The DVR Digital Video Recorder, Satellite TV and Video Rental Stores

How long do video rental stores have left to live in the era of cyberspace?

Obviously in a world that seems to grow technologically, the space for places like video rental stores seems to loose more and more focus with every coming year.  How long do video rental stores have left to live in the era of cyberspace?  That is a good question.  Video rental stores have been a part of all major first and second world nation powers since VHS began to sell a hardware that would play back audio video rental tapes at ones convenience.  DVD slowly; yet then suddenly took the VHS home video rental market, becoming in some instances, purely DVD video rental sores.

Satellite TV In The USA

By the end of the cold war with the fall of the Berlin wall, Satellite TV had surely lost the battle for commercial use of specialized television channels to the home viewer in favor of cable TV.  People would so use the term cable TV that to many, Satellite TV was the same as cable TV, except that Satellite TV was for only rural areas.  And that is definitely understandable, blackboxing and pirating of audio-visual feed from Satellite TV and cable TV were destroying any kind of revenue, rates were skyrocketing (litteraly), and completely almost completely abandoned.

Satellite TV in the USA took up flight again with the launching of Satellites in 1993 and a marketing campaign that would put them back in business.  DIRECTV and Dish Network in the 90’s revolutionized marketing by competing with better and better deals, just to get people to pay for a monthly service.  The fact that a monthly service comes with free installation, three to five receivers, HDTV and even a DVR for free nowadays is going to change the video rental stores market for good.  Home video libraries are going to rule the roost by 2010 and mostly because of DVR.

DVR takes down Video Rental Stores

The development of DVR seems to have developed a shift in the technological paradigm that had been a constant for some 30 years in the world; video rental stores.  Video rental stores have no where to go once person is well equipped with Satellite TV and DVR in their home.  Some DVR will record up to 200 pre programmed hours of MPEG and MP3 on their hard drive, which can be easily downloaded to another digital storing device of the same nature as the traditional computer hard drive.  How about PEN drives?  Or PEN drive MP3 players inside cell phones?  For that matter how about the accessible prices involved?

With DVR, Satellite TV and even free internet all linked to a 50U$ a month price tag for one year, most people will tend to go to the video rental store as soon as they discover the wonders of virtual collective hard drives such as Emule, Imesh, Kazaa, Soulseek and many others.  How is that for the free reign of home video libraries? Certainly there have been and may still be a lot of tries to make it illegal to distribute information in thus a manner, especially works of art such as those that come from Satellite TV transmission signals from the video rental store, but in the end, the collective has a power that it did not have in the past.  The prices are becoming accessible and new hardware development seems to flourish in an almost no-risk investment high-return manner.

DVD is not the future, it is the cold and distant past.  PEN drives and similar technologies are the future, cell phones and palmtops.

Future Technologies

Are palmtops really useful for someone on the go?  How about cell phones? Cell phones have certainly proven their worth, palmtops are nice, but for anyone looking to really do a lot of audio-video, they are not so practical.  What would be better?  How about sunglasses that look kool, hide a person’s eyes, can be just sun glasses or head phones and monitor as well?  Just look straight ahead and they are a monitor, look to the left or right just a tad, and they become sunglasses once again.  Sound like The Last Starfighter from 1984?  Better yet, they have the same effect as Johnny Mnemonic’s 3D monitor and gloves from the movie with Keanu Reeves! 

That may all sound like sci-fi, and no doubt for the standards of 2006 it still may be, but in 1995 no one thought that cloning was possible did they?  Or in 1999 expect to see everyone with a cell phone in hand on the bus?  By 2000 a lot of things began to change, and DVR, Satellite TV and Video Rental Stores all fall into the category of cutting edge home video libraries nowadays.  Soon, video rental stores will fall and the home video library will couple with tech that is now, but a fantastic dream of RPG gamers and Star Wars fans.