[Rob Babcock]

What do you guys think:  will the current paradigm of personall collection of physical entertainment media disappear in our lifetimes?  All my life I've been a collector of stuff.  I've collected comics, ammo cartridges, stamps, 25 mm lead miniatures, books...and of course LPs, Cassettes, CDs, DVD-A's, SACDs & DVDs.  Soon I'll probably begin the next phase and start my collection of HD-DVD/BluRay.  It's always been that way, and my dad collected 45's & LPs, even 8TRACKS.

But is that the way it'll always be?  The RIAA & MPA would dearly love for us consumers to not physically own anything.  Their ideal paradigm would be PPV or pay-per-listen.  Already young people are used to "renting" songs from I-tunes and other internet based music vendors.  Many people enjoy PPV movies, in addition to Netflix and B&M rental.  Of course for the IP providers it's a Goose that lays Golden Eggs- they need stock no inventory, produce no physical media and incur no costs of shipping & distribution.  Best of all, if I want to listen to my favorite songs I'd have to pony up the cash for each play.

Will people go along with this?  Are "old school" guys like us a dying breed?  I can't imagine not having my racks of shiny discs, or chips, or data-crystals, or whatever comes next.  I like something I can hold.  I like a booklet to thumb thru.  Can a relatively tiny fraction of the population (ie the studio heads) dictate this to the bulk of us in a consumerist, free market economy?

Is the idea of private media collections about to go the way of the dinosaurs?

[Mathew_M]

The RIAA & MPA would dearly love for us consumers to not physically own anything. 

I tend to think that they want you to own the media.  That's how they make their money.  Why do you think there's so many re-releases of Kind of Blue?  aa
What's happened over the past 20-30 years is that it's become easier to bootleg copywrited material.  Today nothing is safe, even comic books.  The problem is that consumers no longer value media.  Why should they when so many of their peers violate by downloading music via bittorrent and burning "back-up" copies of DVD movies.

You could argue that subscription models would suit the artists and RIAA the best.  Yet at the same time digital subscription models have yet to standardize.  80% of mp3 users own iPods.  Until Apple makes iTunes subscription based it will never happen.

Is the idea of private media collections about to go the way of the dinosaurs?

I don't think so.  Like I said, the studios want to sell you their movies and music.  I forget the numbers but DVD sales  make up a large source of revenue for studios.  It's hurt them quite a bit that people like myself no longer collect large amounts of DVDs.  In other cases like with Baseball cards, the manufactures over saturated the market with product.  It got to the point where there were a dozen different series you could collect a year.  It took the fun out of the hobby and now baseball cards especially ones made in the past 20 years are not worth much.

[JLM]

Good question.

With the expansion of various forms of high-speed digital communications I would expect that downloads of movies and music will continue to increase.  Movies and music work on our minds differently so I don’t expect these industries to develop the same.  In general, we’ll listen repeatedly to the same music, even multiple times in the same day; OTOH all but the youngest would get bored doing that with the visual media of movies.  So I don’t think music will go the pay/use route.

In such matters one must "follow the money".  Both the music and movie industries live and die by the amount of available disposable income.  And both of these segments of the entertainment business are dominated by the age 10 - 25 demographic.  This demographic not incidentally is also the market segment with the most disposable income.  So this most certainly is where the answers to this question lies.  With the cultural shift of this market target group to using individual music/movie sources and their associated loss of socialization skills I can even imagine "real" movie theaters going the way of the drive-in.

I'm sure the pay/use market share will expand as bigger/nicer TVs/home theaters proliferate.  The “past 25” demographic is more comfortable owning a physical copy, but 10 – 25 year olds have no such “hang-ups”.  I’m constantly amazed by how much disposable income Westerners have that they continue to buy DVDs that they rarely watch again.  Personally I wouldn’t miss buying DVDs as I only own a handful and I rarely have watched them a 2nd time.

I wonder if TV will go per/use someday.  IMO that would be a good thing for the public, as it might get our heads out of the mindless hours wasted (and channel surfing).  But would be a disaster for the networks as casual viewing (unless I underestimate the amount of "flushable income" this large market segment has) which seems to make up a majority of the hours the TV is on, would go away.

[WEEZ]

Interesting topic, Rob.

