Media storage evolution

Floppy beginning
In the beginning of computing there was the 5.25" floppy. (ok, not exactly at the beginning of computing, but close enough, wacky things like tapes and 8" floppy weren't that available anyway). Then there was the "high density 1.4M" 3.5" floppy. All disk drives can read and write to it, no problem. That meg was massive storage place for little things like a WordPerfect docs and a couple program source files. Now people demand much more. Now there are fat document files, huge images, and needed a much higher capacity storage. And there was the 700Meg CD.

CD
But the problem with CD is that it is written with laser, so can't erase and write again like magnetic floppies. The CD has completely replaced the cassette as media for music. For a time, everyone was content with CD-ROM. CD writers/burners were not so common when they first arrive, until the thirst for portable data storage exceeded the floppies.

DVD
Then there is the DVD, ideal for storing videos. It is like a hyper CD that can store 4.7 Gig! Wow that's a lot of data, but still not a lot of video, because videos are BIG. Look, it takes at least 24 image files for a SECOND of video.

VHS tapes are gone like cassettes, being totally replaced by DVD. All videos are now in DVD, including things like home videos and wedding videos. I will need a DVD burner to make copies. I just bought one, an external one, so I don't have to fiddle with internals of a computer, and it is easy to use it on another computer.

My DVD burning experience
Whoa, it takes at least 10 minutes to copy an image of a DVD, and takes 20 minutes to write to a DVD! Almost half an hour to copy a DVD. Now that's slow.

I have a complain with Nero. What? you copy image by first selecting a recorder type of "Image Recorder" (which means the hard disk) by click the "Burn" button which actually "burns" the image on my hard disk, and then change recorder type to the DVD drive and then "Burn image" to the DVD?? Look, these steps ought to be on 1 screen, with clear instructions. I am disappointed at Nero.

Here is a shocker. the copied DVD can't play on my original DVD drive!! Waita minute, I copied it, and my original drive can't play it? Ok it is an old DVD drive. The copied DVD can play on the DVD burner (when acting as a reader) and on another computer and on the inexpensive Memorex DVD player so I am not complaining too loud. But I want an explanation. Also, there OUGHT to be just ONE type of DVD. Not non sense incompatiable things like DVD+R and DVD-R. One shall stand, one shall fall.

About things like 8x, 16x, 20x speed. Just what am I comparing to? what is 1x? Not clear for the regular customer.

Little USB Flash drives
Then there was the USB flash disk drives. It is an amazing product (due to research in some very difficult solid state physics I suppse). No need to fuss slow burning. It also exchange files much faster with your computer. Now they are very cheap to get. But I doubt you would be renting videos on USB flash disk one day. How about someone invent a DVD player (or media player) that you can plug in a USB drive?

I imagine one day all medias go obsolete. That is, no one owns any videos in the form of VHS or DVD or whatever. I predict one day everything stored on the computer or the internet and you load it from there. Want to get a copy of my home video? I upload on my server and you download from there. I simply give you a password. Ok, this isn't exactly the future, people are already doing this. I just predict everyone trust their storage on computer more than the trusty little portable storages like floppy, CD, and DVD.