> This post is not about movies.

Well, that sucks.

> So my question is, does the fragibility of DVDs mean that video tapes are going to hold on for longer than they would otherwise? Or will DVDs become more resilient? Or will DVDs become cheap enough and people aware enough that they'll develop the habit of burning backup DVDs for their critical data?

I think your last answer is the sensible one. The fact that digital replication *is* flawless means that having back-ups is the answer. Not necessarily on DVD, either, but possibly on some network data storage center. I really see datavaults becoming a viable business in the near future -- places where you can dump data over the Internet and have it stored in a distributed fashion. Considering the price of storage and bandwidth continues to drop, while the amount of important stuff people have to store increases, this makes sense.

It really kills me that DVDs are as fragile as CDs (if not more so). I've had any number of crappy VHS tapes, but stuttering and stuff seems to be a somewhat common problem with DVDs. I think some of it may be more noticable -- we didn't pay attention to the warping of VHS quality because it was crappy *anyway*. Your situation, where the scene is totally unplayable, has only happened on one DVD I rented, and I've been renting them on a regular basis since February 2000.

Still, I wish that the industry would've put some basic sort of protection around the actual data. Enclosing the media in a cartridge of some sort, the way floppy disks or minidiscs work, would seem to make a LOT more sense. Blank minidiscs cost about a buck for a medium much less widely embraced than DVD, so I can't imagine that it would drive manufacturing costs up that much. The cynical part of me says the industry likes making rental outlets replace their media on a regular basis.

One other thing that drives me nuts is how DVD players respond to scratches or dust: by freezing, as Sam noted. What kind of horrible error correction is this? I've never used a DVD player that did something sensible when it came to a bad part of the disc. Why must they lock up for a period of time? Are they running Windows? I'm pretty sure future DVD players will correct for this, but it's damned annoying.

Stephen