When you cant upgrade, then what
Discussion
Longwinded post, apolgies in advance...
I remember Nicam VCR's being as much as £600 7 years ago.
And DVD players being not far from a grand when they came out.
You can pick up a dvd player for £20 now.
Companies keep prices high by improving services/models/things steadily. There will always be room for improvement, ie faster, better, bigger, more storage. But we will reach a point when we cant cope with more.
When, in however many years, we reach the stage where we can store one million hours of MP3's and 10'000 HD movies on one solid state pocketable device, and the whole lot can be transferred to a mate in no time at all, will people still feel such a need to buy newer faster better things, with more capacity. Or will the world be divided into collectors who amass data for the sake of it, and those who are content with their 10'000 HD movie cards.
UK HD will be 1080i(?) the japs have had 3000px for ages; eventually perhaps we'll all have 20k lines across the TV
. When quality cant improve past that which the eye can see at point blank range, surely not much will happen, and then for all eternity prices will just continue to come down and down... and down.
Its debatable, yes. But does anyone remember the colour-bit evolution.
16 colours, woohooo!
32 colours, this is great
256 colours, you must get vga!
1024 colours, supervga, the future is here!
And then the articles in the papers about 16 bit vs 24bit, the debate whether the eye could see 24bit vs 32 bit differences.
No one debates that any more, after 32 or 64bit the growth cycle is redundant, there is nothing to rave about.
Sorry this is so long winded, but we will reach a point when technology isnt cool, new, exciting, and vastly better as regards the quality of life and service it provides. Will we just accept the fact that you can fit as much of anything onto any device as we like, as fast as we like, the eyes and ears cant appreciate better quality media, and when you've got a million hours of songs to listen to, then what?
The only possible outcome, is that the £600 products will all eventually cost £20, like the old dvd player. And we'll all be happy, wont we?
>> Edited by ukbob on Friday 27th January 18:30
I remember Nicam VCR's being as much as £600 7 years ago.
And DVD players being not far from a grand when they came out.
You can pick up a dvd player for £20 now.
Companies keep prices high by improving services/models/things steadily. There will always be room for improvement, ie faster, better, bigger, more storage. But we will reach a point when we cant cope with more.
When, in however many years, we reach the stage where we can store one million hours of MP3's and 10'000 HD movies on one solid state pocketable device, and the whole lot can be transferred to a mate in no time at all, will people still feel such a need to buy newer faster better things, with more capacity. Or will the world be divided into collectors who amass data for the sake of it, and those who are content with their 10'000 HD movie cards.
UK HD will be 1080i(?) the japs have had 3000px for ages; eventually perhaps we'll all have 20k lines across the TV
. When quality cant improve past that which the eye can see at point blank range, surely not much will happen, and then for all eternity prices will just continue to come down and down... and down. Its debatable, yes. But does anyone remember the colour-bit evolution.
16 colours, woohooo!
32 colours, this is great
256 colours, you must get vga!
1024 colours, supervga, the future is here!
And then the articles in the papers about 16 bit vs 24bit, the debate whether the eye could see 24bit vs 32 bit differences.
No one debates that any more, after 32 or 64bit the growth cycle is redundant, there is nothing to rave about.
Sorry this is so long winded, but we will reach a point when technology isnt cool, new, exciting, and vastly better as regards the quality of life and service it provides. Will we just accept the fact that you can fit as much of anything onto any device as we like, as fast as we like, the eyes and ears cant appreciate better quality media, and when you've got a million hours of songs to listen to, then what?
The only possible outcome, is that the £600 products will all eventually cost £20, like the old dvd player. And we'll all be happy, wont we?
>> Edited by ukbob on Friday 27th January 18:30
I know what you mean, however, I am sure the next true 'revolution' for TV/Films will be seeing the film in proper 3-D holographic images, as if you're there in the film, but I'm sure they'll be quite a few evolutionary dead ends (Betamax, anyone?) before it's perfected, and then we'll laugh at the extortionate prices we paid for the early attempts at 'virtual films'
I would think the first steps in this new technology will be some kind of 'solid state' device, replacing all mechanical hard drives (the bottleneck for most new systems regarding data speed)
I would think the first steps in this new technology will be some kind of 'solid state' device, replacing all mechanical hard drives (the bottleneck for most new systems regarding data speed)
"640 K ought to be enough for anybody."
-- Bill Gates, 1981
The fact is that people will always find a use for advancing technology.
When transfer speeds reach the point that you can send a couple of films to your mate in a couple of seconds, we'll find something else to transfer that'll still take the time we use now.
When you get the 'perfect' image, we'll switch to wanting holograms.
Such is life ... when we stop moving forward, we die.
-- Bill Gates, 1981
The fact is that people will always find a use for advancing technology.
When transfer speeds reach the point that you can send a couple of films to your mate in a couple of seconds, we'll find something else to transfer that'll still take the time we use now.
When you get the 'perfect' image, we'll switch to wanting holograms.
Such is life ... when we stop moving forward, we die.
Holograms sound good, any idea if this is years or decades away?
Lets pretend holotelly is here, and porn mysteriously also made another big comeback
And in your back pocket is a device which has a copy of every movie you have ever seen in HD holographic format. And you can transfer the lot to your mate in 2 minutes.
ok, so next years model will do the transfer in 1 minute, and a few years later the transfer only takes a second or two.
Then what? I predict enough subscription based services to keep us whinging as usual, cheap as chips hardware, and a great night every night watching Holo Heather starring in "Touching my Void"
Lets pretend holotelly is here, and porn mysteriously also made another big comeback
And in your back pocket is a device which has a copy of every movie you have ever seen in HD holographic format. And you can transfer the lot to your mate in 2 minutes. ok, so next years model will do the transfer in 1 minute, and a few years later the transfer only takes a second or two.
Then what? I predict enough subscription based services to keep us whinging as usual, cheap as chips hardware, and a great night every night watching Holo Heather starring in "Touching my Void"
Well,
Technology is only as good as the use you can put it to. There is a bundle of stuff we can't do yet that advances in computational power could make possible - Star Trek type stuff, although the "Transporter" is somewhat unlikely.
Its also massively unlikely that our biological bodies will ever be able to explore the stars...or a host of other difficult things. One day, though, our machines may carry our psyches out there.
Who knows whether a digital version of me would still be me. But the idea of being able to back meself up. Copy meself. Transmit meself to places. Very appealing.
And a whole lot more likely than drugs to make me live forever...although given a few hundred more years of technological investigation even that might become possible.
Nope. Technology has a looong way to go before I'd get bored of it.
Technology is only as good as the use you can put it to. There is a bundle of stuff we can't do yet that advances in computational power could make possible - Star Trek type stuff, although the "Transporter" is somewhat unlikely.
Its also massively unlikely that our biological bodies will ever be able to explore the stars...or a host of other difficult things. One day, though, our machines may carry our psyches out there.
Who knows whether a digital version of me would still be me. But the idea of being able to back meself up. Copy meself. Transmit meself to places. Very appealing.
And a whole lot more likely than drugs to make me live forever...although given a few hundred more years of technological investigation even that might become possible.
Nope. Technology has a looong way to go before I'd get bored of it.
Don said:
Nope. Technology has a looong way to go before I'd get bored of it.
Ditto.
The computer on your desktop is probably used to run a word processor and get buff images downloaded from the web but there's so much more it can do in and around the home. Nearly everyone has one now and there are so many other applications it can be used for. There's along way to go with what we have at the moment. It's always great when you see programmes like Tomorrows World from decades ago when they were making predictions that are still not into production today.
[quote=ukbob]Holograms sound good, any idea if this is years or decades away?
quote]
'ccording to Mr. Clarkson and History TV/ Men and Motors/ Discovery or whatever other peesachit channel I had on the other day, hologram projecting mobiles are no more than months away from prototype.
quote]
'ccording to Mr. Clarkson and History TV/ Men and Motors/ Discovery or whatever other peesachit channel I had on the other day, hologram projecting mobiles are no more than months away from prototype.
ukbob said:
Lets pretend holotelly is here, and porn mysteriously also made another big comeback
you are answering your own question.
you are foreseeing a future that includes holographic image devices, which is an extension of the gadgets question. the problem is that you can't see on from that so you are assuming that there is a finite end point just out of sight.
but by imagining a device like a holographic image viewer and recorder of course you are already looking into the future at the next gadgets that we'll be buying. how about shrinking the size of screens so it appears on your eyeball directly? how about computers that don't need keyboards? the list does go on. just because its unimaginable now doesn't mean there is a conclusion any time soon.
anyway, i shall show you the device that will be fun this year - and I want one these:
www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus/
a keyboard with tiny little screens on each key. how cool is that!
Don said:Agreed. Im talking about the home-media side of technology. There is a long way to go, but the day that the resolution is better than what our eyes can see, and the storage space enough to last a 5 years of constant viewing... its not all that far away.
Nope. Technology has a looong way to go before I'd get bored of it.
ukbob said:
Nope. Technology has a looong way to go before I'd get bored of it.
ah in that case i think you are right. there is a plateau in the future. the final issue will be around the speed of the transfer of information between devices.
ukbob said:
Nope. Technology has a looong way to go before I'd get bored of it.
I can do you enough space in a single box to record a years worth of HD content today, RAID 5'd too, for a fairly reasonable cost...
5 of them, jobs a goodun.
chris watton said:
but I'm sure they'll be quite a few evolutionary dead ends (Betamax, anyone?))
The Betamax shell is used in broadcast television around the world. Digital Betacam dominates this country, as did Betacam and Betacam SP (which is still used around the world by every major broadcaster). Not forgetting Betacam SX, and even the new Sony HD cameras use the Betamax shell
So don't be writing things off just yet
tinman0 said:
Lets pretend holotelly is here, and porn mysteriously also made another big comeback
you are answering your own question.
you are foreseeing a future that includes holographic image devices, which is an extension of the gadgets question. the problem is that you can't see on from that so you are assuming that there is a finite end point just out of sight.
but by imagining a device like a holographic image viewer and recorder of course you are already looking into the future at the next gadgets that we'll be buying. how about shrinking the size of screens so it appears on your eyeball directly? how about computers that don't need keyboards? the list does go on. just because its unimaginable now doesn't mean there is a conclusion any time soon.
anyway, i shall show you the device that will be fun this year - and I want one these:
www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus/
a keyboard with tiny little screens on each key. how cool is that!
Now that is a fuggin good idea, would be brilliant for games, especially stuff like flight simulators that use a ton of buttons for various functions so it takes ages to learn what does what.
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