Last year, the New Yorker did something pretty cool – they sold a complete searchable and browse-able archive of their back issues on DVD. I bought it as an xmas present for my brother (obviously taking a sneak peek myself :-) It’s a great way to view the whole design history, the articles and is a great cultrual resource. But changing the DVDs was a pain in the arse.
And now the New Yorker has decided to offer these packaged and delivered on a hard drive. What a great idea. I think the price is a bit too high (an extra $240 for the hard drive?). I think we’ll see flash and HD media being used as a delivery mechanism for movies…
I’d love to buy, say, the West Wing on a Hard Drive, it would be brilliant to carry that around in my bag. I’d be more than happy to take a quality hit for compressed video (mb divx files, for example) to have the whole archive in a manageable format.
And the free time to watch it, of course.
The idea’s not new – a year ago, Mark Cuban was talking about using cheap (hear that New Yorker? _cheap_) hard drives for content delivery..
Here’s the link.