Re: [ARSCLIST] Slides and inconvenient media (was spin it again)

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'd like to wish the same thing but I think it unlikely. Habits and tastes get formed when you're 
young and the modern taste is for convenience and instant random access above all else. Also, the 
younger-generation is very self-oriented, so an experience that make one feel small and/or 
insignificant is probably very jarring and unpleasant. Yet, IMAX survives and some wonderful IMAX 
films have been made in recent years. But it's more a museum-type spectacle -- akin to a trip to 
Disney World as opposed to something they'd want to experience often. When VHS movies and rentals 
came along, I remember a conversation with my mother, who grew up during the Depression when the big 
treat/escape of the week was a Saturday afternoon in the air-conditioned movie theater. She could 
never understand how anyone would choose to watch a movie on a TV screen. It was a totally different 
media and experience to her generation. Now fast-forward 25 or so years, maybe a little bit more, 
and I and most of my friends much prefer watching a DVD at home to dealing with an overpriced, 
filthy, stinky and loud movie theater. The number of screens in the US has declined since a wave of 
over-building in the 90's and now there's talk in Hollywood of releasing DVD, broadcast rights and 
big-screen all at the same time. Plus wide/flat "high-def" TV's are selling fast and are already 
commoditized. I betcha there will be half the number of movie screens as today in another decade. 
The experience will be more limited to fewer people and will not be a mainstream way to in-take 
moving images. The big question is, will broadcast TV go the same way in a generation or so, making 
all entertainment instant-access and completely able to view any part of any program for any length 
of time on any screen anywhere? If you listen to the dot-bombers that's where everything is headed.

There are huge ramifications for the business of archiving and the very nature of archives in all of 
this. Oh, and to beat the familiar drum, all of this argues for actively-managed digital archives 
that can easily migrate to the latest/greatest format and delivery medium.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Breneman" <david_breneman@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, April 06, 2007 12:03 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Slides and inconvenient media (was spin it again)


> --- Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Very much agree. But, the youngsters seem to derive much more
> > stimulus and deep enjoyment from a
> > visual experience on a blurry 2x2 screen than I or people my age
> > (41) or older are likely to.
>
> I can't help but think that at some point there's going to
> be a backlash, or pendulum swing, or epiphany, or whatever
> you want to call it, that will drive people back to high
> fidelity audio and video.  It's the "you are there" aspect
> of formats like 6x6 and stereo slides that drives my inderest
> in those media.  Maybe it will take a digital version of Imax
> with an increased frame rate to get the fluidity of movement
> of video combined with the picture quality if film to get
> people back, or something else, but I can't see how after
> a century-long quest for ever-greater realism, the whole
> endeavor going to be forsaken for crummy web audio and video.
>
>
> David Breneman         david_breneman@xxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
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