Could physical media actually die out?

[ComputerNerd]

The biggest barrier by far is the internet access, and that is one that will still continue to be one for years to come for as long as it is provided by money hungry companies who value their profit margins over customer service.
I am currently on my main home connection receiving less than 3mbs over ADSL.
Without cable I simply could not get any faster because of the local conditions/distance from exchange.
Therefore for me physical media particularly for video content is a huge draw.

[Tradewind]

I personally haven't bought an actual physical disk copy of a game since WotLK collector's edition, everything I get is through steam, origin or battle.net.

[Hekto]

i believe so, but i also believe itll only be temporary, i think there will be an eventual return of physical media eventual... idk, maybe im wrong but i have a feeling somehow one day digital media is going to collapse on itself,

[Mechazod]

I'll bite on one small piece of this idea, books.

Examples of literature date back to the early bronze age. This means we have nearly 5,000 year old books.

How long do you think the Facebook servers are going to remain operational? How many technology shifts will occur during the next 5,000 years, and how much data will shift each time? I think most of the data that is currently being stored has very little long term value. Some of the data we're storing, though, has great long-term value. Scientific journals, for instance, and publishing experimental data and the conclusions being drawn from that data. This would be of great value to future civilizations, so they can understand our times a little better.

My overall thought is that virtual and physical media will coexist. There is no great reason for only one to survive. We can find fantastic uses for both.

This is pretty much the exact thinking I have on the subject and why I will never support digital only media without any alternatives, especially as far as video games are concerned.

i believe so, but i also believe itll only be temporary, i think there will be an eventual return of physical media eventual... idk, maybe im wrong but i have a feeling somehow one day digital media is going to collapse on itself,

I have been waiting for a long time for something horrible to happen to say a popular service like Steam or a cloud service to at least get more people to realize digital only isn't as great as companies make it seem. So far closest thing has been the week PlayStation Network was down but not really in the same context.


Also I know this will make me seem like an ass hole but I will NEVER pay for digital only content. I will more then gladly pay for a physical back up copy that I own and not dependent on a third party or company to use. If everything does become 100% digital then I will pirate the hell out of everything with no remorse.

[Powerogue]

books will probably stay a while, then again there's that google books thing. http://books.google.com/

dying out, unlikely, but I can see it not being the norm.

[Time Sage]

Despite growing up in the 90s and 00s's, I dislike being unable to have my stuff in physical form. I like being able to buy my video games second hand, and if everything goes digtal... There was a nerouticly Your's rant about this, which I'm not going to link to for obvious reasons, that I think you guys should watch.

[PBitt]

I think it probably will before too long, but at the same time, I actually like having physical copies...books, music, games, you name it. I think they will co-exist for awhile, but, to be completely honest, say 20, 30 years from now I think pretty much everything is going to be online and downloadable, and I do think the cloud storage thing is really going to take off as well. Plus, there is the whole 'green' thing, you know, why waste all that material to make a bunch of K-Fed CDs that will eventually end in the dumpster anyways.

Yeah, it takes up space, but I'm quite proud of my media mountain just to the right of where I'm sitting atm....pretty much every dvd, cd, and game I've ever owned is all in one place, formally all neat and in racks and now more mountain-ish as I collect more and more shit. It's nice to just be able to have a hard copy of any game I've ever had at my fingertips (I never get rid of anything unless I really hated it), be it I'm just in the mood for it, want to let someone borrow it, or if I just want something to show for all the time and money I've spent on media stuff over the years.

[Mechazod]

