Pack Your DVD’s Away With Your Cassettes & Vinyl

Well I knew it was only a matter of time, when you would never have to leave your house to rent a video. Back in the  early 90’s I owned a few Video Stores and could see the handwriting on the wall for the VCR tapes. God what a pain in the ass they were. Customers would bring them back in all kinds of disrepair and could rebuild one of those suckers with my eyes closed.

It used to be a great business back in the 80’s when they first came out, you actually made money. Of course you could make money back in the 80’s opened a Pet Rock shop also. But those days are gone and if you believe the President of Netflix the online giant of home delivered DVD’s, you have about 2 years left to stock up on your favorite movie on DVD.

If Netflix CEO Reed Hastings’ comments are any guide, the DVD era may be set to come to a rather abrupt halt.

Specifically, Hastings said in an interview with The Motley Fool website (digested here) that DVD will only be the “primary delivery format” at the company for the next two years, though he did add that it would stick around in some fashion for the next decade or two. That’s a huge pull back from Hastings’ previous prognostication; the Netflix boss had formerly predicted DVD would remain the company’s primary format until as late as 2018.

It looks as thou the new format to watch has already arrived by the method of streaming over the net. I know I watch all the shows from TV that  with I missed with this method, right here online, as I am sure many of you do to.

Mr Hastings went on:

Netflix has embraced video streaming in a major way in recent years, and its $99 set-top box remains the method I use to watch more streaming content than any other, outside of the occasional YouTube clip, anyway. (And yes, I know the Xbox-Netflix combo is undoubtedly popular with a huge number of people, too, at least those who don’t futilely shun and fear video game consoles.)

To me there is something to be said about having your movies in it’s own media, like DVD or cassette. It’s comforting much like your favorite pair of  shoes. They are there when you want them to wear, or in this case watch. And watch as many times at whatever time you desire.

So stock up now before you don’t have the choice of watching Gone With The Wind, fifteen times a year. Let us not forget our favorite Holiday movies. I am even thinking of buying a few cheap DVD players, just in case one breaks. Hell have you ever try to get your Beta Max fixed lately?

Netflix continues to expand its streaming options — about 20 percent of my queue is now available for streaming, up from roughly 8 percent a year ago — but Hollywood keeps resisting, much as Big Media did in the early days of digital music downloads. Is Netflix hinting that more studios are climbing aboard the digital bandwagon? And at what point does streaming hit enough of a critical mass to become the dominant movie delivery method? 50 percent of titles available to stream? 80 percent? It’s hard to see those kinds of numbers panning out in a mere two years… but maybe Hastings has tricks up his sleeve that we’re only just now starting to hear about.

Hell, I am still wondering if I should shoot out all my computer programs I have on floppy discs. Ahh the wonderful world of Technology. Last years $2000 computer is this years,  Ebay Buy Now for $99.00

Parts of this article reprinted from Yahoo Tech.com

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Posted by Glenn on Oct 10 2009 Filed under MEDIA, NEWS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry