I can see what's coming

[Primula Baggins]

We just got an AppleTV. Less than $100, a tiny little box (it sits in the palm of your hand).

I just watched Air Force One on it. A really dumb, but mindlessly fun, action movie. Didn't cost me a thing, because I have Netflix, and I watched it on Netflix's streaming service—in HD, on my 50-inch HDTV, with surround sound, because AppleTV does that for me.

I'd been looking for the movie on DVD, because one of my kids loves it. I could only find it in 4:3 (non-widescreen) and so never bought it.

Now I never will buy it. Because it's . . . out there. In the cloud. Anytime I want it. (In widescreen HD and surround sound.) And my kid can access it too, where he lives, through my Netflix account.

Also out there is all of the new Doctor Who, and great episodes of the old one, and all of Farscape, and all of Babylon 5, and all of Firefly, and tons of old BBC miniseries, and tons of great movies. Anytime I want to watch them. No extra charge (minimum cost for this service from Netflix, which includes one DVD at a time, is $9 per month).

And, I can only see the selection getting better. Plus, the AppleTV gives me access to the Apple Store and rentals there (lots of TV series and recent movies)—plus anything I can access through my computer, which I can stream to the TV through the AppleTV. YouTube, Hulu, Comcast, name it.

The time's coming, and very soon, when DVDs will be as archaic as videotapes.

This has NOT been a Netflix commercial. This has been an I told you so, because this particular science fiction writer predicted this twenty years ago. Not, unfortunately, in print, only to my family; but I did. And here it is. And here we are.

So there.

[vison]

[Lalaith]

So we can send all of our outdated DVDs to you in tribute?

[Primula Baggins]

Whee.

We haven't even dealt with our outdated VHS tapes.

No, I just enjoyed figuring something out. As an SF writer and reader this is kind of a hobby with me. I'm wrong much, much, much more often than I'm right, of course. (My score so far for predicting the 21st century is 2 out of probably 938: streaming media from "the cloud," and the iPad, or what the iPad and things like it are eventually going to become.)

[Frelga]

Well I certainly hope you are wrong about the Cold Minds!

[vison]

We sat down the other night to watch The Princess Bride on VHS and gave up. It was so crappy we couldn't stand it, so I ordered it on DVD.

Jeez.

Why didn't you post this last week?

[Primula Baggins]

Merciful heavens, yes!

[yovargas]

If I'm not mistaken, this means the singularity will be happening any day now.

[Primula Baggins]

If it hasn't happened already. There are so many forms it could take, and not all of them would be obvious the moment they became inevitable.

[vison]

I ought to post my story about the end of it all.

It's called The Funny Farm.

It's scifi, and prophetic.

[Primula Baggins]

Yes, you oughta.

Better yet, you ought to market it.

[River]

The cloud settled over our house a long time ago. My husband and I own, like, four DVDs. Which is pretty remarkable given that on evenings he doesn't watch anything, I ask him if he's feeling okay, but he's a huge rental fan. After pretty much plumbing the depths of the local, uber-cheap outlet when he was a grad student, he signed up for Netflix. His main complaint about Netflix was the lag. He'd often end up going for a whole day without a movie and that's just not acceptable...an then he discovered Netflix streaming. He has a beef with that too - apparently the selection isn't as good. But he can stream something during the DVD lag and that's good enough. It does, however, mean we need a fast fast fast internet connection.

My parents, on the other hand, still have a few old Betamax tapes floating around. Never mind the Betamax player has been broken for years (in fact, I think they finally threw it out). We also have a bunch of VHS tapes. And DVDs. And the first Star Wars trilogy on all three media, though the covers on the tapes are beat to hell.

All of that aside, I don't think hard drives and optical media are going to ever go away entirely. There'll always be a need for an on-site, off-the-net place to store your data. But that need might end up relegated to some deep corners of industry, defense, and academia.

[Alatar]

Unfortunately Netflix is not available here. However, I wonder if its possible if I got an American to sign up for me?

We're not sure you will be able to sign up
for Netflix from your area.

You will need a valid U.S. mailing address to sign up for Netflix. Also, you will only be able to watch instantly if you are in the 50 United States or Washington, D.C. It looks like you are outside the United States. If this is incorrect, please contact your Internet provider for help. We are sorry for any inconvenience.

[Lalaith]

Well, there's your million, Alatar. Get something like Netflix up and running in Ireland. It's pretty amazing, I have to say. I signed up not that long ago, and we love it.

[Holbytla]

Unfortunately Netflix is not available here. However, I wonder if its possible if I got an American to sign up for me?

We're not sure you will be able to sign up
for Netflix from your area.

You will need a valid U.S. mailing address to sign up for Netflix. Also, you will only be able to watch instantly if you are in the 50 United States or Washington, D.C. It looks like you are outside the United States. If this is incorrect, please contact your Internet provider for help. We are sorry for any inconvenience.

I think the issue would be your isp. I don't think you can even stream to Europe from US tv sites. I'm sure I could get you a name and password so you could try it, but I doubt it would work.

[Primula Baggins]

My son couldn't do it when he was in Ireland last spring, and he had our Netflix account, which is US-based.

[axordil]

There's probably some spooferific way of doing it, but streaming video really does like nice clean bandwidth.

[Primula Baggins]

My son's pretty savvy about working around technical barriers, but he wasn't able to access any U.S.-limited streaming content. And bandwidth glitches do make streaming frustrating at times. Our home "network" is just the wireless network every Mac desktop computer generates; we don't have an Airport or other wireless modem. But the cable-modem bandwidth mostly seems to be up to streaming HD even through that kind of bottleneck and with other computers using the same connection at the same time.

I read somewhere recently (and may already have posted on HoF) that in the evenings, 20% of U.S. Internet bandwidth is taken up by Netflix video streaming.

[Inanna]

I read somewhere recently (and may already have posted on HoF) that in the evenings, 20% of U.S. Internet bandwidth is taken up by Netflix video streaming.

that;s why my flickr is so slow.

Example of the US-media bit. I tried to download one of those free Kindle ebooks from the US site (my standard) and couldn't because I am in France.

[Primula Baggins]

Well, there should be some cosmic compensation for being in France, don't you think?