I just personally can not honestly see why an artist would not want their works preserved in some form of physical media even if it isn't their main source of income. For example: If I were a game designer I would make sure no matter what that I had a version released of my small indy game in a physical format. Many people say this is impossible for what they get from their games but I disagree. First off all it wouldn't have to be an initial release but lets say a game like Bastion, a very popular game so far only released as a download, are you telling me that the company that made it hasn't made enough to get a small CD release? I know plenty of small companies that hardly anyone even knows of that continue to create physical copies of their games which never get close to the amount of popularity as these mega popular indy titles. As far as the whole wasteful production concerns with physical format I do agree, a lot of it is worthless, first off there is no reason for a case to be so large unless perhaps for a collectors release, standard CD size cases would be fine, manuals are no longer needed since most have them on the disc which I am fine with, plus there is the option to use recycled materials for packaging which a few games have done but a lot more could be doing. I would personally gladly pay more for a physical copy, wouldn't even have to be a collectors edition version, I just want insurance that 10 years down the line I can still find a game and not learn that the servers that hosted its download no longer exist. I just cant see why more game designers would not put out a plan to create a physical version and have their work preserved. I can think of no greater honor then having a game I created being up on a shelf along the classics like Mario and Halo and to 20 years from now become a true classic that everyone remembers, I just cant see that happening with 90% of download only games that exist today.


Also I dislike the fact that digital content has so much of a greater opportunity to be broken up or edited upon release. I could see a future where full games no longer exist, in fact I could see DLC no longer existing either, instead all games will be released as episodic releases, paying for each one or paying for a subscription to one company to receive their games, games which will probably not even be downloads but instead be streamed, THAT is a future I do not want to see.

[Orlong]

The very idea of physical media dying out pisses me off. I like my high quality 1080P video content with HD Master Audio and in the near future I will enjoy 4K content. Unfortunately there isnt currently enough bandwidth to stream 1080p content with HD Master Audio tracks or better. It a shame that so many people are satisfied with the mediocre video and audio quality that you get with Netflix. Its these people that are going to ruin everything for the rest of us. It seems that nobody wants the best of anything anymore, they are just satisfied with mediocre crap. Its also why tablets are so popular. You'll never have the flexibility with a tablet that you get with a powerful desktop PC, especially when it comes to gaming. keyboard and mouse offer so much more flexibility than a touchscreen. It's also why they still sell crappy 720P TVs, generic soda, Daewoo and Kia cars etc...

[Deleted]

this is not an "if" question, but a "when".

Pretty much this.

While we might not see a point where physical media "dies". It will continue to get more and more irrelevant. As you read this message, someone, somewhere, is purchasing a smartphone or a tablet/kindle.

To be honest, I really can't see physical media still being relevant in 10 years time...possibly 5 for advanced nations...

[Deleted]

The very idea of physical media dying out pisses me off. I like my high quality 1080P video content with HD Master Audio and in the near future I will enjoy 4K content. Unfortunately there isnt currently enough bandwidth to stream 1080p content with HD Master Audio tracks or better. It a shame that so many people are satisfied with the mediocre video and audio quality that you get with Netflix. Its these people that are going to ruin everything for the rest of us. It seems that nobody wants the best of anything anymore, they are just satisfied with mediocre crap. Its also why tablets are so popular. You'll never have the flexibility with a tablet that you get with a powerful desktop PC, especially when it comes to gaming. keyboard and mouse offer so much more flexibility than a touchscreen. It's also why they still sell crappy 720P TVs, generic soda, Daewoo and Kia cars etc...

Actually desktops are rigid, not flexible. That's their very nature and only drawback.

Tablets are all about flexibility and that limits their performance much more. And you can hook up keyboards and mice to any quality tablet and play quite a lot of games with them. I don't think you own one by the sounds of it, they're quite nice honestly. And with Apples new iPad and the A700, 1080p+ is coming to tablets.

[DeltrusDisc]

Actually desktops are rigid, not flexible. That's their very nature and only drawback.

Tablets are all about flexibility and that limits their performance much more. And you can hook up keyboards and mice to any quality tablet and play quite a lot of games with them. I don't think you own one by the sounds of it, they're quite nice honestly. And with Apples new iPad and the A700, 1080p+ is coming to tablets.

In the matter he was speaking - desktops are very flexible, far more so than tablets. Tablets are for people who do not use computers as heavily, seriously, and perhaps as much for work, as those who do. My computer? Synthaxx's computer? Cyanotical's computer? These computers we can make do many more things than a tablet could, and far more efficiently. Encode a huge video? Not a problem, Cyanotical will win though. ;p Play a game at ultra settings? Not a problem and won't burn our hands (lol The New iPad comes to mind) either, however once again Cyanotical will win on the actual performance scale. Edit music? We can do it too. Analyze a picture? Trust me, a bigger screen with a real graphics card feeding into it - will do better than a tablet. Some part in the computer getting old? Shoddy motherboard? Bad hard drive? Not a problem, we can replace those, tablet-owners, cannot, will not, and likely don't know how, either, to be fair.