I suppose it depends on priorities. Movie buffs (like my wife) collect movies. Shelves full of video cassettes from the days prior to dvd; and now making room for more dvd's.

I collect music. Shelves full of lp's; cassettes; cd's; and a few music dvd's.

We both collect books.

Someday, we'll need more shelves! And a bigger house to make room for all the shelves!

For me, having our 'collection(s)' stored in a computer; or 'renting' songs or movies on a ppv/ppl basis will never happen. 

I have a problem getting my head around a scenario where someone says "Com'on over to my computer and have a look at my stamp collection". 

WEEZ

[Rob Babcock]

At one point such a thing wouldn't have been technically feasible, but as broadbast becomes ubiquitous throughout the world we're very close to being able to centralize all media and stream it.  Perhaps music and movies are two completely different things, but the same technology could be applied to both.

As for the studios wanting us to buy their DVDs...well, yeah- they want that now.  But wouldn't it much more attractive to them if we couldn't own any of them, but rather rented them each time we wanted to view them?  To those of you with kids, imagine the money Disney would make if they charged for each viewing of Cars or Monsters, Inc. instead of each copy!  The RIAA makes money when we repurchase Kind of Blue again and again, but think how much more money they'd make if we just rented it again and again.

There's no doubt that lots of us "older" guys (ie over 30) are used to having a hard copy.  But I really think younger people have a little different view than we do.  The under-25 kids that work for me don't really care much about CDs- they like music (or what passes for music with kids nowadays! ), but don't give a damn about the actual disc.  Most of 'em are happy downloading, legally or not.  They burn discs for their cars, taking to work, etc but don't seem to care about album art, credits, etc.

Perhaps VoD (video on demand) from centralized servers is more likely than music.  First off, you're generally (but not always) going to be at home when you watch a video, so being tied to a router/wifi isn't as big a deal.  It could present a bit of a problem in your car, although who nows how powerful networks may one day get.  Also, as many say, people tend to watch a movie only once, or perhaps a few times, whereas a favorite song may be played several times a day for weeks. 

I don't ever want to give up actually owning my movies and music, so I hope that option is always there.  If it wasn't, it's hard to say what I'd do.  There's enough "legacy" material extant that I could, for the most part, forego new music and just listen to what's already out.

[Dan Driscoll]

What do you guys think:  will the current paradigm of personall collection of physical entertainment media disappear in our lifetimes?

Probably, and for the very reasons you mentioned, plus a few more. I believe it is very clear that the studios and labels will very soon reach a point where they absolutely will not want you to own the media. The only reason they let you purchase the physical media now is because there simply was no other method of delivering you the content on demand. Radio, television and movie theaters simply could not exploit the review stream to anywhere new the extent possible. LP/cassettee/CD and videotape/DVD sales vastly increase the amount of money that the studios, record labels and artists could earn. But even then, they made strong efforts to restrict your use of the actual content, in the form of the license and laws against public display.

The problem from the content provider's position is that physical possession of media with a permanent copy of the content is far to easy to abuse or pirate. Controlling the content is the only thing that's important to the studios and labels, so anything that will improve their control of the content will be embraced. Fortunately for the provisers, the public is embracing the downloading concept, particularly younger customers. It took the providers a long time to realize this could become a gold mine for them, but the idea is finally starting to sink in and I expect will be fully accepted in less than 10 years. One of the main hold ups will be the market penetration of true high speed internet access, it will need to be greater than 90% for the download model to become dominant, IMO.

The other critical requirement will be reliable software and hardware that limits the number of uses or prevents unauthorized transfer of downloaded copyrighted material. But once those factors are in place, I think you can expect to see the beginning of the end of physical media collections.

[Wayner]

This is a very interesting topic. I don't think we own it now. We own the medium that it comes on, but the music, movie or whatever has a definite tie to the creator of the material. In other words, you can own a record, the vinyl, but not what is in the contents of the grooves. There are many laws concerning copyright covering this topic in particular. We as consumers of the music and movie media have the right to listen or view, but that is the limit.

The movie and record companies are going to go full circle on us because of all of the theft going on, especially with music. I'm sure they would love to have us all buy down loads that expire within a specific time, just like some computer software.

Yes, my friends, I believe the time is near.

