Ok, this is just my little rant against all of the articles I read about how physical media is going to die and all will be downloaded in the future. I do not believe that will ever happen for these reasons.

1. It takes forever for an hd movie to download from the internet even on a fast
connection.
2. The supposed HD isn't HD. There isn't a lossless audio track and it isn't even
1080p format. Itunes is nowhere near and the zune service is getting close,
but this would make loading times even longer.
3. I cannot make a backup copy of my movies on a disk. If my computer dies I
have lost my purchase.
4. The need for HUGE capacity drives for movies. If and when movies are output
at 1080p and lossless audio just a few movies will top 100 gig. Individuals
that have 50 or more movies ouch!!!

Why I like to have Physical media disks

1. As easy as put it in the blu ray player and instant gratification and the best
quality.
2. I can back up my disks incase something should happen to them.
3. To move to another room I just take the disk out and put it in another blu ray player.

I would like to hear other comments about this subject. Post your thoughts!!!

Blu-ray is dead.

:-P

At least, that's what I always tell my coworker, just to bug him.

And the best reason of all for physical media...

The bas@!!#@** can't take it away from you claiming you only purchased the right to watch it, not own it.

How ironic it was that Orwell's book was the one revoked from the Kindle. THATS what really pisses me off!!

Sure they can't. There's way too many provisions in the BD spec that are intensely anti-public.

The BD specs pretty much allow it to do everything short of self destruct and I wouldn't be surprised if there is a back door activation for that somewhere.

That being said, the only media I generally download is a missed episode of a TV series. This last season of "24", we had a storm and the dish crapped out for an episode and my wife turned into Jack Bauer in interrogation mode until I successfully downloaded her the missed episode.

Hunt, I'm with you personally and can't really see downloads causing the extinction of physical discs, at least for HD or QD content, but most other people I know don't care about true HD audio/video quality. If they can get "good enough" or "decent" quality quickly via download then they will go that route.

Download speeds are an issue for now, but presumably as technology advances it will no longer be a concern.

The inability to make backup discs will always be there, but if the downloads are cheap enough then people won't be in an uproar if they need to purchase it again. It'd be no different than if they lost or damaged their physical disc.

As far as storage space goes, it's already cheap to get 1TB or 2TB and it will only get cheaper and bigger.

Just my $0.02

Yep, I have 16 TB on my server (room for another 16 tb @ 2 tb/disk). My lazy butt likes to click the remote to watch a movie (and my rack/BR player is 50' across the house so I rip um). 500GB docs and Music (with redundancy/backup), 1.5 TB DVDs, 3.5tb Recorded TV and the rest BR. I don't backup Video I'll just rerip (but that could be a lot of time re-invested. Oh well!)

At $140/2 TB aint bad (not on sale).... but setting up the machines can get pricey

Jeff

now if you could buy 1080p movies with lossless audio already on a hard drive or jump drive that could be uploaded to my computer and ipod I would like that. Then I have the master copy, back up, portability, and time saved.

I'm sure the studios are working 24/7 on that.