Could we say goodbye to physical media?

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Gathering up the right hardware would be a challenge, but Sony did release Hi-MD which could store 1 GB on a single disc, and I think some of the players had MP3 playback support. That's like 300 songs or so on a single disc. Granted, if they wanted to bring back that form factor, they could do a whole lot better now (Mega Mini Disc...)

I do agree with you though, I'm a fan of MDs, I have a MD walkman and stereo deck at home and I still use it from time to time.

1 GiB was good back then.
Using Archival Disc density of 166.6 GB/layer on a 120mm Optical Disc, I estimated that a updated Mini-Disc could have ~45.7104 GiB per layer of data storage.
With a average complexity of up to 7x layers or 319.9728 GiB.
That's using Blu-Ray & DVD style disc manufacturing, the simplest known forms of Optical disc making.
4x layers on the clooser Blu-Ray side, 3x layers on the DVD side (HD-DVD used the same tricks).

Imagine having 319.9728 GiB of High-Fidelity music that was better than CD quality.
24-bit Integer / 48 kHz Practical Higher-Fidelity audio on a Mini-Disc format.

 

[Charles Phipps]

One of the reasons I'm not a huge fan of streaming is that its an attempt by the corporations to declare permanent ownership of all media. Now, everytime you want to watch Deep Space Nine, you have to pay them to do so as part of your subscription.

Versus DVDs giving you ownership of some permanently.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Ownership is overrated.

I am a huge fan of streaming. With services like Peacock and Paramount+, which are obviously not going anywhere, I don't just get shows and movies, I get things like Premier League soccer (I'm a big Liverpool fan) - which I obviously could not get if I did not subscribe to these services - AND I get live television, without having to subscribe to cable or fuck around with antennas which never work. So I'm really not getting why streaming is supposed to be the bad guy here.

If I can watch what I want, when I want, without the inconvenience of physical media OR cable television, why is it so gaddam important what I "own"? I pay the fees because I get results, and I get my money's worth. Simple as that.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

Versus DVDs giving you ownership of some permanently.

DVD media degrades. Nothing permanent about it.

 

[Charles Phipps]

DVD media degrades. Nothing permanent about it.

So do humans. So it lasts "long enough" usually

 

[Richard S. Ta]

So do humans. So it lasts "long enough" usually

For many, no. There are threads on this site about discs from Trek box sets randomly refusing to play after just a few years use. I recall myself that I had a few Doctor Who DVDs, in terms of scratches ‘pristine’, which just refused to play after some years.

I forget the exact term for it. Disc rot or something like that. A typical disc will last somewhere between 30-100 years. So possibly a lifetime… but, possibly not.

Physical media and streaming are both imperfect solutions and both as impermanent as each other.

 

[Charles Phipps]

For many, no. There are threads on this site about discs from Trek box sets randomly refusing to play after just a few years use. I recall myself that I had a few Doctor Who DVDs, in terms of scratches ‘pristine’, which just refused to play after some years.

I forget the exact term for it. Disc rot or something like that. A typical disc will last somewhere between 30-100 years. So possibly a lifetime… but, possibly not.

Physical media and streaming are both imperfect solutions and both as impermanent as each other.

Still, paying monthly is very different.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

People pay monthly for plenty of services and have for years and years. Complaining about streaming from that angle is silly.

The fact is, a streaming service is not just a way to watch archive TV. Mostly, they actively make new TV as well and a great deal of it is good.

Paying monthly for Netflix is no different to paying monthly for Cable or Sky.

 

[Charles Phipps]

People pay monthly for plenty of services and have for years and years. Complaining about streaming from that angle is silly.

The fact is, a streaming service is not just a way to watch archive TV. Mostly, they actively make new TV as well and a great deal of it is good.

Paying monthly for Netflix is no different to paying monthly for Cable or Sky.

Yes, exactly. Cable versus physical media, I choose the latter every time.

