DVDs will be obsolete in 10 years: Bill Gates

AFP ^

[YoungHickey]

2 hours, 8 minutes ago Add Technology - AFP to My
Yahoo!

FRANKFURT (AFP) - DVDs will be obsolete in 10 years at
the latest, Microsoft boss and founder Bill Gates
(news - web sites) predicted.

Stuck on Tape?
The ultimate guide to digital camcorders, HDTV cameras,
and super-portable video cell phones.

Asked what home entertainment would like in the future,
Gates said that DVD technology would be "obsolete in
10 years at the latest. If you consider that
nowadays we have to carry around film and music on
little silver discs and stick them in the computer,
it's ridiculous," Gates said in comments reproduced
in German in the mass-circulation daily Bild.

"These things can scratch or simply get lost."

Gates' vision of television of the future was: "TV that
will simply show what we want to see, when we want
to see it. When we get home, the home computer will
know who we are from our voice or our face. It will
know what we want to watch, our favourite
programmes, or what the kids shouldn't be allowed to
see."

[Dog Gone]

I'm sitting here at home this afternoon waiting for the UPS guy to deliver a computer with a 160 GB harddrive.

C'mon, Dale, we want to race the truck!

[MississippiMan]

Betamax was much better technology than VHS. They were just outnumbered by their competitors.

No doubt. Sony made a huge marketing blunder; they were determined that the better technology should bring a better price. VHS started dropping in price and Sony refused to keep pace. (Until it was too late.) Fatal error.

MM

[Hank Rearden]

Could be Jaron Lanier as well...

Oh yeah - whatever happened to that dreadlocked spacecase? Did he just float away?

[lawgirl]

AAARRRGGG!!! LOL

[brianl703]

Comcast is already offering Video On Demand to their digital cable customers--most of the good stuff is pay-per-view of course.

[MississippiMan]

No, Nelson sounds like he actually has a lucid grasp on technology. The guy I saw, OTOH, obviously studied THE JETSONS as if it were a documentary.

MM

[KellyAdmirer]

Video on demand sounds like just another way for the cable companies to grab more money out of my wallet. I'd rather pay once at the store for a copy than have to pay coin every time I want to watch "Apocalypse Now."

[thepainster]

My vision of Hell.....

Dave: "Open the refrigerator door Hal"

Hal 9000: "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that"

Dave: "Open the refrigerator door Hal"

Hal 9000: "I'm sorry Dave I just can't let you do that to yourself"

Dave: "Open the %$&*@* fridge, you piece of %&$#"

Hal 9000: "Daisy, Daisy, give me you answer too....."

[Paleo Conservative]

No doubt. Sony made a huge marketing blunder; they were determined that the better technology should bring a better price. VHS started dropping in price and Sony refused to keep pace

While perhaps the video image recorded and played back by Betamax was better, Sony had a smaller tape cassette mechanism that could only record one hour. JVC designed it's cassette to hold two hours of tape. Most consumers were more interested in the extra recording time (which was long enough to record most movies on one tape) rather than a noticable but still marginal superiority in picture quality. The advantages of Sony's U-loading versus VHS's M-loading system were only of interest to videophiles. Sure special effects especially fast forwarding were easier to do with Sony's system, but consumers mainly wanted longer recording times.

[Trampled by Lambs]

Are you sure you want to watch the Fox News Channel?
(Think NO to cancel / Think YES to continue...)

[AgentEcho]

Just turn off the Brain Cookies and you'll be fine.

Æ

[KarlInOhio]

Also, VHS had a longer record time. Beta had better picture but the market decided that long record time and lower price were much more important.

Now imagine how much better this would be if the Federal Video Recording Agency had picked the standards. They would probably have tried to put video on vinyl disks.

[steplock]

"They have the technology. And Gates has the money."

Gates has it built already from MS hqtrs to his home. multi-fibre links with anything and everything he wants at a blink. If it requires communications and data transfer it is there immediately.

Now --- want something even more sci-fi??

There IS a 3-D fax machine right now working and in use world-wide. Officially, you can put in a machine part in Memphis, Tn and in Tokyo they will have a full-size 3-D SOLID reproduction of that part that can be used in a machine shop.

Soon to come? a full-size WORKING reproductions being "faxed"!

Add that to the ".NET" and now you have objects delivered to you within seconds?? Food reproductions? Actually, we have the technology for that, but not pretty enough (nor tasteful enough) to eat.

SHADES of Star-Trek!

[KellyAdmirer]

I never understood why Sony couldn't just make their tapes, you know, bigger and capture a billion-dollar market.

[Amerimom2]

I wonder if they could make the washing machine and dryer fold and put up clothes???

[varon]

Is that Laura Ingraham ;-) ?

[stands2reason]

What's Bob?

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Maybe so, but I still refuse to enable Universal Plug 'n' Play on my PC. Useless...for now.

[MississippiMan]

Now imagine how much better this would be if the Federal Video Recording Agency had picked the standards. They would probably have tried to put video on vinyl disks.

Yeah, they did such a beautiful job setting up the airline reservation and ticketing system.

(/SARCASM)

MM

[TommyDale]

What does Bill Gates know, anyway? His company still can't get Windows, Internet Explorer or Media Player to work correctly.