W

[Rob Babcock]

I don't think we own it now. We own the medium that it comes on, but the music, movie or whatever has a definite tie to the creator of the material. In other words, you can own a record, the vinyl, but not what is in the contents of the grooves. There are many laws concerning copyright covering this topic in particular. We as consumers of the music and movie media have the right to listen or view, but that is the limit.

Yes, that's the way I see it- or at least the way I see they see it.  We own the physical disc, but the rights to the music don't come with it.  That is to say I can listen to it, but I can't broadcast it on the radio freely or make copies and sell them.  I suspect that selling the music on a durable carrier has always been viewed as a necessary evil to the record companies; at the time there was no feasible means to distribute the content on demand.  Now of course that's possible.

As Dan Driscoll said, the studios have always put as many limitations on our ability to use the media as they could.  In the early days of digital, no one really understood the power the technology represented.  When CD burners made their debut in PCs, I instantly saw the writing on the wall, but the record companies didn't get if for years.  When they did it was simply too late.  They did make sure to rectify their "error" when they readied DVD for market; not only did they add a sophisticated encryption system, they used their political clout to make even the attempt to crack it a crime.  It's easy to follow the bread crumbs to the truth- with each passing generation of technology, the studios have aimed to perfect not the sound but the security of their product.

Now we have a generation of consumer that doesn't even understand the value of fair use or privacy- the concepts aren't even in their lexicon.  That's what worries me.  The DMCA initially had provisions protecting "Fair Use," but it also has a provision allowing all the terms to re-evaluated every 3 years.  And each time it's "re-evaluated," the new interpretation seems to further narrow what's considered fair use.  If the studios get their way, in the end the term fair use will be empty and forgotten.

I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom, here.  Nor am I against progress if it's real progress.  Take MP3 for example.  CODECs combined with miniaturization have created an entirely new way to use music (although many probably consider this a negative, saying it was the beginning of the end).  But I do think it's time for the end users & customers of the labels to re-examine what we want music to be in the future.  We can allow the studios to completely dictate the terms to us or we can make our voice heard.

Ultimately we have a choice.  Sony has shown us that; they try to ram SACD down our throats, not for better sound but for greater security.  The public has spoken with their wallets, and the word they used was "no."  Sony tried to conceal odious malware within our music purchases, fueling outrage and eventually a legal beatdown.  I think there's still a window of opportunity for the public to participate in the choice, but that window is closing fast.

Am I being overly pessimistic?

[JLM]

I wonder if there would be sufficient interest among the larger labels to continue Redbook/CDs as a sideline after a conversion to pay/use.  CDs (and their players) could become as rare as LPs or 78s.  Hopefully PC DVD players (that can read CDs) will stay around for a while so can continue to have CDPs.

I wonder too what the age demographic is within the hi-end audio market?  Us older farts will be moving out of the hobby one way or another in the next couple of decades, but the younger audiophiles will suffer the most.

[Wayner]

Good point JLM, but I wonder if there are many young audiophiles?

W

[WEEZ]

There are some, but few and far between I'm afraid.

(unless you consider using a computer to store music in MP3 format being an audiophile. I don't.)

But let's remember, that young folks (unless they have rich parents) don't have the financial ability to start out with an expensive system. I sure didn't back some 35 to 40 years ago. Some things grow with time....

If iPods and MP3 players are the future...well, I feel sorry for the up and coming generation of 'potential' audiophiles.

[Mathew_M]

As for the studios wanting us to buy their DVDs...well, yeah- they want that now.  But wouldn't it much more attractive to them if we couldn't own any of them, but rather rented them each time we wanted to view them?  To those of you with kids, imagine the money Disney would make if they charged for each viewing of Cars or Monsters, Inc. instead of each copy!  The RIAA makes money when we repurchase Kind of Blue again and again, but think how much more money they'd make if we just rented it again and again.

True but today with all the methods available for someone to copy the media it makes more sense for them to sell it to you.  Take China for example, bootleg copies of movies hit the streets almost as soon as the movie is released here in the theaters.  How do you combat that? 

Personally I like the rental model for movies.  Most I will only watch once and that's it. For those select few that I will re-watch I can always buy the DVD.  The big breakthrough for me is when I can order a movie for rental online and then have it stream into my tv in real time and at at least DVD quality.  I like NetFlix but sometimes I find that I'm stuck with a movie I only had a brief interest in watching and it winds up sitting there on my coffee table for a couple of weeks before I send it back un-watched. 