And did when I bought VHS tapes of Star Trek.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

And did when I bought VHS tapes of Star Trek.

So that’s 2 episodes per tape, at (being generous considering the prices at the times) $10 per tape, so for a typical season of TNG, you’d need 12 tapes. 7 seasons, you’d need 84 tapes.

So that’s $840 on a format that degrades as it is being played. If you factor in owning TOS and its movies, that’s another 42 tapes. You want DS9 or VOY, You’re gonna pony up for another (approx) 164 tapes… and by this point nearly $3000 has been ‘invested’ in VHS tapes that take up several large bookshelves worth of space AND that are slowly going rotten in their boxes.

And you think you ‘won’ by not paying $10 a month for Cable?

Interesting.

 

[Guy Gardener]

A 40 GB movie compressed to 3 MB would have lost so much information that it would look and sound like noise.

A petabyte DVD is unimaginable Buck Rogers technology since yesterday.

Why can't they invent a second impossible Flash Gordon technology by tomorrow?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

A petabyte DVD is unimaginable Buck Rogers technology since yesterday.

Why can't they invent a second impossible Flash Gordon technology by tomorrow?

The technology already exists, not necessarilly petabyte Optical Discs for commercial sale.

Those are still in the realms of "Press Releases" by universities or R&D labs, but who knows when we'll get commercialization & Mass Production of those.

But Archival Disc is already in mass production. Sadly, Sony relegates this technology in the form of ODA (Optical Disc Archive) which is a cartridge CD Changer solutioon for Enterprise Solutions only.

There are also better / more efficient encoding solutions than the "Morse Code" style encoding we currently use that would dramatically increase data density, it's only a matter of financial will / implementation for Sony and others to use it.

 

[Cryogenator]

There are also better / more efficient encoding solutions than the "Morse Code" style encoding we currently use that would dramatically increase data density,

What are these?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

What are these?

I believe some of the latest chips use analogue memory levels.
IBM develops a new 64-core mixed-signal in-memory computing chip (techxplore.com)
Analogue computing is due a resurgence - for certain applications.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

What are these?

The very first step is to move away from "Morse Code" style encoding and go with MultiLevel Recording.
You record 3-bits or 8 distinctive values into a tiny circle and repeatedly encode many circles in a linear fashion.

Storing the 3-bit pit depth worth of tiny circles with various pit-depths into a Hexagonal band for each row on the disc.

This is on top of recording on the Lands & Grooves section of the disc and seperating everything into read-able sectors.

 

[Disposable_Ensign]

People need to realize that, in light of the streaming boom and cloud hype, the cloud is just other people's computers. Forgoing physical storage for streaming movies or keeping all your photos on a Google Drive or your iCloud account just means if the right Google technician spills his coffee or the right Russian hacks the right computer (more common than you would think), you are (pardon my Latin) up shit creek without a paddle. Physical media is the only way data can truly survive.

 

[Cryogenator]

We don't need to have a disc pressed and shipped for each release, though. We can store downloaded purchases locally (and make them DRM-free with programs like AnyStream or StreamFab).

 

[Cr0sis21]

I used to love the idea of Streaming.
Then the stuff I paid for started to disappear. I realized that I am not actually "paying" for anything but a long-term rental. Amazon can and probably will start yanking "offensive" episodes of SpongeBob I bought (like the panty raid ep).
Then, P+ decided they were going to pull Prodigy completely from their service. Then decided that if you want to watch the original movies, you have to subscribe to HBO. Or something.
It's nice to have them there for convenience, sure. But for the stuff I really love? Like Star Trek? I'm going to own it on physical media.

 

[Cr0sis21]

And now they're just trying to force it:
https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/20...lower-moon-not-getting-physical-media-release

Because companies like Apple are not artistic. They're just looking for the easiest way to Make a buck.

 

[Cryogenator]

Then the stuff I paid for started to disappear. I realized that I am not actually "paying" for anything but a long-term rental.

I mentioned a solution to this directly above.