What is the best way to distribute content? DVDs which will be limited in capacity to 9.4gbs on a single DVD for another year, and then after that 50gbs on a single disk for years to come after that, or rewritable media that can hold 2gb already in a device half the size of a pen, or in a hard drive that can hold 200GBs plus in a drive the size of your cell phone?

Which device should content distributors like HDNet invest in ? DVD, knowing that the future standards will be locked for 7 to 10 years, or these storage devices that will grow in capacity, and shrink in size and price, not to mention the additional flexibility of being able to erase and rewrite the drives?

This article was extremely interesting. He brought up some great points and I have to say I agree with him. Why invest in dvd's whose capacity is limited (even HD-DVD and BluRay will have limited capacities when compared with hard drives) when you could provide the content on small hard drives that go for about $.50/gb. I really loved his idea about having the airport kiosk where, before your flight, you select a few movies and have them transfered to a keychain drive so you can simply plug them into your laptop and watch them on the plane. I'd definately buy that. And I also liked the netflix-inspired idea of paying a monthly fee to get a small hard drive (half the size of a cigarette box) with a hd movie on it. When you're done watching it, you send the hard drive back and get another one. (The only problem with this is the shipping charges. Netflix is relatively cheap because a dvd weighs almost nothing.)

He also brought up a good point about piracy. The problem right now is that quality is so low that the content can easily be transferred online. Bump up movies to full HD quality (even better than the compressed HD you get on tv because tv has bandwith limits) so that a 2 hour movie is 18gbs and you won't have many people downloading them. It's simply cheaper to buy a hard drive with the movie @ $.25/gb than download where your bandwith costs more than that.

Anyway, its an interesting read and i suggest everyone check it out. It also shows the workings of Mark's entrepreneurial mind. He had an idea (put a dvd on a keychain drive to watch on a plane), it worked well and he developed a whole business idea out of it. What differentiates him from us is that he can actually finance all his crazy ideas :)



Oh and in case you didn't know, Mark Cuban will be having a new reality tv show starting soon called The Benefactor. It will be similar to The Apprentice; you always here Mark and Donald joking about eachother's tv show.


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