To follow up a little bit on last night's PlayOn / Hulu / Netflix discussion, I thought I'd share my thoughts on streaming / digital media. There are a number of bloggers and internet writers who have already declared Blu Ray a dead format, and I believe that Tom also shares this opinion. While digital media certainly has its perks, I'm hard pressed to buy into this "next wave already" argument.
For one thing, the convenience and portability of a dvd or Blu Ray doesn't exist yet. Talk to me all you want about portable hard drives and quick USB hookups, but until each digital media source has the same unified standards for all of the various types of computers, projectors or game systems out there, it's just not as easy as bringing the disc over.
Sure, I understand that having a Blu Ray player limits what I can bring over to houses that don't have it, but it's not like I cleared out all of my dvds either. However, if I have a movie on my iPod and want to bring it over to hook up to someone's computer, we have to make sure that iTunes doesn't try to erase my iPod while syncing, or beyond that, that they're even compatible. DRM is still making things tricky in a way that set top players don't have to deal with.
The other big issue I've noticed so far is that if you want to watch something in HD from a digital source you'd better be prepared to wait for it. The higher the quality the larger the file size so you're pushing those high speed connections. Even downloading demos and add ons for the PS3 takes time, and that's not even close to the size of a movie. The Apple TV is still pretty expensive, and while cool, requires quite a bit of set up in order to use, let alone trying to move it to someone else's house.
While I can understand how digital media is already permeating the next generation players (not just game systems but blu ray players, Apple TV, Tivo, DVRs, etc) and that it will eventually become uniform enough that portability and compatibility are no longer an issue, for now I think it has a way to go. The streaming Netflix looks good, but it's like having a VHS tape. You can pause, stop, and play. Fast forwarding and rewinding work to a degree but there's only so much bandwith it has to work with.
PlayOn also doesn't work with Macs right now. For now I'll take the ability to bring discs from one house to another, including being mailed something from Netflix in addition to their "instant" queue. Tangibility is still a plus as far as the Cap'n is concerned.
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In news which will make many of you happy, Tales from the Darkside season one is finally coming to dvd next month. If you're wondering what that is, there was a period of time before USA showed Monk and Psych and Burn Notice all the time. Back in the network's skeazier days they used to have this program called USA Up All Night, hosted first by Gilbert Gottfried and then by Rhonda Shear. From 1986 to 1998 Up All Night was for many of us an introduction to movies like Revenge of the Nerds, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Basket Case, and Night of the Comet. The wikipedia page doesn't have Klowns listed, but I know that's where I and many of us first saw it.
As important to the movies were the host segments, which are on Youtube. Click the screen of each of these for links to more of them.
| .. .. After Up All Night ended (usually with an episode of USA's Silk Stalkings), the network would air Tales from the Darkside, which was a cheaper version of Tales from the Crypt. Because it aired so late and because the budget was so low, they frequently went much darker than Crypt and were more violent. USA didn't really care since we're talking well after midnight here. If you were lucky, Darkside was followed by Monsters, which was the cheaper version of Tales from the Darkside and while rarely scary was frequently hilarious. Here are the intros for Tales from the Darkside and Monsters: .. .. While it may seem hard to believe to you jaded kids now, just the intro to Tales from the Darkside used to creep me out. Monsters is, as it always was, retarded*. If Monsters comes out on dvd I'm not saying I won't buy it, but Tales from the Darkside is a guaranteed purchase. I haven't seen that show in years, and thanks to Phillippi I unearthed a memory of one episode that scared the shit out of me. Don't know how quickly I'll leap to watch that. It's a curious time for horror television, as the not-that-great Friday the 13th: The Series is now on dvd. Freddy's Nightmares will no doubt follow as the remake gets closer to release. Freddy's Nightmares is only kind of better than Friday the 13th: The Series, mostly because of how stupid it is: .. * other than Patton Oswalt's bit about Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, the only contact I had with man-eating beds was in an episode of Monsters. |
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