’t make me feel like I’m missing out on anything.

    Piracy will still happen, for the simple reason that you can only get up to a certain resolution for any given screen size before further improvements in the resolution just won’t be that noticeable. You can make an uncompressed file format to distribute movies at 32768×32768 resolution or whatever at 99 GB per minute of video, and it will look just as good at 2048×1536 compressed - so which format do you think pirates will choose?

    Comment by goofyballer — August 24, 2004 @ 5:41 am

80. I like the way this guy thinks. Finally, a tech-saavy rich guy that isn’t a tightwad. In many ways I agree with Mark’s vision. DVD-ROM and other hard media like that is old school and on the way out. Especially for the usage that Mark is talking about. If you are watching a movie on a 7″ sceen on an airplane you are not going to notice the difference between Xvid and the original DVD. So with today’s technology you can already imagine a video version of the iPod. With a 40GB drive you could store 60 movies. OK, but with a display built in it could cost as much as a laptop. Although display and storage prices are falling so it could be realistic. Or instead, satisfy the copy protection folks and make a display panel without storage, similar to a tabletPC. Except much lighter, thinner, and less expensive. And with a SD card slot for input. So, an 8″ widescreen OLED panel with a battery, two headphone jacks and an SD card slot. And a little stand to prop it up. And then set up kiosks where people can purchase content on their SD cards. Walk up to the kiosk. Pop in your 1GB SD card. Select what you want from recent movies, TV shows, music videos, whatever up to the available capacity on your SD card. Pay a small fee and have it copied on to your card as you wait. In 4 minutes you’re on your way with 3 or 4 hours of video to watch on the plane.

    Comment by Andy — August 24, 2004 @ 9:57 am

81. One consideration in favor of hard-drives is that the new SATA standard, in addition to being faster, allows 1 meter (~40 inches) of cable from the controller to the drive and has a brain-free connector. The old AT ribbon cables have a limit of 18 inches with a connector that is both more fragile and complex (red wire to pin one … which is pin one?) This means that SATA drives potentially have firewire like plug in the back capability without the need for any fancy internal controllers … just a cheap case and some power.

    Another interesting point is that most broadband providers have lots of bandwidth headroom between them and the customer (if your limit is dsl distance from CO, there are some new things coming) the limit is largely their upstream connection to the Internet. Obviously, cable company ISP broadband providers are in a great position to off-hours stream to PVR devices, but phone companies would be willing to jump on that wagon in nothing flat if there was money to be made … and there will be. Satellite will have no trouble. There just needs to be an awareness and market.

    Finally, first the record lables and more recently movie studios are enjoying a cheap boom because people are re-purchasing stuff they already own on CD and DVD. Partly becasue they LAST and partly because they’re BETTER. When I got a DVD player for my PC back in ‘97, I had to copy “Dangerous Liasons” to tape and take to a friend’s house to watch. The surprise was that the dub I made using a $15 stablizer (same one from ‘92, just add another 9volt) and a 6 year old Hitachi VHS deck was BY FAR the best image I’d seen since I saw it in the theater.

    I’ve seen HD cap images and they’re gorgeous! I live in the boonies (NW Vermont) and can get digital cable but none of the converters have a s-vid out … what’s the point? If they start offering HD, that’s when I start getting the premium packages and looking closer at HD monitors.

    Comment by Clint Grimes — August 24, 2004 @ 10:27 am

82. Over-air broadcast HD has been regularly ripped/posted going back easily to 2001. For web-posting, it’s posted in SVCD, DivX, or Xvid formats. Most of it of course on darknets and Usenet alt.bin groups. All is comparable to MPEG2 DVD quality.

    But when you’re watching “CSI” or “Sopranos”, the difference is only marginal between the latter two formats, e.g. as compared to HD. There’s probably a greater difference with live events and sports — but we don’t archive/share those programs the same way as set-filmed content, i.e. we wouldn’t want to re-watch the entire 95-96 Bulls season, but maybe we would want to pick out a few games (ala ESPN classics-style). Usage patterns, as defined by the type of content, should have effect on our piracy tendencies, and thusly has effect on content size/compression/transmission/creation decisions for an entity like HDNet.

