At this weeks consumer electronics show Toshiba will introduce a new way to own movies. On SD Memory cards. Now if you read some of the blogosphere, many are laughably writing this off. I say don’t laugh so fast. If you having been reading the writing on the wall, we are moving to a solid state future. Take a look at the current netbook craze. The majority of these mini PCs are powered by solid-state hard drives. What this means is no moving parts. In fact, if you look ahead, in roughly five years or less the hard drive in PC’s as we know today will cease to exist. The fact that there will no longer be a need for moving parts in a PC or other devices will mean longer life and possibly more secure ways to store data. However, for the time being, the largest SSD-HD can only hold up to 512GB of data. The cost is also still prohibitive.
However, storing movies on SD cards can offer a new way to own and collect films. Remember our huge VHS collections of the 80’s and 90’s? The amount of shelf space needed was staggering. Then in the late 90’s DVD came on board and cut that storage space in half. That’s nothing to speak of the improvement in picture quality. In the past few years, downloading movies from the likes of iTunes and what-not have become mildly popular. I have always been a huge proponent of disc media simply due to the fact of having a hard copy in case of hard drive failure. Putting films on SD cards though gives you a way to not only have huge collection, but have a back-up as well.
Toshiba through a partnership with NCR, is creating download kiosks that will enable you to purchase films that can be written to yours, or a purchased card in moments. Imagine, for the first time we could have access to thousands of movies and programs that the studios would have otherwise not released on DVD due to the fact that it wouldn’t be cost effective to print and replicate so many DVD’s.
We would also be able to enjoy films in high-definition as well. SD slots which are already being placed into many HDTV’s could act as a way to play them. Even if we had to purchase a separate player, they would be very small and inexpensive as well.
So while the jury is still out, I for one would welcome this new format and look forward to seeing what it’s potential can be.
Keep Moving Forward!
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