Roku CEO: DVR is Dying Relic

[Guest]

DVRs, cable boxes and DVD players could all disappear within the next decade or so, according to Anthony Wood, the CEO of Roku.

Roku CEO: DVR is Dying Relic : Read more

 

[xenol]

Hey Roku, if you can convince ISPs to give us unlimited bandwidth at pretty fast speeds (20Mbps/30Mbps to start) without telling us to bend over, then I'll believe what you'll say. Otherwise streaming content is about as meh as long as ISPs hold dear to their monopolies and negative innovation.

 

[deftonian]

Before this happens, I need to see a few things:

1.) Better internet speed options in rural areas (outside the city)
2.) ISPs not throttling the streaming services
3.) 1080p with 7.1 support for all of these streaming services.

One of the reasons I continue to buy Blu-ray is because of the sound/video quality. Currently, with my ISP, I cannot come close to a Blu-ray with streaming quality. Once I can stream at such quality, I can see ditching the physical media and using streaming for showing off my A/V setup.

 

[ashburner]

I have to agree with the other comments. I currently have Suddenlink 50Mb down service. Within the past few months, they have implemented a new cap. 350GB. Between my wife and kids watching netflix and Amazon, and me downloading and playing games, working from home, and listening to iHeart radio, we hit our cap early and easily. Internet bandwidth is getting cheaper by the day but our ISPs continue to raise rates and limit consumption. There is going to have to be some change to the greed of these corporations if this will ever work. We still have Dish as well and record an awful lot.

 

[getochkn]

Until streaming can show the shows as they air on network TV at the same time, it will never fully take over. I like to timeshift my shows and at least bypass commericals or watch them later in the day. With the internet you can't go online without spoilers about what happened last night so I don't want to wait a week to watch it whenever some streaming service gets it.

 

[dimar]

I predict that the average speed of the internet in Canada will be 20Mbps within the next decade, which is still not enough for normal blu-ray, and not even close to quality 4K playback. Optical media is not going anywhere. It is possible that in 10-20 years these media boxes would come with a super huge 100PB storage that would let users to store the purchased movies, and if it's DRM free, only then I'm totally for getting rid of optical media.

 

[elbert]

I have to agree with the roku CEO. When I have time to watch tv. I watch what when I want. I watch not based on a clock time and I can watch parts of shows as I want. I do not like to looking for the dvd's.

 

[brucek2]

His comments make the most sense for primetime series, but ignores the vast number of hours of TV watching that fall into either sports or "background TV." For sports fans, there's often too many important games that just aren't available without the cable or satellite subscription. And for background TV purposes -- think the small TV that's on in the corner of the kitchen while dinner is being is made -- people want to just turn it on and have content play, vs. having to specifically select a show ever 30 minutes (or 23 without commercials.)

 

[Zaranthos]

Except when the internet goes down. How about some DVR features for my next Roku? It would be nice to have some offline content stored on my Roku for when the internet goes down. It's not often but every year or so there is construction or some infrastructure failure where the internet may be down for an hour or more.

 

[Zeroplanetz]

It's either going to be streamed to a smart TV, a gaming console or a streaming player." DVRs, therefore, will be unnecessary: if consumers stream all their content, recording shows becomes pointless.....

a couple of things,
1- people I know who DVR which is alot of them do so so they can skip ADS. This is the biggest downfall of cable/satellite ads!
2- streaming is ok if you have the internet that can support it.
3- watch, as soon as streaming becomes more popular the damn ADS! Will find there way into it more and more. Which will make people look for another alternative.

digital downloads would be fine except its not. Most are blocked with drm crap. If I buy something to watch on my digital devices I want to be able to put on any of my digital devices. And one cannot simply do that.

companies anger me.

 

[EddieLomax]

right now the quality of video I get from Cable providers is already going downhill fast, while the quality I want is increasing. I'm guessing that blu-ray (and the next blu-ray) may become a niche format, but there will always be demand there for higher quality while the masses seem content to watch highly compressed blocky junk on a 50" 4k tv...

 

[cats_Paw]

There is a simple reason why this is (for now) a utopia:Reliability.

While I can perfectly understand watching even lower than optimal quality, the fact remains that In order to watch your favorite DVD/Blue-ray or similar you need only electricity.

To stream you need electricity and Internet.

Last I checked, Internet providers do not pay you back your money if they stop providing service for a "short time" (how much that is depends on your provider).

Even worse, the prices and rules of anything like that (online services) can be changed by your provider anytime they want leaving you with a simple decision: "If you dont like it, dont pay for it and you wont get it ".

With physical copy, that dosent happen.

Also, lending a physical copy is something possible and rather normal (well, for now at least). With streaming we dont know how it will look later on.

Finally, considering how badly companies behave when they "can", trusting them is plainly dumb (naive is cutting it short in my book).