5 replies to this topic

[cunningham1471]

I was sat on the bus reading my kindle and it dawned on me that this is the future of books. maybe not in my life time, but at some point the traditional paper books are going to disapppear as it's cheaper for the publishers to do it all electronically. Equally more and more people want to download and watch TV shows and films or music, so it could lead to a similar thing happening with those as well. Why pay to produce CDs, DVDs etc when most non law breaking) people are happy to subsribe or purchase downloads?

Could there come a time when the idea of getting a book, CD/DVD cover signed is not just a thing of the past, but impossible? I really can't see an actor/musician wanting to sign an home created CD/DVD.
I think CD/DVDs days are numbered anyway. One of the things that most people agree on when comparing video and DVD's is how much better it is that DVD's take up less room than videos. As anyone who bought all the various Star Trek series on video will testify, they take up a lot of space.
I can see the day when CD/DVD as a format disappear and a hardware version of a film is the size of a memory card in a phone or a camera. Less space but also impossible to autograph.

As technology changes how do you think autograph collecting will change? Will it be purely bits of paper and photographs? Will signitures be replaced by fingerprints on memory cards?

Just something I got thinking about on the bus. Has anyone else thought about this or have any thoughts on it after reading this?

[gobo1979uk]

My thoughts on this are that it must have been a long bus journey.

[cunningham1471]

It was thanks to diversions caused by the olympics, despite there being no events locally that day.

[TerraHawk]

I've said in the past, downloads are well and good, but you can't sign a download.

And I don't think you can sell a download 2nd hand either. Now presuambly companies don't like 2nd hand sales, their product can be sold cheaper, but they see none of the money.

I've heard it claimed somewhere that keeping items on servers 24/7 365 days a year for people to download is actually more enviromentally damaging that a one off 10,000 unit production run, which is done and over.

[Not_Pennys_Ship]

There will always be hard copies of everything.  More money is made from CDs and books than electronic formats.

[GoldenGreen]

Interesting thoughts. I was thinking on a similar vein the other day, in terms of resale, for example you could sell your old vhs or DVD films on ebay but how would you sell a download ? Sounds like a potential market opportunity for someone there !

In regard to signing most of my autos are on 10x8 pictures, in autograph books etc, so I don't have that many videos or DVD's signed. I do have quite a few signed books, in fact the only books I physically have are signed ones, all other books I have now are downloads.