Is Optical Media dead?

S

SR_Ind

CD/DVD/BD etc. ? The press has been proclaiming it for a while.

Newer laptops have begun to start shipping without any optical drives.

Some observations here.

Personally I've not used my laptop DVD drive for years. In my part of the world (extreme heat, humidity and dust) optical drives tend to die very rapidly.

My first USB stick (circa 2003, 128GB) has outlived 2 DVD players and 4 PC DVD drives.

So what does the FreeBSD community foresee?

>>

Off Topic, it was pleasant surprise to find that my new Panasonic Viera is running FreeBSD.
 
I haven't used mine in ages either. The only reason I use it is to install a game (on Windows). And even that is getting slowly less as I've started using Steam to get games.

Also any stuff I download I just park on my NAS, I still have a stack of empty CD-R and DVD-R disks, gathering dust. It hasn't been touched in quite a while.
 
Considering the fact that I'm one of the poor and that I'm without a place to live, whatever I'm able to find will be used.

For those of us with very little, optical media will be used for quite a while. The "media" which states such- "CDs/DVDs/etc are dead."- is composed mostly of those who have not to struggle.

If I'm looking about and find a computer which uses a cassette tape or
eight inch disk- and that the media is available and working- I'm going to use it.
 
SirDice said:
I haven't used mine in ages either. The only reason I use it is to install a game (on Windows). And even that is getting slowly less as I've started using Steam to get games.

Also any stuff I download I just park on my NAS, I still have a stack of empty CD-R and DVD-R disks, gathering dust. It hasn't been touched in quite a while.
Click to expand...

The major problem with steam is the DRM. If steam shuts down or decides you should not have access to certain games, then you don't.
 
sossego, I have to disagree. Many people struggle economically, but it's not *always* a valid reason to stick with obsolete (and far from perfect) technologies.

I was the last person around here to ditch the floppy drive and I still have a box full of brand new diskettes that I bought years ago and couldn't use because the last drive I had died and I didn't want to replace it (<$10 drive) with a $30+ USB-connected one.

But when it comes to optical media, it's just the opposite. Drives die quickly and cost (along with the many discs) just as much if not more than a USB pendrive. Discs store much less data than a single pendrive and take more physical space. Most importantly, they are way less reliable and durable compared to USB pendrives.
Like SR_Ind, I still have a 10 year old pendrive (256 MB). I've never had a single problem (e.g. data loss) with it or any other that I've bought in the past decade.
On the other hand I've lost a couple of CD drives and way too many discs. CD writers can easily burn discs and I've lost boxloads that way too. I'm a very careful person and I've still lost a few *original discs* I was very fond of!

So when it comes to all optical media, I only have this to say: I hope they disappear as quickly as possible; and good riddance!!!
 
Carpetsmoker said:
The major problem with steam is the DRM. If steam shuts down or decides you should not have access to certain games, then you don't.
Click to expand...

Oh man did this piss me off when I bought my shinny new copy of Skyrim. Until this, I didn't even have networking enabled on my Windows drive. Being an old RPGer from the 80s they should bring back the cardboard wheel that SSI games had, or the old "on page 35 of the manual what is the 3rd word in the 5th paragraph" security questions.

As for the topic, when Microsoft, Apple and other start distributing there OSes and software on pen drives then I will say that the CD/DVD are dead. Right now that are still some people out there that like having a physical medium when purchasing software. My feeling is that if you purchase something, you should get something physical on a medium that is going to last and not be susceptible to stray magnetic fields or power outages.
 
roddierod said:
As for the topic, when Microsoft, Apple and other start distributing there OSes and software on pen drives then I will say that the CD/DVD are dead.
Click to expand...
Apple already did. Try and find an install CD for Lion and/or Mountain Lion.
 
SirDice said:
Apple already did. Try and find an install CD for Lion and/or Mountain Lion.
Click to expand...

You can do a full (re)install of OS X 10.7 or 10.8 from scratch over the network if you have an apple id and you have purchased the OS from the app store. The only snag is that for installing on an empty disk you need a ready made recovery system on a USB memory stick but that can be made using tools provided by Apple very easily.

On topic, I hope that optical media (what's left of it) dies a quick death, blu-ray included.
 
fortune(6) threw this at me today

In reply to a message by Scott Long:

> Note: this amounts to life support for floppies. The end IS coming.

Say it ain't so! If you establish a dangerous trend like this in
your support for floppy booting, the next thing you know, some
computer manufacturer will start shipping machines without ANY FLOPPY
DRIVE AT ALL, leading to the infocalypse, the four horsemen pouring
their vials upon the earth, the birth of the anti-christ (or PERL 6,
whichever comes first), dogs and cats living together, etc.

It's the end of days, I tell you! The end! Can the FreeBSD/NetBSD
merger be that far off?
-- Jordan Hubbard (31 January 2006)
Click to expand...

