Well, I have to strongly disagree with the premise of this thread that DLC will be adopted before Blu-Ray fully becomes the next standard.
First of all, SOMETHING will be a new high def media standard. Whether blu-ray makes it all the way or not, makes little difference in that. The reason is that whenever it is that HDTV's finally are the big majority, people will want to take advantage of that. If it's within the next 5 years or so, BD will likely be the medium of choice. We'll see during this next year if it starts to post decent percentage gains in sales.
Downloadable content is not near ready. First, Studios DON'T necessarily want it. Do you really think a studio WANTS to sell you a copy of a movie that is perfect in picture and audio and WON'T ever wear out or break so that you have to buy another? Sure, there's copy protection, but it's been pretty well proven that what man can invent, man can crack, so that's really not anything other than a monetary investment for the studio that will be broken and rendered useless by those in the know anyway.
As of a recent GAO government study, in 2006 only 28% of American households had broadband access. That was 30 million up from 7.8 million business AND households combined in 2000. If you ignore other factors and just extrapolate this, you'd find that we'd reach about the 50% mark in America around 2012-13. That's still just half and only here in America, a very technically developed country. Even then, with current broadband technology ranging from satellite and DSL to cable, can you imagine downloading HD movies at 25-50GB??? Slooooooow, man, slooow. The tech isn't there yet.
That's also assuming that everyone is technically savvy enough to do so which we all know the general public isn't. Sure, tech savvy people will do it because they'll like that, but mass adoption? That's another story.
Even saying that all the problems are erased...there's some kind of CHEAP set top that makes getting, playing and storing (in case you purchase rather than rent) the movies easy enough for anyone to use. The fact of the matter is that people like having a physical product in their hand, especially when it's a purchase. Yes, digital music downloads are big now, but CD's still sell better, and the music that DOES sell is primarily the singles, not the albums the studios want to push. That was one of the points of contention with Apple's latest negotiations with the iTunes music store. Studios want to force album purchases and Apple didn't want to.
Look, books and print media have been available to download longer than music, at least in legal and authorized forms. Are libraries and book stores drying up? No!
Fact is, while digital downloading probably will be the future at some point, it's going to take a lot longer than some people think for the infrastructure, usability and then the public acceptance of that way of doing thing. The public's perception and acceptance will be the last roadblock and is the factor that's the hardest to predict. It's possible the public may NEVER accept the disappearance of a product in their hand, after all.
No, digital downloading will NOT be the medium of choice for quite some time. I would estimate it as being at least 10 years or more in the future and that's being generous. I think that some type of small flash media or other type of storage, is far more likely to take the place of the optical disk before that. Certainly before digital downloading. Once people get used to a small pen cap sized piece of hardware being their movie or movie library, they're far more likely to accept the next move....no identifiable product whatsoever. Till then, the majority will want to be able to see their movie or book on the shelf. Remember too that most general consumers don't own 500 or 1,000 movies, so they're less likely to push for such massive reductions in storage space than are those of us that buy tons of DVD's or BD's now.
The only way I think DLC has a chance is in the rental game. It still will need some kind of easy set-top "Netflix" box or something that makes it easy for people to operate. And I mean easy like an alarm clock, not 'easy' like TiVo. Even then, infrastructure has to grow in capability to make this not frustrating for the average consumer and even more importantly that has to be more widespread than just in the USA. America is not the rest of the world, despite our tendency to see it as so. The world has grown ever more dependent on the "global economy" and that isn't just a word. Emerging markets like China and India are HUGE lures for all types of companies, and they will need to be up to speed just like South America and to a lesser extent, Africa, for something like DLC to really take off.
Anyway, that's my opinon...
