09-07-2003, 09:06 PM
the "expiration date" DVD was already attempted a few years ago - it was called DIVX and was sponsored by Circuit City - the difference was the DVD would only lock-up, but could be played over and over so long as you dialed up and paid a rental fee to play it - essentially making your very own blockbuster at home. It was a huge failure, but the one good thing that came out of it was the DIVX .avi file format 
We as a a people love to pwn things - period. As small and as limited as my DVD collection may be, I take pride in seeing it and like the fact that I can watch each and every one of them at any time with no cost to me other than the initial $20 or whatever it was that I spent on it. I've used the VOD service, and while it's nice I like it mainly because I can rent a movie and watch it any time that day that I feel like it - but if I rent a movie and love it, I'm gonna wanna go out and buy it, not rent it a million times.
If anything, we'll see another format akin to the DVD that uses smaller discs, or maybe puts more interactive features on the DVD's themselves - for example, you rent Lord of the Rings, and after the movie there are online links to an express shopping site where you can order movie posters, T-Shirts, whatever.
People once said that offices will become "paperless" because files, records, etc. could be stored electronically - yet everyone I know that works in an office environment still has to print every goddamn thing on paper AS WELL AS backing their shit up on disc. People like to see what they own, not rent it every time they wanna access it.
We as a a people love to pwn things - period. As small and as limited as my DVD collection may be, I take pride in seeing it and like the fact that I can watch each and every one of them at any time with no cost to me other than the initial $20 or whatever it was that I spent on it. I've used the VOD service, and while it's nice I like it mainly because I can rent a movie and watch it any time that day that I feel like it - but if I rent a movie and love it, I'm gonna wanna go out and buy it, not rent it a million times.
If anything, we'll see another format akin to the DVD that uses smaller discs, or maybe puts more interactive features on the DVD's themselves - for example, you rent Lord of the Rings, and after the movie there are online links to an express shopping site where you can order movie posters, T-Shirts, whatever.
People once said that offices will become "paperless" because files, records, etc. could be stored electronically - yet everyone I know that works in an office environment still has to print every goddamn thing on paper AS WELL AS backing their shit up on disc. People like to see what they own, not rent it every time they wanna access it.