[Internet news] A joint report by two market research firms predicts that digital content in an average U.S. home could hit as much as 12 terabytes by 2014. So where are you going to put all of it, and more importantly, how will you back it up?
The findings by Coughlin Associates and Objective Analysis include DVD libraries, and that accounts for a fair amount of the 12TB total. Tom Coughlin, president of Coughlin Associates, estimates that half of the data is commercial content, like DVDs.
Since their advent in 1999, the DVD has changed consumer habits, creating a whole culture of library collection that never existed in the VHS world with people building libraries of more than one thousand discs.
But that means the other half of the content in the report is user generated, like photos, music, and videos, and downloaded material, such as video on demand from Netflix and iTunes. That content, especially high definition content, can add up fast.
Coughlin said the 12TB figure is based on projections from a survey of consumer use, how users were getting information and the rate at which they got it, plus growth projections for higher resolution formats.
"A couple of trends are very big, such as Internet-based content delivery," Coughlin told InternetNews.com. "A lot of stuff people are getting, like from Netflix or iTunes, make it easy for people in their homes to make a quick [buying] decision."
What starts out as physical media, like DVDs and music CDs, might end up stored on a disk somewhere or a disk array. "I think that will be more and more of the trend, hopefully the content owners will be comfortable with that," said Coughlin. It started with music, as store-bought CDs gave way to iTunes.
Report: Consumer Storage Demand Set to Skyrocket - Will consumers need a refrigerator-sized storage system to manage terabytes of digital content?
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