The battle between DVD’s and streaming video seems to have taken off very rapidly within the last couple of years. For a long time, DVD’s (including Blu-Ray) have controlled the market after displacing VHS’s and even with the downfall of rental stores such as Blockbuster, Netflix and Redbox brought a new level of convenience to the home movie watching experience. However, streaming movies have become very popular and has not even threatened the DVD market but the television market as well thanks to Netflix and Hulu+. Due to the rapid development of this battle and how it has highly influenced development, Thornburg (2013) claims that this phenomena can be classified as “Red Queens.” I believe that at the beginning of this battle that would definitely be true, streaming movies was not entirely popular yet 5-8 years ago though pioneers like Hulu and Redox jumped into the market early. As this became more popular, its development soared and now has become a competing way to access movies. In fact, I might say that it is on the cusp of replacing DVD’s thus making it an emerging technology and DVD’s are on the verge of being obsolete. The ability store films in the could or in applications so storage space is no longer needed is a great benefit of streaming as is the absence of movies not playing due to damages to the DVD. Yes, internet access can hamper the watching experience of a streaming movie, but as our world becomes more connected that lack of connectivity will likely diminish. The only real gap I see streaming videos having to close is in high quality films such as Blu-Rays. At the moment I have yet to see a streaming film which can rival that of a Blu-Ray. However, once that gap in quality can be closed, DVD’s may find themselves next to VHS’s and cassettes in the trash.
References:
Thornburg, D. (2013). Red queens, butterflies, and strange attractors: Imperfect lenses into emergent technologies. Lake Barrington, IL: Thornburg Center for Space Exploration.
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