HappySqurriel on 06 June 2007
If you assume that 1080p and 7.1 surround sound will be the major motivation for people to switch to a new movie format then it may be awhile before people switch to a downloadable format. After watching CD survive through DVD-A and SACD only to be replaced by MP3, and VHS survive through Laserdisc and DivX only to be replaced by DVD, I'm not sure that higher-quality is the main motivating factor for people to adopt a format. It is possible that you could capture people's interest with 480p content today, 1080i/720p content in 18 months to 2 years and 1080p content in 5 years; the beauty of this is that people wouldn't need to upgrade their hardware to take advantage of these improvements unlike a Disc based format.
