Weekly Question

The Future of Entertainment

We all take DVD for granted these days, most of have at least one DVD player in our homes, and most of us are building up a healthy DVD collection. But with advances in technology becoming so rapid, and that technology becoming cheaper by the day, what does the future hold for the DVD? Indeed what does the future hold for all our entertainment media?


When DVD was first released people said that it could never take over from VHS, as VHS was too established, and people would not want to spend the money on updating their collections. But with the huge amount of piracy, cheaper DVD's & players, downloading and saving to DVD, all possible VHS has virtually been replaced by the DVD. It's not only the VHS that has been replaced, look at MP3 music files, the iPod and CD's. The music industry has probably been hardest hit with the advent of the internet/MP3/iPod revolution, as fewer CD's are been sold than ever before. Giving rise to millions of people breaking the law by downloading music albums from illicit websites.

Pirates of the Caribbean 2 on Flash Memory???

But are we facing a future world where you download your films and music from the net, to watch on your media centre PC's, is HD-DVD going to be the new format to wipe out the current DVD format, will Blue Ray have a chance? Or will something else take it's place in the homes of people everywhere.

Imagine this as a future;

You're sitting at the airport waiting for your flight when the tannoy announcer states it will be delayed for 3 hours. So you have time to watch a movie. So out comes your Flash Media card player from your jacket pocket, it's only the size of a pack of cards after all. You then unfold from your other pocket something resembling a plasticky cloth, you pull it tight so it locks into place, with it's soft-hard-soft properties. You place it on the empty seat next to you, and then plug it in via the attached cord to the card reader. You then take out of your other pocket a small holder that has a number of flash cards in, looking at the titles you choose a classic "Pirates of the Caribbean 2", slot it into the cardreader, and the film starts straight away.

Sound like science fiction???

Well Flash cards now come in 4Gb sizes, and it wont be long before they are 8Gb. There has been some work that involves stitching tiny LED's into clothing, so the technology for a cloth like screen is there. Brings it closer to Science fact.

What about then using the same card reader to allow you to play MP3 (or a higher quality format) music on the same card reading device? It's just a case of software for that, so that is dead easy too.

I cannot see that the future lies with internet downloads, due to the bandwidths involved.

Of course for this to happen, there will have to be some sort of security encryption on the cards themselves, but not necessarily region coding. I mean why bother, far better to have the cardfilms available anywhere, so they can be bought anywhere, than have them only work in certain regions. You may have to make the cards slightly different in size/thickness to normal cards, and NOT sell blanks of them, so that they cannot be copied.

The iPod has a small screen inbuilt to it, that is capable of displaying video, we have video conferencing watches now, so in theory it is possible to create a fold-away LCD screen.

The thing is the electronic company giants have to get in quick, to be the first, and establish themselves in the market.

The future of home/away/on the move entertainment is Very,Very bright, it is also very small!