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CDs and DVDs are doomed - so say those soothsayers at Forrester, who reckon that the "end of physical media is nearing". Forrester reckons that a third of all music sales will be made by downloads in the next five years. It also predicts that almost 15 per cent of films will be viewed by "on-demand" services such as cable TV rather than by DVD or video by 2005. Although this will "wreak havoc" with traditional retailers flogging and renting the stuff, digital downloads and on-demand services could give the creative industry a much-needed shot in the arm, concluded the report From Discs to Downloads.

"On-demand services are the future of entertainment delivery. CDs, DVDs, and any other forms of physical media will become obsolete," predicted Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff. "Music and studio executives are finally beginning to understand that they must create new media services through channels that consumers will pay for. Consumers have spoken - they are tired of paying the high cost of CDs and DVDs and prefer more flexible forms of on-demand media delivery," he said.

According to Forrester, music sales are set to increase by more than half a billion dollars in 2004 thanks to online revenues. Equally, on-demand movie distribution channels will generate $1.4 billion by 2005, while revenue from DVDs and tapes will decline 8 percent.

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News source: The Reg

NVIDIA's major rival in the PC space, ATI, recently won the contract to create the graphics chipset for the successor to Microsoft's Xbox - no surprise to those who have been following the internal tensions in the relationship between Microsoft and NVIDIA over the current Xbox contract, but rumours suggest that the final stumbling block may have been a refusal by NVIDIA to hand over manufacturing permissions for the chipset to Microsoft rather than creating and supplying all of the components itself. Given Sony's track record, it seems highly unlikely that it would accept anything less than this from a technology partner - so even ignoring the technology hurdles, a deal seems highly unlikely.

However, our source could not rule out the possibility of discussions between Sony and NVIDIA. "I'd expect that Sony talk to a lot of people," he commented. "In a business like that you always explore all the options, but it would take a hell of a pitch to change minds at Sony about internally developing the GPU, and NVIDIA just don't have that pitch. People hear a whisper that someone from NVIDIA is talking to someone from Sony and bang, you have a massive rumour, but it really doesn't mean anything - people from these companies talk all the time."