Will DVD Drives Still be Around in a Few Decades? - sohimpt1956

In On What Media Should I Fill-in My Photos , I recommended archiving to Videodisk+Rs, and discussed the issue of whether these discs are stable enough for long-time storage. Philip Peters wrote me and brought up other issue: Will we take drives that can read DVDs in ten, 20, or 50 years?

It's unattainable to say with complete confidence what contemporary media will be supported past readily-available computer hardware when our grandchildren have grandchildren. But we can make educated guesses. And I'm guessing that DVDs and CDs will be clear, with close to moderate investment, for a very long time to come.

When a medium has enjoyed wide consumer popularity for a significant measure of time, the market for players stays alive for decades. You can no longer assume that every home has a floppy drive, record player, or cassette player, but you'll take over no put out buying these devices–complete brand new. In point of fact, you can buy them with USB ports, which you couldn't do when these types of media were popular.

Of course, if a culture medium was popular only briefly, never enjoyed wide popularity, Beaver State was entirely controlled by one and only company, finding a role player decades later becomes more of a challenge. To my knowledge, no one is making Laserdisc players Beaver State Bernoulli Corner drives. You can still buy used ones, only one of these days these will disappear.

Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector writes about applied science and cinema. Email your tech questions to him at response@pcworld.com , or post them to a biotic community of helpful folks on the PCW Answer Line of credit forum . Follow Lincoln on Chirrup , or subscribe the Answer Line newssheet , e-mailed weekly.

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