ONE BILLION

One Billion. What an incredible number. 1,000,000,000. It took the earth millions of years to reach that number in population. Yet, it took the DVD format just five years to reach that milestone. Yes, ONE BILLION DVDs have been shipped, according to the DVD Entertainment Group. It took VHS tapes twice as long to hit that target.

Almost 275 Million DVDs were shipped just in the first half of 2002, which is said to be a growth of 80% over the previous year.  What is amazing about this number is that the cost of DVDs still is significantly higher than VHS tapes or other electronic media.  As the economies of scale kick in (as they are beginning to do) we will see even lower prices on hardware and media. Apple Computer’s DVD writer equipped Macs, more and more PC software to create DVDs, and the use of the medium both for video distribution and data storage will ensure us seeing the 5 Billion mark in the next 2 years, in my opinion. That would represent one DVD disc in existence per person on the planet!

The number of households with these devices is also growing. According to research done by the consulting firm Carmel Group, abou\t 1.6 million DVR devices will be in use in the US alone, by the end of this year. They expect this to hit almost 30 Million units by the end of 2008. I personally like these numbers, though I am quite leery of technology predictions that far in advance. With the current state of technology growth I would not be surprised if, by 2008, DVD recorders are considered a has-been, slow or pokey technology, superseded by something even more fancy – possibly even based on Gigabyte RAM chips which do not require expensive laser based hardware as DVDs and DVD-Recorders need. In either case, if it has not already happened, I expect the day to be here soon when the number of data bytes on this planet exceeds the number of viruses and bacteria living here. (I also hope that the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries will try to emulate the technology industry in introducing new and effective drugs, so that while we have trillions of data bytes, we can bring killer disease viruses down to Zero).

Bandits. Stealing Time.

With a cast like Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton and Cate Blanchett – among others, one would have expected the movie Bandits to be an interesting, if not exciting, entertainment piece. Alas, it was neither. I rented the movie the other night, and, even though I did not doze off, I just could not get to relate to any of the characters as being real. The whole script was contrived, the viewer, instead of being immersed in the movie, feels constantly that he is watching a movie and that it should be over soon, but it does seem to go on longer than one expects. I am tempted to think that the writers of this movie got together and decided to emulate the formula of that awesome movie “Pulp Fiction”, with a bit of another interesting production, “2 Days In The Valley.”  The end result, sadly, merely tells us that the movie was a copycat of the above two, but not even half as good as either. I do not think it is entirely the cast’s fault. They all seem to do a decent job as bandits, but the movie as a whole left me feeling ripped off by the producers for stealing 90 minutes of my time. I would rate it 6.0 on the iRate scale of 1-10.