Blu-ray is in trouble

This news article reflects my same sentiments.  Blu-ray may have won the format war, but it has already lost the overall battle.  Streaming videos into your home is already a reality.  You can do it with Netflix (their partnership with Starzz makes their list of movies to watch now much more interesting), Movelink (partnered with Blockbuster), Amazon, and Apple.  Netflix launched their set-top box this year and Apple has had the AppleTV out for quite a while now.  You also have Media Center extenders that take XP Media Center and Vista Media Center and allow you to watch movies from Amazon, Netflix, and Movielink including the renting and downloading all from right at your TV. 

People are ripping their movies from DVD onto HDDs at an increasing rate as well (I can’t count how many Disney DVDs we have had to replace because of scratching).  These HDD based movies are available through some of the mediums discussed above (notably Media Center) to be viewed without ever having to put a disc in anything.  I see this mode increasing especially when you add to it the home movies, photos, and music collections that people are accumulating.  As an aside the increasing amount of digital storage that the average user has puts increased emphasis on having a solid backup strategy.  Even with the likes of Time Machine, Windows Home Server, Mozy and other online services, and even the improved backup capabilities in Vista there is a lot of room for improvement here in the consumer market.  In the end Blu-ray will undoubtedly stay around for a few more years until the streaming options include HD quality, but its demise is already fixed.  Let the streaming wars begin!

Technorati Tags: Blu-ray,streaming,Netflix,videos,Vista Media Center

How many choices are too many choices?

Americans are constantly faced by a myriad of choices.  When we go out to eat we have to pick between Italian, American, Chinese, Greek, Thai, Mexican, Indian, etc….  Once you have picked a type then you have to choose between Applebees, Chili’s, Outback, etc…  The same thing happens on trips to the grocery store, picking a dentist, or what movie to go to.  Many times we sit and spin on making a choice about something that likely doesn’t truly matter that much.

In the technology world this problem continually manifests itself.  Most techies have probably seen projects where the project deadline was hit before all the architectural choices were made because too much time was spent weighing the pros and cons of the variety of choices available.  That isn’t to say that decisions shouldn’t be weighed and measured, but that this activity should be time-boxed and at the end of the time the decision be made based on the data available.  One common example I use as evidence for this is citing the variety of technologies used by the big sites out on the Web.  Facebook uses PHP, MySpace and Microsoft use ASP.NET, Google uses Java (I believe) as do many, many others.  The same argument could be made about what server OS to use, what database to use, and so on.  The fact of the matter is with good people most technologies can be made to meet the need.  The argument that many people will try to cite is the productive improvements that technology X will bring.  The problem with that argument is that productivity is very difficult to measure (many smart people have tried and I have yet seen anyone to trumpet a truly successful way to measure) and so that argument is easy to make, but very, very difficult to prove correct (and often not worth the cost of doing so).

The danger comes when the new technology of the day or moment causes continual churn in an organization.  The seduction of always looking for best of breed (assuming for a moment that there was someway to truly determine best of breed) is that you are then set up to become a technology merry-go-round.  Invest in your technology selections, build expertise, and go deliver value.  Choose to get off the merry-go-round and make a commit.  Change of course will come over time, but when it does it should be obvious and done for obvious reasons.  In most cases change should be made because it will be a game changer either in dollars saved or dollars earned or provide obvious (emphasis on obvious) productivity gains.