Seven Gadgets Not to be seen by 2020

[MacLeod]

DVD/Blu-ray will still be around long after 2020, Not everywhere will have superfast broadband by the end of the decade. some areas are still only at 2mb/s at most. Others at upto 8mb/s. Releastically for streaming you are talking a minium of 20 mb/s espically if you have more than 1 computer trying to stream.

I also think the days of "all you can eat" broadband are numbered. When providers start to charge for all the extra streaming data that will slow down (or stop) the shift away from DVD/Blu-ray.

Wouldn't people like Hulu, YouTube, and other major streaming services fight tooth and nail to prevent that from happening? At least, I would if I were in their shoes; that's a pretty serious threat to their revenue model.

If the ISP's believe they can make money by charging those companies a fee to have unlimted service they will. Either way the consumer losses out.

After all from an ISP point of view, why should I help anothers company revenue stream, if it'll damage my own.

Of course a solution for those companies would be to become ISP's themselves.

 

[Marc]

I also think the days of "all you can eat" broadband are numbered. When providers start to charge for all the extra streaming data that will slow down (or stop) the shift away from DVD/Blu-ray.

Wouldn't people like Hulu, YouTube, and other major streaming services fight tooth and nail to prevent that from happening? At least, I would if I were in their shoes; that's a pretty serious threat to their revenue model.

If the ISP's believe they can make money by charging those companies a fee to have unlimted service they will. Either way the consumer losses out.

After all from an ISP point of view, why should I help anothers company revenue stream, if it'll damage my own.

Of course a solution for those companies would be to become ISP's themselves.

no no no.

Look at the ISPs in both the U.S and Canada.

they are frequently owned by companies that aren't only telecos they are media content providers and the likes of the Hulu and Netflix are the the competition and the last thing they want.

To give a prime example. The day Netflix opened it's streaming service in Canada, Rogers announced a cut in it's data caps because Netflix was in conflict with it's on demand service over it's cable network.

Going further you can read up on the opposition to net neutrality legislation in the U.S. It's opposed by the likes of AT&T becasue it would hinder their ability to throttle traffic from sites like Hulu & Netflix.

You could argue that the market should be allowed to sort it out but that's in an ideal world - not what you have in the U.S with monopoly carriers (oh and another good example was a U.S munipality who couldn't get a big carrier to provide them with high speed internet so they decided to build their own FTTH and were immediately dragged into court by the big teleco who announced they were going to do it after all).

 

[Crazy Eddie]

But the only thing that you can predict safely is that you'd have less things doing more.

True that.

Unless a person happens to be a Technophile

In which case, you would have MORE things doing more.

 

[Owain Taggart]

3. Walkie talkies

Was that ever OUT? Security guards and police officers still use them, and Nextel used to have that annoying/chirping walkie-talkie thing.

Nope, ham radios are still being used, which you need a license to operate. Plus there are things called emergency/safety radios which are basically walkie-talkies that I see at big events, often used by their parents to keep track of their kids.

 

[Matthias]

The current TB drives don't have off switches and that is one security problem. Another is that even with a surge protector you could get a near by lightning strike that would jump your protection. I have an external drive and the USB port burned out on it. Luckily I was able to salvage the drive and put it in another housing. Both had off switches.

I save everything to CD and or DVD. The life span of these disks is suppose to be about 5 years, but I have a CD-R that is older than that. Unfortunately no one has come up with a better way to save data.

You do to hard drives what you do to CDs: Take 'em away from the computer and put them in a safe.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

That's not very safe, as it doesn't protect the data from a worldwide disaster. If the Earth is destroyed, your backups are gone. Keeping the backup hard drives off-planet is the best choice.

 

[ngc7293]

The current TB drives don't have off switches and that is one security problem. Another is that even with a surge protector you could get a near by lightning strike that would jump your protection. I have an external drive and the USB port burned out on it. Luckily I was able to salvage the drive and put it in another housing. Both had off switches.

I save everything to CD and or DVD. The life span of these disks is suppose to be about 5 years, but I have a CD-R that is older than that. Unfortunately no one has come up with a better way to save data.

You do to hard drives what you do to CDs: Take 'em away from the computer and put them in a safe.

Until the price of Solid State Drives comes down significantly or they come out with media that can hold more, I will stick with disks.

 

[PurpleBuddha]

That's not very safe, as it doesn't protect the data from a worldwide disaster. If the Earth is destroyed, your backups are gone. Keeping the backup hard drives off-planet is the best choice.

I am not sure who's idea it was originally but Through the Wormhole had an episode that talked about saving a person's "dna code" digitally and storing it in space, because one day that digital code may be all the information we need to recreate the person. Of course this would merely be a clone of yourself and not you, but it is at least a cool idea even if nearly inconceivable.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Well, if DNA doesn't do it, you can always freeze your brain...

 

[RAMA]

E-readers my stand the test of time, they offer a basic viewing option that doesn't have some of the drawbacks of current tablets.

 

[RAMA]

That's not very safe, as it doesn't protect the data from a worldwide disaster. If the Earth is destroyed, your backups are gone. Keeping the backup hard drives off-planet is the best choice.

