Portable Videodisc Players: Why They Still Make Sense (cont.)

ANY FUTURE? With so few technological innovations and so many regressions, it begs the question: What does the future hold for portable videodisc players?

In 2009, we speculated that portable videodisc players would benefit from the mobile Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) specification for the transmission of TV to portable devices. But the development of mobile TV has stalled. Only one manufacturer, Philips, has incorporated ATSC technology into a portable videodisc player that’s sold in the United States, the 7-inch PET749/37 ($180). Unfortunately, the analysts with whom we spoke were unable to say whether the device works in any market in the country.

“Mobile digital-TV broadcasts, which would work better in vehicles, are still rolling out across the United States,” Rubin says. “The service is free, but [ATSC technology] adds significantly to the price” of a portable videodisc player.

Ultimately, the “portability” is the strength of portable videodisc players and the reason why we believe that they’ll stick around at least for a few more years. Although more consumers download movies to their smartphones or tablets, the problem with such a download is that your choice of devices on which you can watch those movies is limited in most cases to only that particular device. Thus, the $14.99 Harry Potter movie that you downloaded to your Apple iPad can run only on a device that’s made by Apple. Blu-ray discs or DVDs, of course, can be viewed on any portable Blu-ray or DVD player.

But this accessibility problem could change by early 2012 with the introduction of UltraViolet, which is a system that will allow you to store your purchased video in the online cloud and download it to whatever device that you choose. (Apple devices already let you do this within Apple’s closed system.) We’ve seen demonstrations of UltraViolet, and we found the technology to work well. You can play the same video on an Android tablet and a Windows smartphone.

UltraViolet could open up easy multidevice functionality for downloaded video to all other types of devices, says Tom Adams, who is an analyst at IHS Screen Digest. In fact, we believe that it’s the only thing that could accelerate the transition—so far extremely slow—from discs to downloads.

At this time, UltraViolet won’t work with Apple devices. Adams predicts that that could change if all other platforms and manufacturers throw their support behind UltraViolet, but we remain skeptical. Apple never has shown any proclivity to do things the way that everyone else does them.

If UltraViolet catches on, you finally would have the same universal interoperability with downloaded video that the videodisc provides today, Adams says.

And portable videodisc players would speed up their fade to black.

Melissa J. Perenson is a senior editor at PCWorld and has covered computer technology for 18 years. She is a regular contributor to Consumers Digest.