:)
 
The cost of optical media is far more expensive when it comes to portable computers than USB pens.

When we talk about optical media we have to understand that behind the media there is a mechanism that has to read and write data. It turns out that the cost versus reliability is very high. Another important factor is capacity which is very limited. BlueRay media could be an exception but the markets did not embrace this technology.

So, it would not surprise me in the future if optical media disappears like floppies did.

PS. Optical media is not the poor mans choice unlike some naive tend to believe ;)
 
roddierod said:
Being an old RPGer from the 80s they should bring back the cardboard wheel that SSI games had, or the old "on page 35 of the manual what is the 3rd word in the 5th paragraph" security questions.
Click to expand...

I've still got my translation wheels for Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, and Hillsfar. :) The disk drive to play them on my laptop is dead though.
 
For data use, I also no longer see a point.

But until music and movies come on pendrives which work reliable on my machines and my car stereo, I accept the existence of the optical drive and continue to buy DVDs (provided they conform to the orange book). Whatever carries DRM is no longer allowed in my house.
 
Even Windows can nowadays be installed without optical media. I got (legally) Windows 7 in ISO file, and transferred it to USB-stick and installed it from stick to my desktop machine. Process needed just couple of third party tools, but after some tries I managed to do it.
 
sossego said:
Considering the fact that I'm one of the poor and that I'm without a place to live, whatever I'm able to find will be used.

For those of us with very little, optical media will be used for quite a while. The "media" which states such- "CDs/DVDs/etc are dead."- is composed mostly of those who have not to struggle.

If I'm looking about and find a computer which uses a cassette tape or
eight inch disk- and that the media is available and working- I'm going to use it.
Click to expand...
If you are running a really old computer, then I think you have a valid point.

In fact I have a PC (sent it to my dad) which requires a really weird BIOS setting to get it booted up from USB stick. So, yes if you are not in position to upgrade or even procure a recently built second hand computer (anything later than 2008/2009) then you do require an optical drive.

However you may be mistaken with respect to the ownership cost. The optical drives have very short shelf life. The discs themselves are prone to damages due to breakages, scratch, material deposits and even chemical deterioration.
 
Crivens said:
For data use, I also no longer see a point.

But until music and movies come on pendrives which work reliable on my machines and my car stereo, I accept the existence of the optical drive and continue to buy DVDs (provided they conform to the orange book). Whatever carries DRM is no longer allowed in my house.
Click to expand...
Once pen drives are common with 50GB space to hold a Blu-Ray movie that'll happen. Maybe a couple of year down the line.
The old school media will also have to take into account increasing broadband bandwidth and simultaneous increase in broadband user base.
 
TiberiusDuval said:
Even Windows can nowadays be installed without optical media. I got (legally) Windows 7 in ISO file, and transferred it to USB-stick and installed it from stick to my desktop machine. Process needed just couple of third party tools, but after some tries I managed to do it.
Click to expand...

You don't even need third party tools to do that. Format the stick, put a boot sector on it and copy the files from the CD/DVD to the stick and you're done.
 
SR_Ind said:
Once pen drives are common with 50GB space to hold a Blu-Ray movie that'll happen. Maybe a couple of year down the line.
Click to expand...
I would not bet on that. The powers that be in media distribution will not allow for this because without the DRM endpoint in the drive firmware for DVDs or BRs, they will not do this no matter what. But it would indeed be great, and also save a lot of space on my shelves.
SR_Ind said:
The old school media will also have to take into account increasing broadband bandwidth and simultaneous increase in broadband user base.
Click to expand...
The old school media will first need to learn how to read the manual of the beeding obvious which will tell them how to see the writing on the wall hinting at what users want and will pay happily for.
 
SirDice said:
Apple already did. Try and find an install CD for Lion and/or Mountain Lion.
Click to expand...

I have 2x DVD (Install and extras, official, from Apple) with Lion that I have got with my MacBook Pro. Also there are torrents for Mountain Lion DVD ISO so there should be disk for that as well.
 
Carpetsmoker said:
The major problem with steam is the DRM. If steam shuts down or decides you should not have access to certain games, then you don't.
Click to expand...

Agreed. And the day this happens, it will be glorious.

(Might even push consumers to try to demand a new law against DRM. It probably wont do much, but at least it will mark a historic occasion where we will be on the attack for our digital rights for once.)
 
expl said:
Also there are torrents for Mountain Lion DVD ISO so there should be disk for that as well.
Click to expand...
Except that Apple never released ML on DVD.
 
I used to use DVDs to back up my data. I had gotten to about 800 of them. One day, I had to do a hard disk rearrangement (long story) and found it was best to restore most of the data from the DVDs. Of the 200 I went through, about 10 of them were no good, and many others had single or a couple bad files on them. They were stored carefully and all that.

After this experience, I threw them all out and now just use more hard drives. Hard drives are cheaper gig for gig anyways.
 
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