[Scott F.]

Great topic!

When it comes to movies, we tend to watch ours all the time. For instance, we're watching Harrison Ford in one of the Jack Ryan movies right now for the umpteenth time (going all the way back to VHS). There are very few movies that we only watch once or twice but that is usually due to content (depressing issues or a comedy that is unfunny). When it comes to all of the 'extra features' and 2nd disc's that come with a movie, we never watch those for some reason. Guessing, we've collected about 2-300 DVD's.

Music, on the other hand, I have tons of stuff I've only listened to once and will likely never listen to again. With music, I enjoy reading the liner notes (with a magnifying glass) and finding out about all the behind the scenes stuff that went on.

Strange, maybe I like the illusion of being fooled when I'm watching a movie. I don't want to know how they did it because it would take something away when I become deeply involved in a flick. On the other hand, I want to know what type of mic's they used during the recording session. I want to know that the musicians recorded the entire album before sun up, just after they got done playing a gig on 52nd street.

I think at some time in the future we will defiantly be downloading everything we watch or listen to. I think there will always be a niche market for hard formats though I feel the mainstream will become streaming on a pay per view basis. The labels will likely offer it both ways, stream and own or stream one time. The protection scheme will likely be similar to iTunes where you pay a fee each month and they charge you per download. When you stop your subscription, your ability to play that music (or movie) ends.

We are on the verge of affordable, computer based home entertainment systems with terrabytes of storage. That I think is more the issue for the 'collector' right now. To store all the movies we have in high resolution, I'd need a shitload of 500gig drives.

I'm sort of looking forward to it all. I'd really like to have everything stored on my server. Then I could take my imaginary tablet PC that acts as a remote and access everything from my home security and automation system to my music, movies, television and the internet. PROVIDED, I own the rights to my media. Last thing I want is the labels getting greedy, Congress backing them up and me being forced to pay every time I want to watch a movie or listen to a song that I've paid already good money for.

A scenario like that is just a bit too Orwellian for me (but I could see it going either way unfortunately).

[Rob Babcock]

Interesting, Scott F.- that's the way I am with movies, too.  I've watched some of my favorite movies 50 times!  I'm split on the extras- certainly I don't want to see "the magic" revealed before I see the movie, but if I really love a film I usually want to see the process behind it.  Often I like my music to be a mystery- to me the power of a song, like a poem, lies in my interpretations/feelings about it.  I hate having art explained to me, most of the time. 

Having a centralized database of media that you could access on demand certainly seems efficient, and if broadband was ubiquitous and reliable it could have some advantages for the average movie buff.  And perhaps I'm paranoid about the price structure.  After all, it's not the average consumer would really spend much more for music than he currently does.  If Cars or The Lion King were only available as PPV they couldn't realistically charge $20 per viewing and expect anyone to buy.  And presumably there'd be some type of "volume discount" for the hardcore movie junkies.  Still, then you'd always have to be on The Network, you'd be subject to all the same server issues, etc.  Probably inconvient to access the central database while you're driving in the mountains, hiking, fishing, etc.

One thing I used to think was that movies would eventually be released to home video the day and date they hit movie theaters.  After all, if you could get the new Rocky Balboa on PPV instead of going to the theater, why not?  But naturally, my situation isn't the same as most consumers- I've got perhaps $14,000 invested in my HT rig, with another $25,000 in media.  I greatly prefer my home rig to any theater I could find withing 100 miles of home.  And even then I admit, sometimes it's cool to watch on a truly GIANT screen.  Plus, I'll also admit there's a social element to some films that makes it worth going out for.  A comedy seems even funnier when a couple hundred people are laughing along with you.  And it was really cool to see the 1st of the new Star Wars movies (even though it wasn't very good) alongside a crowd of rabid fans who'd waited their whole life to see the stories continue.

[jqp]

To me "collecting  music" or "collecting movies" has pretty much always been a personal act for a limited period of time. In one sense, you are merely collecting media, since as someone stated, you do not strictly own the art. Your collection is for you, for the duration that you can physically enjoy playing the media. You could currently sell the media to someone else, to a private individual, or even to a used media dealer.