So you can play quite a lot of games on a tablet... that's great. We can play more on computers. I've personally used some tablets and I must say - I really did not like it. It was uncomfortable, typing without a keyboard drives me nuts, yes a physical keyboard, and plugging one in, kind of defeats the purpose of being all mobile and crap.

Also as I mentioned earlier, the NEW iPad runs very hot and Apple responded in a rather harsh manner: "The New iPad matches our specifications, if any customers feel they are having any problems, they are urged to contact Apple Care."

Tablets are okay if you don't care about true quality. And 1080p+ resolution =/= quality.

[Deleted]

No, because of reliability and speed. Reliance and capacity requirements will reduce as streaming services improve and further adapt, but it will not die out completely. Local storage remains necessary because its the only medium which is guaranteed to work during spectrum overloads. As more and more devices become wireless, this problem just continues to increase. It is also far more power efficient.

The 'clouds' themselves still requires that same media to store it, and the media companies use is much more expensive per gigabyte than consumer media. From a straight cost perspective, private storage will remain considerably cheaper for a foreseeable future.

[Lemons]

The very idea of physical media dying out pisses me off. I like my high quality 1080P video content with HD Master Audio and in the near future I will enjoy 4K content. Unfortunately there isnt currently enough bandwidth to stream 1080p content with HD Master Audio tracks or better. It a shame that so many people are satisfied with the mediocre video and audio quality that you get with Netflix. Its these people that are going to ruin everything for the rest of us. It seems that nobody wants the best of anything anymore, they are just satisfied with mediocre crap. Its also why tablets are so popular. You'll never have the flexibility with a tablet that you get with a powerful desktop PC, especially when it comes to gaming. keyboard and mouse offer so much more flexibility than a touchscreen. It's also why they still sell crappy 720P TVs, generic soda, Daewoo and Kia cars etc...

God...I kno right? It's these people! They have no taste! For instance...they all settle for normal shoes made of leather and textiles, and that's keeping the gold shoes from gaining popularity! Can't those people see that there's nothing better in the world than walking around in some solid-gold kicks? No, they're just satisfied with mediocre crap.

[Djinni]

there have been books for so long because we only discovered the EM spectrum recently in terms of human history, personally i think a shift from physical to virtual media is needed, aside from saving the trees, it reduces cost, and lets everyone have a say in culture

if civilization ends tomorrow, and we have to start over in a cave again, everything we know about science and technology will be discovered again, but perhaps somethings like atomic and biological weaponry, people dont need a head start in

I'd tend to agree with you... but splitting the atom has led to so many other technological advances.... as for head start.... I think it would be stupid to think that if we didn't leave any evidence of this research behind that it wouldn't simply happen all over again, and the millions of deaths resulting from that research wouldn't happen all over again. No best to leave it as is and display the results right alongside it.

Not to mention most of this stuff would be stored by multiple countries military and therefore the most likely to survive a cataclysmic disaster.

Wikipedia is as much a valid source as any encyclopedia, perhaps more so due the the faster and heavier oversite, that view comes from aging teachers and professes who automatically discount anything on the internet, they still view it as the geek's toy from the early 90s

Oh if only but if I reference anything from Wikipedia for any of my university work that reference is immediately discredited and only serves to use up my word count. (and most of my teachers/lecturers can

i agree with your thoughts on the need to store data locally, but those caps are artificially created by a company that is trying to maximize profits, the last argument i heard for bandwidth caps was "the internet is a precious resource, if we don't limit it, we will run out" (the scary part is im not making that up)

i would say that cloud computing is fully viable when these criteria are met:
1. high speed connections available to all people
2. true net neutrality
3. viable security of personal information

we already do plenty of cloud storage, often people listen to music on youtube, pandora, and last.fm instead of downloading it, we only download it when we want to take it with us, in say an mp3 player, but imagine if that mp3 player could play directly from pandora all the time, anywhere in the world, we wouldnt need to download anything

Artificial or not... the caps need to be removed.