    Best,
    -Michael

    Comment by Michael Schwartz — August 24, 2004 @ 10:56 am

83. Mark, you can download some HD files over at suprnova, just search for HDTV or browse the movies/TV section for files. Filesoup/Hawkies also has some.

    Bit torrent like apps make most HDTV files downloadable for pirates. Most initial uploads are from compromised corporate servers, you hack into a box, ulpoad your files then begin serving via BT, this can get you 100Mbps transfer and when spread over hundreds of users downloads are reasonable.

    I got last season’s Sopranos episodes on HDTV, within hours of it being on HDTV HBO I was downloading it. Again, I’m in the UK so that is my excuse, I wouldn’t see it for months, a weak excuse but i’m sticking to it.

    Using bittorrent is the most common p2p network now simply because it’s harder to spam bogus files like they did with Napster/Kazaa. Usenet is too unreliable as you said, bittorrent and the other split sharing programs have huge redundancy once the seed has been planted.

    Asynchronous connections in part slow down the spread of large files but there’s always a way, like seeding off foreign servers where you can get ethernet connections.

    By the way, there’s not really an email address listed for you, do you take business mail through the mavs address?

    Comment by Kanes — August 24, 2004 @ 11:29 am

84. The size vs quality issue will create a caste system for media files. Need it small and fast? You are lower caste. Want huge files extreemely high quality and you have the $10 K in equipment to get the most out of it? You are upper caste.

    I think Mark is glossing over the fact that a handful of well known technology companies ( telcos & telco equip. makers) have credible plans for deploying terrestrial terabit + networks. That quashes the idea that making the files bigger makes them harder to move.

    We are now just starting to see a change in people’s behavior - a la viewing media - PVRs like TIVO are creating a whole new type of consumer who does “need it now” becuase they knwo that TIVO is getting them what they want and they can view anything they want on Sunday morning (can you say good-bye to networks being able to charge a premium for “prime time” commercials?).

    I’m from the generation that was lucky to see 3 hour of cartoons on Saturday morning ( and was fooled on Sunday into thinking that Davey and Goliath was not religious indoctrination), but look at how the 15 and under set are using the myriad of technologies to their advantage. these are the peole who’ll have big chunks of disposable income in ten years, and they have been trained already to be early adopters, and rapid swtichers of technology.

    They’ll view and use media in completely different ways than we think of right now.

    Most of the answers on this blog reflect the question “What do people want? like…now please” but the real qustion is “what WILL people want?”.

    I see a market 10 years from now where transferring files of terrabytes will not take long periods of time, where widely deployed media center PC will be proactively set to retrieve favorites for their masters, where small form factor but HUUUUUGE “hard drives” - micro flash cards, (not discs tho - nothing should have to physically move, juts asking for a breakdown)will be easy to own (Cheap$) and move, where it’s all too easy for anyone with determination to make some copies and fling them off to friends. We can’t fight it, we msut roll with it.

    Throughout industrial history, legacy technologies have fought the “new kids on the block” as opposed to enbracing them.
    Mark is right that big media comanies are playing CYA for near term profits, but he also very ccurate that somebody is going to do something private and smart (there is a kid in the 9th grade in Clevland today that will do it) that will rock all opur worlds and set us on a new path.

    Forget what 40 year olds want, think about establishing the new way for 5 year-olds to get what they want.

    Comment by Kevin — August 24, 2004 @ 12:38 pm

85. I dont know if anyone posted anything about this, but maybe this could be a solution, like all others expensive at first, but with time that could change. Should be better than blu ray. This is the article.

    A Japanese company has achieved the world’s first reliable recording and playback of digital movies on a transparent holographic recording disc.

    Optware plans to offer reader/writer players and 200Gbyte holographic versatile discs (HVD) in 2006 for enterprise users.

    Much less expensive consumer versions could be on the market by 2007, said Yasuhide Kageyama, manager of business development and marketing at Optware.

    The company has developed a collinear holographic data storage system that uses a green 532 nanometer laser to read holographic data on a 12-centimetre disc.

    Light from the laser is split into t