Another limit to having a collection of music or movies is the generational limits for available players. Your grandkids will one day sell your beloved collection at a garage sale for 5 dollars, much like 8-track tapes are sold today. The difference is that the digital content could be easily transferred to the current digital media. But would it be the same collection, or just the ones someone wants?

I remember realizing that my fathers collection of 78s was virtually worthless as a music collection, unless I wanted to set up and maintain a museum (or is that what an audiophile does).

Another difference is that with the current trends, we may have peaked on the quality of available recordings. CDs are better quality than MP3s, since they are the uncompressed source of the MP3s. SACDs are even better than CDs but have we not seen a decline in SACD/DVD-A as a format? What is the incentive to produce higher quality recordings these days? The trend is to dumb down the sound.

And how much higher will video resolutions get? Resolutions have plenty of room to grow for video, when you consider a whole wall of your room as a video screen. But all movies to this date would be played at these lower resolutions. And will the average consumer watch movies on a BIG screen in their houses in the future?

This would make current collections of media valuable, especially assuming they could continually be legally transferred to the next generation of media.

[Rob Babcock]

Very true, JQP.  I've often considered that one day I may have to "stockpile" transports against the day DVD or CD is "dead."  Certainly ripping them all to hard drives would be prudent- assuming music is still played back from PCs, or even that PCs as we now recognize them still exist.

I agree, video seems to have more room to grow than audio.  Not withstanding some radical new playback technology that we can't imagine today that will give us vastly more realistic sound, we're probably closer to the "limit" of audio playback than we are with video.  To put it another way, who hasn't occasionally heard something reproduced on an audio system that startled them into thinking it was real, or at least heard something that sounded extremely close to real?  Now, who's ever seen a video that nearly fooled you into thinking you were seeing the real thing?  Yeah, me neither.

Already Japanese researchers have an experimental format with something like 8X the resolution of the current 1080i format.  Obviously any time you create a format it's essentially "a fossile"- it's a snapshot of what seemed like the technical & economic sweet spot of the moment.  The next year you could easily top that, but formats have to last a while to make them economically viable.

[jqp]

Right, availability of good transports would seem to be a real limiting factor. Apparently good CD transports are very hard to find these days. They are just not being manufactured. Thats why nOrh quit having the CD-1 produced, although the factory they used still makes a cdp like the CD-1, with a low quality transport.

Not sure what the factors for DVD transports are, probably very similar.

Now what device could display 8x1080p? How far from the screen would you have to sit, and how big is it? Of course displays are probably very primitive compared to what they will be. Can the same be said for audio drivers?

[Scott F.]

.......I greatly prefer my home rig to any theater I could find withing 100 miles of home.  And even then I admit, sometimes it's cool to watch on a truly GIANT screen.  Plus, I'll also admit there's a social element to some films that makes it worth going out for.  A comedy seems even funnier when a couple hundred people are laughing along with you.  And it was really cool to see the 1st of the new Star Wars movies (even though it wasn't very good) alongside a crowd of rabid fans who'd waited their whole life to see the stories continue.

I'm with you when it comes to preferring my HT to any cinema out there. It sounds better, looks better and best yet, I can pause it for bio breaks and hit rewind when I miss something.

There is absolutely something to the group effect when watching movies. If I had to choose though, I think I'd go for my HT out of sheer convenience.

And how much higher will video resolutions get? Resolutions have plenty of room to grow for video, when you consider a whole wall of your room as a video screen. But all movies to this date would be played at these lower resolutions. And will the average consumer watch movies on a BIG screen in their houses in the future?

I think resolutions will get higher and yet higher again. Tell you what though, 1080i is pretty damned good with the right source material and HT rig. I'm not sure that I'll be in any big hurry to 'upgrade' to the HD-Blu's.

When it comes to the average consumer and big screens......I think nearly every person on the planet, especially guys, are racking their brains trying to figure out how to afford a bigger, higher resolution TV with the latest big bang HT rig. I liken it to the whole urban assault vehicle syndrome in the major cities, it's become a 'status' thing.

[Wayner]

When I kick the bucket, they can use my LP's for frisbees. But if they try before, I may have to get my shotgun!