Tag Archives: major film studios

From Print to Augmented Reality

Part 2: Video killed the radio star!
Today we have tv’s in the living room, bedroom, car and a few of us even on mobile phones. However, there is limited usage of tv when people are travelling, working, doing sports or just studying. So contrary to The Buggles prophesy, video didn’t kill the radio star…

Clash of the Titans
The tv had a much slower development then the radio, but thanks John Logie, a brilliant Scottish inventor, in 1923 the moving picture was born. The tv’s got got colour, size increased and quality improved. Sony saw the opportunity to introduce the Betamax for home users 1965. This changed the user behaviour when watching tv. People were able to program the Betamax and record tv shows when they were away. The market started to be real competitive and the first war began. It was JVC vs Sony. JVC had produced the VHS and Sony the Betamax. JVC won due to the open licensing cost of the technology and the recording time of the VHS tapes.

Clash of the Titans (round 2)
Sony was not done yet. After VHS, the digital age come along. VCD come on the market shortly, but was quickly outclassed by the DVD. The war of standards was brewing again. This time it was Toshiba vs Sony. Toshiba produced HD DVD backed up by Microsoft and Sony produced Blu-Ray backed up by Java. The launch of Playstation 3, signing of Target, Blockbuster, Wal-Mart and the cheap royalty price per Blu-Ray disks made the major film studios to choose Sony. Sony had won this battle, but for how long?

With the Internet becoming faster; and noticeably much faster in the recent years, movies were now downloaded in a matter of minutes. Sony saw themselves that 50GB Blu-Ray disks were no longer an option for people to record their favourite tv shows, so they introduced high-capacity HDD in their Blu-Ray Recorders.

R.I.P. Local Movie Rentals and Book Shops
Soon after the introduction of the VCR, video rental shops were on the rise. People were hiring and buying movies. That continued well with the DVD and the Blu-Ray, until a few years ago when Internet had reached speeds of ADSL2+. As the movies were downloaded in a matter of minutes, people soon stopped going to the video shops. In Nov 2013, the biggest video rental shops Blockbuster announced its closing of doors. With at least two tv’s in every house, people were no longer choosing books as their main source of entertainment. This was a  drastic change in consumer behaviour and besides the video shops, the book shops were going out of business as well. When the rest of the world catches up with the Internet speeds, we will surely see a decline in Blu-Ray sales and ultimately the last standard of recording on physical media as we know it.

My.2.Cents: TV Onslaught!
Traditional TV will die. Dead, Finito, Terminat, Fin. With the rise of fiber and 5G networks (Australia, hint, hint: Singapore, Hong Kong and Romania are reaping the rewards already), the shows will be distributed directly over the Internet directly to your home from the major film studios. There is one thing to broadcast a show to 5-6 million people and there is something else to broadcast a show to 60-100million people world-wide. The traditional and pay-tv stations with the exception those stations covering live events and news, would need to brace themselves, as they will be wiped out in favour of on-demand tv.

Personally I like the future, especially watching live shows in different languages from different regions is a dream come true. All is good, but then having all this entertainment at my finger-tips is that to much temptation to stay home and watch more tv? Will I have the will to overcome becoming a couch-potato?

To be continued next week (part3, The diversification of information age)