Agree with your 3 points :-)

[Deleted]

if you mean physical media such as newspapers, Magazines, Books. IE anything paper based then yes I can see that in the future we move away from a paper based system.
Look at the likes of tablet computers, Kindles, and other hardware which allows you to download and read books. It wont be long (100 years or so) where we get to a point where paper based media will go the same way as the Phonograph did.



Sure it [paper] will still have its Affectionado's but it will be rare to see people sat round reading an actual book or newspaper that is actually made from paper and not some sort of smart paper or on a hand held device of some sort. Look at the the music industry, it went from portable tape players, to CD players to MP3 players in a very short period of time, if you had an mp3 player with today's memory technology the same size as a 1st generation walkman then you could no doubt carry with you every single song from the top 40 for the entire decade, where as the original Walkman would would be able to carry one tape which was about 90 mins worth of music.

[Anakso]

Personally I think the future is a combination of things like the cloud and also physical storage. We'll have both. I don't think the cloud is going to replace physical storage all together.

EDIT: As for digital files replacing things like hard copy of DvDs then I definitely think that's possible, even quite likely.

[Somebodyelse]

Services like iCloud, and cloud computing in general are on the rise. The new MacBook Pro is rumoured to be shipping without an optical drive, just a flash drive. The amount of data you can store online is increasing, and the prices for storage space are going down significantly, if not totally free. Internet speeds are also increasing. People prefer MP3s over physical CD's. You can easily sync and stream data from one device, such as your computer, to your television.

And as each day goes by, all of this is becoming easier, cheaper, and more reliable. Lastly, digital distribution is on the rise, negating the need to obtain physical copies of books, movies, CDs etc. Receiving content at the click of a mouse, is more convenient and time saving than going all the way to the store, especially in an age where everyone is always busy.

During our lifetimes, many formats have come and gone. From the casette, to the VHS, to the CD, even physical copies of magazines & books (Wikipedia etc). And now it seems that all forms of physical media will soon be phased out.

-What are your thoughts on the likelihood of physical media dying out?
-And what is your personal opinion of this trend?

I have a love-hate relationship with the concept actually...

I love not having to keep 200cd's/dvd's around and having to re-insert them in the dvd drive everytime I want to install something, considering downloading/installing online is usually faster then installing with dvd's (you know like...WOW and the 16 cd's you need to install if you have physical copies of all the xpac's and vanilla)

BUT and it's a big but (pun intended) I hate how they are handling digital distribution...You know those freakin' "small characters at the bottom of the contract"...Mainly the things saying that I'm not the OWNER of what I bought, that I bought a SERVICE and that I'm a USER of the service so the company can f me in the butt anytime they want and tell me sorry bro, we'Re revoking your rights to use our products, thanks for paying, good night. You're screwed...

I also hate the new hypocritical excuse they use for forcing us to be online playing single player games like diablo or SC2 campains...It's not to stop piracy at all, it's just a way for them to have even MORE control on what you do with what YOU buy.

[Deleted]

As for digital files replacing things like hard copy of DvDs then I definitely think that's possible, even quite likely.

True. I really see no reason for Jane Green to hop in her car and drive down to Blockbuster in order to rent Bridget Jones. When instead, she can just turn on her computer, log onto Netflix, and stream to her TV.

The only thing holding back this from already having taken place, is the fact that you still have to be relatively tech-savvy to set up a lot of things and to manage it all. When the process becomes simpler and companies make it more seamless, then less tech-savvy users will join the bandwagon. Apple has already set this trend in motion with iCloud being essentially a key cornerstone of an iPhone users experience, and it's essentially unavoidable. Not to mention Microsoft before them making movies so accessible via Xbox Live. Kinect just ties this in for the casual user and the rest of the family.

You really can't fight technological development. Word of the day: Convenience.

[DeltrusDisc]

installing with dvd's (you know like...WOW and the 16 cd's you need to install if you have physical copies of all the xpac's and vanilla)

You ARE aware that you can stick the Cataclysm DVD in and start from there... right?