Head in the clouds? look out for Ultraviolet.

The future of entertainment is changing rapidly. The technology that we get use to using today will be the medium of the past tomorrow. About fourteen years ago a little company started to revolutionize the home rental business by making videos available through the mail at a low cost. This was followed by a streaming technology that incorporated the use of video game consoles to deliver the content through a high-speed internet access. This would be a significant event, as it would affect the home video business and coupled with a downward economic spiral, would lead to a large amount of video stores closing. Before this event there was a slow change from VHS tapes to DVD. This change was gradual a slight shift from an analog tape to a digital disk. However the change to the blue ray was one that met with many obstacles as the market was split between companies vying for the use of their medium, Sony with their Blue ray disk, and Panasonic with their HD-DVD. I enclosed a brief video from 2007 courtesy of C/Net.com Even in 2007 there was a mention of downloadable content. Now here we are in 2011 having a new discussion on the cloud. The cloud is what many in the industry are planning to use to convince consumer to come back to buying DVDs and blue rays instead of using the Netflix service so much. The new Ultraviolet technology is a direct result of negotiations with companies to avoid splitting the market as they did during the Blue Ray and HD-DVD struggle. Many studios have come together and decided to offer their movies on the ultraviolet format. Disney is the only notable hold out on the format, as they have decided to come up with their own cloud format. Either way there will soon be digital lockers available to house your movie collection meaning you may not physically own the movie, but you would have access to the movie via the cloud. As of right now the media is only available via streaming or down load for portable devices such as your laptop or your digital phone. However you can bet a pretty penny that before you know it there will be a set top device that will enable you to tap into the cloud and access your stored media. However this makes me think about the stores that closed as Netflix came on the scene. What will be the effect of keeping so much material on a server that you don’t have access to, and will this have an adverse effect on the already shaky home video market? Only time will tell, but one thing that is definite is technology will continue to expand the possibilities and boundaries of what we watch and how we watch it.


References:

C/Net video 2007 retrieved Oct 26,2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oKkqpA2ZoI

Chris Pirillo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bBLap5zOcQ retrieved Oct 26,2011

http://www.uvvu.com/what-is-uv.php retrieved Oct 22, 2011