DVD Rentals Top Videocassettes For First Time
from the steady-march-of-the-DVD dept
A new report says that DVD rentals outpaced videotape rentals for the first time last week. Revenue from DVD rentals and sales passed VHS revenue quite some time ago, so this is just in absolute numbers. It is fairly impressive just how fast DVDs have come in and taken over (and in some ways revitalized) the entire industry.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Worse than video because...
2. Older, obscure movies are not available on DVD.
3. DVD hasn't caught on in Japan yet.
Electronic makers are poised to come out with blue-wavelength DVDs soon, which will add further confusion to the market. I wonder if we won't see a spectacular flameout of DVD, the first medium that reached majority status before backing down again?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Worse than video because...
As it is now, most DVDs you buy or rent contain a full length movie, sometimes in both 4:3 and 16:9 format, full 5.1 audio with multiple optional audio tracks, subtitles in multiples languages, cut scenese, behind the scenes and more.
Some DVDs, like the LOTR sets, contain as much as 8 or more hours of video.
The movies on DVDs are already at the maximum resolution that existing TVs can show and still have room for all these extras, so why do we possibly need higher capacity discs?
I see blue-laser DVD having limited uses, either as archival storage for computers - similar to a DVD-RAM drive, or for HDTV DVD-type movies, but since the cost for blue-laser media will be prohibitively expensive until it becomes popular, and since the only thing you would really be able to use it for is archiving (won't play in your CD player, won't play in your DVD player, won't read in your buddy's DVD-ROM drive, etc) I don't think it will become popular enough that the price will ever become tolerable. Plus, HDTV adoption is so slow with all the different formats and the fact that they still haven't decided on copy-protection, I don't see that happening any time soon.
I was at Radio Shack last night to pick up an obscure battery for a camera and noticed that they had a tiny (small laptop PC sized) DVD player for $48 after mail-in rebate ($10 rebate, IIRC). It not only plays DVD movies, but MP3 files and JPG files off of CD-R as well. At that price, there is no reason why anyone can't afford DVD instead of VCR.
People who keep saying "yeah, but X-technology (in this case blue-laser DVD) is just around the corner and it's going to be a zillion times better, so I'll wait for that" are just doing themselves a disservice. Some things like mini-disc and DAT audio tape looked good at first but never took off for one reason or another. DVD Video is not one of those things - it's here, it's still growing, and it's going to be around until something significantly better becomes available.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Worse than video because...
One Word - APEX
> 2. Older, obscure movies are not available
> on DVD.
Another Word - Netflix
> 3. DVD hasn't caught on in Japan yet.
No Word...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Worse than video because...
Won't let me do a search. Does it have "Zontar, the thing from Venus"? Or "I spit on your grave"?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Worse than video because...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Worse than video because...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
BLUE WAVELENGTH WILL NOT REPLACE DVD ANYTIME SOON
[ link to this | view in thread ]