Sunday, November 6, 2011

Minority Report and Red Queens

I actually had the DVD Minority Report in my dusty collection of Dvd’s I say ‘dusty’ because I really don’t use them anymore, with the exception of viewing Disney Princess movies for my three year old because they are not licensed on Netflix.
The competition between DVD’s and Streaming Video services is an example of the dreaded Red Queen- one technology runs as fast as they can to keep up, but ultimately gets left behind. In this case, the convenience of streaming and on demand video all but shut out the storefront dvd market, as hard as they tried to keep up with marketing conveniences such at RedBox. As much as the brick and mortar store such as Blockbuster have tried to keep up by adding services such as videos by mail, streaming services created by Netflix have surpassed. Even Netflix’s own mail service is suffering due to the convenience of streaming and pricey mail service. Customers in today’s age demand fast service and don’t want to wait for a dvd in the mail. Streaming essentially ‘streamlines’ the customer service process and alleviates the overhead created by a brick and mortar store.
Streaming services will eventually obsolete dvd’s. As televisions and media players such as blu-rays and gaming consoles become more advanced, wifi becomes faster and cheaper, and the laptop smaller and more touch screen friendly, dvd’s will become phased out in lieu of streaming video.