egafd.com

Eventually, when most people have broadband, many people will buy their porn by downloading from the internet. Obviously this happens quite often now, DivX films in particular, from P2P sites.

Next year DVD disks will be available with a capacity of 20Gb up from 4.7Gb. However, increasingly popular are external hard drives that plug into any PC via USB2 or FireWire. At the same time recordable DVD players on the PC and domestic are beoming widely available and cheap. Also quite a few graphics cards give you TV-OUT allowing you to display any MPEGS etc on any hard drive (internal or external) onto a TV set.

You can now buy special standalone 20Gb MP3 hard drives allowing you to plug it into a PC, load it up with mp3s directly from the internet or from your internal hard drive. You can just remove the hard drive from your PC, take it anywhere and plug in some head phones and you would have a vast number of Mp3s on tap.

Some recordable DVD players will be sold with built in hard drive soon. Also hard drives are currently used to record from satellite without a video recorder.

Anyway, sooner or later, the video hard drive must be developed. It would be say 120Gb. You just load up DivX, MPGs, AVIs from the internet. You then detach the hard drive and connect it to your TV set and you then watch the videos as you would a DVD using a supplied remote control.

It save all the hassle of burning to DVD. You can't even burn DiVx to DVD.

I should stress that I am not advocating any piracy and that any videos from the net should be paid for.

However, I would have thought that making porn vids available for download form the net may be of concern to the suppliers because thereafter it is so easy to reproduce the same MPG or whatever for others. On the other hand DVDs are less easy to copy.

The problem with all of this is standardisation. With Apple and Microsoft expounding their operating systems as "home entertainment" platforms, they want everything to be based around the PC, whereas cable companies obviously want everything to be based around their delivery.

The problem is, will broadband become that popular in the UK, given the fact that there will be a majority of users not able to enjoy broadband due to the companies not cabling remote areas, or BT not bothered about upgrading their exchanges quickly enough for most of the public to take up the (expensive) option of broadband.

For most, a dial up is sufficient for their needs, and Sky or cable will take care of their other needs; that and the Dvd player, or the new Dvd R-W/VCR which we will see shortly.

We will have to wait for Internet II before we really see the delivery of media in a sufficient form to entice people to use a PC, and even with broadband, quality and very, very large file sizes will make downloading a slow and cumbersome method of delivery.

Zipper

I can manage now downloading whole movies from the net with broadband, it just means leaving the computer running overnight.

I am certainly going to buy a 'video hard drive' when one comes available (or maybe a 'video hard drive/ DVD recorder combo'). This would make it very easy to make stuff downloaded on the net available for viewing on a TV set. The 3 big reasons for viewing on a TV set are big screen, TV in comfy lounge rather than uncomfy back room where computer is, ability to use a remote control.

Microsoft & Apple's home entertainment platform concept is bollocks and won't suceed. It would allow you to use a PC with a remote control but you just can't replace a large TV screen in the comfy lounge with a PC controlled with a remote control in the back-room.

"20 Gb DVD's?" I must admit I haven't heard about these though I am an avid technology watcher. Where can I find out more?

Also, video hard drives for recoding TV programs have already been developed and have been around for a number of years now. There are a couple of competing brand names, one of which is "TiVo". On the computer front 120 Gig hard drives are quite common now, particularly amongst video editors and graphic professionals - there's one wiring away right now, inches from my keyboard.

Officer Dibble.

Anybody out there who thinks that they will be avaiable to download films from the net and not pay for them should beware.

Microsoft have developed a new anti piracy software which will be standard in all Windows operating systems and all Windows Media players.

This will stop anyone downloading films, music etc, that you haven't paid for.

You will however be able to download stuff from authorised pay sites.

Microsoft are doing this so they can licence it all and make more money. It will stop all the piracy though which is a good thing.

I tell a lie. I meant 27Gb ! It is blue laser technology coming out next year. See

Yes video hard drives have been out for a while (it's what i meant by recording from satellite) and yes 120Gb drives are common on PCs. But what i was thinking of was a bridge between the two - an external PC hard drive which could be loaded with MPGs and then unplugged and then connected to a TV set to view the MPGs. There is already a special 20Gb hard drive that works in a similar way for MP3s, you unplug it from the PC and just connect a pair of headphones to it to hear the mp3s.

Yes but DVD was supposed to be 'safe' then the DeCSS file was cracked and now with the right kit it is very easy to copy DVD's even with macrovision and RCE.

How long before more of Windows gapping holes are exposed?
Don't belive me - check out Microsoft's security patches!!!

So Microsoft will stay ahead of the 'game' - but for how long?

Ah yes, I have heard of "blue laser technology" but I don't think that it will have any immediate affect on most of us because everyone will all have to buy new hardware to take advantage - so it maybe a further two years before folks like us can start punting blue laser discs and count on a large enough number of suitably equipped customers to make it viable.

Officer Dibble.

sidenote: sony has announced this week that it's finally ceasing production of the betamax vcr! given that, i think it's safe to assume dvd, as we know it, will be around for some time to come - however much the current technology is rejigged.

Betamax was a far better system than VHS. I still have a few beta tapes and the sturdiness and solid build of the casettes makes me realise what flimsy rubbish vhs tapes are. The picture on beta was far better and the Sony machine I had was a proper sturdy deck not like the shit you see on the Edgeware Road (and its provincial equivelants) these days.

I have no Betamax deck to play my tapes so if anyone has one they want to sell please email me.

Farewell Betamax. I will miss you.