Time to bid goodbye to DVDs, SD cards are on
By Kukil Bora, SiliconIndia   |   Thursday, 16 December 2010, 13:07 IST
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Time to bid goodbye to DVDs, SD cards are on
Bangalore: A few years back if a movie kiosk was asked about his adorable assets, his answer would surely be like this - "My collection of DVDs". A similar reply would have come from a music-lover or a person who is crazy about computer games. But the days have come when these DVDs will be replaced by other storage devices such as hard drives, SD and USB, a change which will result in the death of the DVDs. According to a recent prediction, the iPad is going to capture almost 12 percent of the PC market in 2011. With a number of advanced capabilities, smart devices like smartphones and tablets have gained such popularity among users that streaming data to these devices have increased significantly. What all these have created is a threat to the existence of DVDs. Apart from these, there are lots of new technologies waiting for a chance to take off, and when they are on, the DVDs are dead. Let's talk about SD or flash memory which is becoming incorporated in nearly each and every device today. While a tablet or a smartphone never have a DVD-ROM included in it, most of the netbooks, as well as sub-notebook computers like MacBook Air have done away with them. And it's a clear indication of DVD's demise. Since new devices are coming with flash memory slots, the SD is on its way to become the next format for the masses, while DVD is following the same death rout, the popular floppy disc once took. As per the demand from users, there have been a lot of key developments in the flash memory technology. Mo-DV (Mobile Digital Video), a California-based company is on its way to develop a patented product to deliver content via flash memory devices. It has embedded its own OS on a micro-controller that is custom designed to its SD cards. The micro-controller, on its part, provides the encryption and playback capabilities that a device needs to play the encoded film. A user can copy the files from the SD card to a hard drive without any sort of difficulty. In this age of smartphones and tablets, anyone who owns a Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm or Android device, or a Mac OSX, can easily have a great time watching a movie at the highest resolution. And the inclusion of a graphic user interface makes it an even greater experience. Compared to DVDs, the demand for movies on USB Flash Drives and SD cards is increasing. DVDs are fragile and less portable compared to USB or SD cards. Another key aspect is that although DVDs are less expensive than USB Flash Drives and SD cards, these devices offer a wide variety of options at a reasonable price. In addition, they can be used on several mobile platforms as well as on PCs. With all these new devices and more useful possibilities brought by them, we are gradually stepping in to a whole new world, where everything is more portable and concise in size, yet offering even richer performance. Coming back to the fading light of DVDs, tomorrow when you go to a movie store, perhaps you'll witness SD cards sitting on the shelves instead of DVDs and movie kiosks flipping over the SD cards searching for their favourite movie. Goodbye DVDs.

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