First off, though mostly unrelated, I found this article pretty hilarious. And this just made me lol.
But anyway, the news of the day is that in South Korea, Internet video has eclipsed the DVD. This is really far from surprising though; there’s been such a rise in the number of companies doing the digital distribution model that I skip out on mentioning most of it here because there’s news about it pretty much every day and who likes to be redundant? The fact that Internet models have officially outpaced DVDs is something noteworthy though, and another indication that Korea is ahead of the game. I imagine that Japan will be quick to follow, then Europe, and finally the States because we’re kind of slow about everything.
One thing in the article I found particular interesting though, was the fact that it’s easier to create illegal copies of DVDs than it is to create illegal copies of digital downloads. I suppose it makes sense that it’d be harder to crack a digital copy-projection mechanism just because it hasn’t been around as long, but I wonder if less people are inclined to bother because it’s already in a digital format. If HD quality movies only cost two bucks to download, then who really cares? It’s almost free already. I wonder how long it’ll take for the anime folk to follow suit and stop charging two bucks a normal quality episode?
Hulu.com’s been getting a lot of spotlight recently, what with FUNimation, Viz, and a ton of other companies adding tons of free, full episode content to it (omg, they have Firefly!). It’s beating out YouTube as the venue of choice for online streaming episodes, and there’s definitely a lot more that’s legal about it. Seems like this revolution’s well on its way to becoming the norm. I wonder if Blu-ray will even be relevant at this point? If DVD is getting beat out by the Internet and the digital model already, I can’t see that Blu-ray will fare much better, especially since the HD format is already available for cheaper online. I don’t think the new generation will be as attached to the physical item as the previous because they’ll always have had the digital option. Soon DVDs and Blu-ray will be 100% obsolete, like VHS… it’s an interesting time.
It’s hard to believe we invented the internet, when South Korea is kicking our ass at it so thoroughly :(
Part of the reason that DVDs are easy to crack is that they can’t ever change the copy protection on them without breaking everything. With streaming video, on the other hand, you can do pretty much whatever.
It is hard to believe that we invented the Internet. :o I demand more mbps!