Every guy with a home audio/video system worth his salt has a couple of shelves packed to the brim with CDs. Since our not-so-fictional media savvy dude had a DVD player since the DVD release of the first Matrix movie, by now he’s even filled up one of those really smart DVD shelves from Ikea. Guests can peruse rows of DVD case spines for just the right classic film among the teeming collection.
That’s so 2001!
In a few years we’ll look at this whole requirement to facilitate silvery shiny media discs as a quaint relic from the past. We’ll fondly look back at manually alphabetizing and categorizing expansive CD collections like today we might think of how cool vinyl album covers were. It’ll be interesting to muse upon a return to the “single” just like the 50’s, before they were undermined by the more mature and sophisticated ‘album’. The whole album paradigm is likely to shift as yet again, the economic and distribution reality affects art itself.
Even today corporations like Sony, Philips, NEC err on the side of vanity as they spend resources drawing battle lines between HD DVD and Blu-Ray. One can’t help but think of these corporations today as vaguely analogous to the narcissism of a 14th century European king investing heavily in stone fortification for a medieval style keep. His monument to his wealth and greatness is doomed to obsolescence with the coming of gunpowder and the canon.
Perhaps corporations who invest in war are blinded by the status quo and lack the ability to sniff out the obvious change in the air. The two newest media types, the newest shiny disc formats to hit the scene also have a format war of their own. DVD-Audio and SACD are locked in another format war between Sony and the rest of the recording industry. While the technology behind the new formats are sound, simply amazing multi-channel high resolution audio that specializes in making your favorite records blow you away if you have a 5.1 home theater system. But who has won this format war?
Suppose they threw a war and nobody came?
The war between SACD and DVD-Audio is a non-issue to modern media consumers. SACD and DVD-Audio combined have sold as much as vinyl (600,000 units) in the first half of 2004. Meanwhile, Apple has sold some ten million iPods. Those iPod customers are downloading from iTunes at a rate of some 1.25 million singles per day. It’s obvious that the winner in the format war between DVD-Audio and SACD is the online distribution model.
In a couple of years from now, lets revisit our media savvy “every guy”. In his entertainment room in 2008 will there be another smart silvery disc shelf from Ikea sporting a new expanded library of HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs? Only if he’s hosting a retro-90s party! To be certain, media library software and hardware that seamlessly integrates to your wireless network is going to drop in price. The ability to manipulate large quantities of files, navigate an enormous collection of movies and songs from the living room couch will be a snap. You’ll access your collection either party mix-playlists or select a genre, just like you do on any MP3 player today. But this time it’s your entire collection, and available via menu systems on your TV accessed by remote control from your couch. Of course you’ll be able throw in some videos and multi-channel audio selections in your playlists as well. Or you can watch a movie, selected from a list of your personal downloads, high quality and perfectly legal.
This is the direction of home theater it will exist legally or largely illegally. The entertainment industry can only embrace it and make it profitable or they’ll ignore this overwhelming consumer demand at their peril.