Media on solid state devices?

[Gingerbread Demon]

I don't know if anyone anywhere has tried this but why are things like movies and TV shows still distributed on physical disks? Bluray and DVD drives are after all mechanical devices, subject to ageing and wear. They sometimes break or fail.

Why has solid state memory not been tried as a medium for entertainment media like movies and TV shows? So instead of a box with 12 disks for your favourite show or movie series you'd have 1 or 2 cartridges that you plugged into a player that did all the same things your physical disk player could do but with zero moving parts?

is there any cost or resources related reason for not doing this?

 

[scotthm]

I don't know if anyone anywhere has tried this but why are things like movies and TV shows still distributed on physical disks?

Why has solid state memory not been tried as a medium for entertainment media like movies and TV shows?

You don't get away from physical media just by moving the bits from a disc to a cartridge, and a lack of moving parts for the system doesn't necessarily mean higher reliability of the data medium.

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[sojourner]

Cost, and the inevitable launching of a new "media standard war". Beta VS VHS, Blueray VS DVD-HD, etc...

 

[Kemaiku]

Solid state has about a tenth the reliable number of read/write cycles than optical drives. And you get far less storage for the same price given the far higher price of SSD's.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Solid state has about a tenth the reliable number of read/write cycles than optical drives. And you get far less storage for the same price given the far higher price of SSD's.

OK was not aware of those issues. I figured if you are only reading the data that wouldn't matter as such.

With USB sticks so cheap these days an 8 gig chip could hold a movie and bonus features just like its disk counterpart if you go for DVD quality. and maybe 32 gig chips for bluray quality. Anyway I didn't know lots of read cycles also cause wear.

 

[Kemaiku]

It causes wear on any drive, as something has to be written or read from it in some way. SSD's currently manage less than optical but it's getting slowly better. When the two can operate at the same reliability and for the same price, SSD's will replace standard drives for the convenience of size and speed.

Until then, HDD's are just cheaper and better to mass produce.

 

[publiusr]

The bit on invisible wood made me think of a way newspapers might stay in business.

You no longer put things on the web--but what you do--is to have people buy one time "newspapers" flexible pages with limited utility. You go up to a newsbox--and put in your quarters--and you bump the top of the box with your flexible membrane reader.

That updates it. You get what you want at the kiosk (science, sports, etc.)

 

[sojourner]

Yes, that's so much more convenient than just checking the web with my tablet.

 

[farmkid]

Solid state has about a tenth the reliable number of read/write cycles than optical drives. And you get far less storage for the same price given the far higher price of SSD's.

If such a standard were developed, I suspect it would be something like SD cards, except that they would be read-only. SD cards can sustain what, 100k write cycles? And the number of read cycles will be significantly higher. So even if the standard were just SD cards that were made read-only somehow, they could sustain being watched several hundred thousand times at a minimum. Even if it's a Disney movie that your toddler loves, it will never be watched anywhere close to that many times. I think the concern would be more that something small like that would be lost in the couch or mangled by something or eaten by the dog than that the memory would wear out. In the real world, I think it may actually be more reliable than optical discs because it wouldn't be so prone to scratches and other physical damage as DVDs and BDs are.

 

[publiusr]

Yes, that's so much more convenient than just checking the web with my tablet.

Maybe things are just a bit too easy--I'm trying to find away to get money back into reporters hands.

 

[sojourner]

Then find a way to make it even more convenient, not less. That's how money is made, by making someone's life easier.

 

[publiusr]

I like the feel of a newspaper. In the future, we may have a fabric or something that doesn't need as much power as a tablet.
it will be convenient, it is just that folks will start having to pay for content--but without having to give account info on ones limited bank account.

I like kiosks. Just for social reasons--I want to preserve a little of that Mad Men world, where folks wore suits to get on planes--and not Wal Mart wear EVERY where you go.... Rituals like the moring paper, coffee. Just my zeerust speaking I guess.

I think it was Matt Drudge who talked about going to Romania some years ago. Every one had ipods--but men still wore suits.

 

[sojourner]

Going to a kiosk to get something I can already get over the air is still backwards thinking.

When you think about it, a newspaper is in near tablet form when you purchase it. You just have to unfold it to an awkward size in order to gain access to all of the information stored there in.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Yeah I remember the buzz about electronic paper and how in the future we could have newspapers with moving images. Very Harry Potterish idea but it never happened. I remember lots of movies with this stuff in it ..

 

[publiusr]

That may yet be. I get nervous if I'm so much as near a tablet--anything fragile that gets near me has to roll a saving throw.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I still want to see electronic newspapers and where the hell is the flying car?

 

[Kor]

Maybe things are just a bit too easy--I'm trying to find away to get money back into reporters hands.

This is a complex issue, from a business standpoint. The newspaper industry relies very heavily on advertising as its main revenue stream, by a long shot. Readers paying for the paper at the newsstand or through subscriptions is merely a secondary income source. Someday when the "dead tree" editions are all retired, and the associated manufacturing and delivery costs are gone, then things may be different.

With so much information available remotely through the internet (much of it for free), having to go to a kiosk to buy an electronic version of a publication for your mobile device, instead of just going to your web browser or some mobile app, would be an extra inconvenient step. Many readers would skip it altogether for something more convenient.

Kor

 

[Scotchy]

I've been having similar thoughts on the media machine subject. I've been playing with the idea of getting a Raspberry PI 3 unit, loading up one of the Linux variants and hooking it up to my TV through the HDMI output. I have a 3 TB external drive to start with that would provide fairly decent storage for a dedicated media server like that. Anyone have any experience building a home media streamer/server like the one I describe?

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I haven't built a server but I did build a small PC with Windows 7 that had a 2 gigabyte external drive bay composed of 4 500gig drives. That had all my DVD's ripped onto it individually using DVD Decryptor. I used that to watch movies without having to actually take a disk off my shelf and load into the DVD player and it worked really well.

I would have kept it alive had I not gotten a bit needy for a new PC build and needed the drives but that system worked well for me using PowerDVD to watch movies off the external storage. It treated each movie folder as a separate real DVD only it wasn't.

 

[publiusr]

With so much information available remotely through the internet (much of it for free), having to go to a kiosk to buy an electronic version of a publication for your mobile device, instead of just going to your web browser or some mobile app, would be an extra inconvenient step. Many readers would skip it altogether for something more convenient.

Kor

Might save on heart disease. If I had a lot of money--were in charge of young children--and had my own island. I would see if there were a way to put significance into each aspect of the kids day--that they had to work at something. Look up around themselves--not just look down for total immersion unless that is what the little thing really wants.

The idea of scripting life may be a Sorkinesque thing to try. I wonder if it has ever been done. A new take on Plato's Republic.

Mars might be the ideal place. A fresh start on humanity where folks of different backgrounds who have not been taught anything about past woes.