If a worldwide disaster comes, you aren't likely to worry about your backups that much, and there aren't many places they'd be safe anyway.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

That's not very safe, as it doesn't protect the data from a worldwide disaster. If the Earth is destroyed, your backups are gone. Keeping the backup hard drives off-planet is the best choice.

If a worldwide disaster comes, you aren't likely to worry about your backups that much, and there aren't many places they'd be safe anyway.

Uh, YellowSubmarine was making a joke.

 

[Irishman]

dvd/blueray won't be totally replaced. Fans like to own their favorite movies and not be subject to the whim of an online company as to whether it is available for viewing at any given time.

dvd-r and blueray-r are already being replaced - by usb memory sticks.

Sigh,

This discussion always happens. Storage and media always go round and round. It's like the house you buy because you think "there's no way I'll fill up all these closets or use all this space!. Fast forward to 10 years down the road when you've added 2 kids, a dog, a Home Theater system, and a treadmill, and you're bursting at the seams.

CDs begat DVDs which noone thought they would fill up, which begat Blu-ray, which noone thinks they will fill up. When Ultra HD hits late next year, (somewhere around 2160p), Blu-ray will not be enough space to store it, and current broadband systems won't have a chance in hell of being able to stream (to put it in perspective, current home broadband can't deliver Blu-ray quality over internet).

New storage formats will come out, as will faster broadband.

After that, it will be something else. It will never stop.

 

[Irishman]

no no no.

Look at the ISPs in both the U.S and Canada.

they are frequently owned by companies that aren't only telecos they are media content providers and the likes of the Hulu and Netflix are the the competition and the last thing they want.

To give a prime example. The day Netflix opened it's streaming service in Canada, Rogers announced a cut in it's data caps because Netflix was in conflict with it's on demand service over it's cable network.

Going further you can read up on the opposition to net neutrality legislation in the U.S. It's opposed by the likes of AT&T becasue it would hinder their ability to throttle traffic from sites like Hulu & Netflix.

You could argue that the market should be allowed to sort it out but that's in an ideal world - not what you have in the U.S with monopoly carriers (oh and another good example was a U.S munipality who couldn't get a big carrier to provide them with high speed internet so they decided to build their own FTTH and were immediately dragged into court by the big teleco who announced they were going to do it after all).

I agree with your comments in part. I agree about Netflix being competition for traditional content providers.

However, Hulu is a different animal. Hulu is a joint venture of NBCUniversal (Comcast/General Electric), Fox Entertainment Group (News Corp) Viacom and Disney-ABC Television Group (The Walt Disney Company), with funding by Providence Equity Partners, the owner of Newport Television, which made a US$100 million equity investment and received a 10% stake.

So, Hulu IS the establishment, not the plucky upstart outsider some mistakenly see them as. I fault this way of thinking as being the main reason they charge for full seasons while STILL including ads in the content. That is the old way of thinking.

 

[Irishman]

I assume that the obsolescence of "standalone GPS" is based on its being available as an application on more flexible devices like cell phones. Tom-Tom is not long for this world.

Well, the pricing matrix on standalone GPS's has become such that they're now a commodity. You can get a VERY well-featured GPS (lane guidance, lifetime maps, lifetime traffic, 4.3" or 5" screens) for under $100! Rewind to 5 years ago, and GPS's with features most closely aligned with these would cost you $400 INCLUDING the map updates and the traffic subscription on top of that!

GPS makers are now including limited internet capability to generate interest in new buyers. I think this is having the opposite result, because it's reminding consumers how similar GPS functionality is to that of their smart phone, and they're buying a GPS app instead.

I agree with your assessment - neither TomTOM, nor Garmin, nor Magellan are long for this world. There's becoming less of a reason to buy them.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Sigh

Um, except that at this point people are not concerned with the increase of resolution. For most of us, 1920x1080 is good enough, hell even 1280x720 is just fine, and there are many people who don't care for anything above DVD resolution. Let's face it, any improvements in resolution from now on are less and less important. Nobody cares.

What could really increase the required bandwidth at this point is framerate and the addition of video tracks (e.g. 3D, multiple angles). But even for that, most people don't care. 3D already fits, and even that nobody cares about.

What's more, new compression algorithms allow for a 1920x1080 to fit on a regular DVD at a small price, and Bluray does support them. So at this small price in quality, you might be able to fit a lot onto a single Bluray if you liked, especially if you're trading it for a higher resolution.

Internet Bandwidth steadily increases, so it will eventually stream whatever. And you don't have to stream. Man, haven't you heard of downloads? Besides, the Internet is broken, and sucks. Things like multicasting can drastically decrease bandwidth usage (and if that doesn't work, there's always the three-strikes law – anyone caught using Windows three times is banned from the Internet).

 

[scotpens]

. . . And of course, the above posts listing infrastructure especially in blighty. Good ole BT could have started upgrading to FO some twenty years ago, but as usual, politics and money got in the way and LLU has taken the biscuit.

Hmmm . . . it reads like English, but I think i need a translation!