jfrancis,
<<I'm way down the food chain....>>
Me too but---
An opinion from "The Dark Side",
I've read, with interest, your questions on the ramifications of consumer devices for HTCH and the sector in general.
Z's responses are certainly well presented and very possible. Please allow me to present a different viewpoint.
I believe consumer products such as the digital VCR and the set-top box with storage capability are temporary solutions, at best and will not achieve mass market appeal. At the very best, they will contain low-end, low margin, single platter disk drives.
My reasoning:
1. The introduction of a greater level of complexity to the consumer (or even corporate ) market is counter trend. An excellent article which appeared in the NY Times is worth a read: search.nytimes.com
2. Video content requires far too much storage capacity to archive on a local hard drive, no matter what the size. 100 gigabyte capacity hard drives would not begin to hold a small collection of, say, classic movies. They could only serve as temporary storage devices for eventual deletion or archiving to tape.
This would require the consumer to own both a digital VCR, a digital tape VCR, and the knowledge and desire to move data from one to the other. Seems to me, a more elegant solution would be a removable storage media (tape) as the only storage device. Essentially, why bother?
3. What content?
In order for the digital VCR to be a mass market success, there has to be some content available of interest. Network Television? Declining viewership. Sporting events? Already well covered by pay-per-view (satellite). A bathroom break doesn't seem, to me, to be a good enough reason to own one of these. Corporate conference calls? Sincerely doubt the mass market pull of these.
Interesting article on interactive TV/Set-top box/Microsoft: salonmagazine.com
4. The miniature disk
Certainly an interesting format but will it hold up to real world abuse. Is it useful in Texas in a hot car? Will a transportable disk drive survive the conditions it is exposed to in the real world? I don't see how but I'm looking from the "dark side".
5. History
We have had an absolute explosion in available content for download from the internet over the last few years. The incredible rise in penetration rates for the pc amongst US Households is absolutely astounding. If you could transport yourself back to Jan 1994 and knew that PC penetration would go from less than 20% to greater than 50% of US households and total web sites would rise exponentially, how many shares of, say, WDC would you buy?
Result:http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=WDC&d=5y SEG has, at least, performed in-line, finance.yahoo.com , but then there's this: finance.yahoo.com
Opinion: We are insane for loving this sector. Absolutely, totally insane. Every fiber in my logical being says to dump this sector and don't look back, but "Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in!". Fascinating.
Paul |
