Is the importance of Blu-Ray overstated?

[jalsonmi]

Rock_On_2008:

I said pretty clearly that I wasn't referring to the advantage Blu-Ray gives as a platform for games. I'm specifically talking about it in relation to it's use a platform for movie viewing.

makingmusic476:

While it's true the entirety of the US does not have DSL level bandwidth, an even smaller percentage of the population has a blu-ray player. I'm pretty sure you'd find that the segment of the population that can afford broadband and have the ability to store these movies in one way or another (iPod, hard drive, DVR, whathaveyou) and the segment that can afford a Blu-Ray player have a massive overlap. Hell, if anything, the population with broadband (or could afford it) is probably bigger than that with the ability to own a Blu-Ray player, as $30 a month is a hell of a lot more manageable than the cost of a Blu-Ray player (even if, over the months nad yer, you end up spending a chunk on broadband. People can afford small chunks of money over a period of time a lot easier than one big chunk at once).

As for the issue of image quality, as I said in my original post, I do indeed think people will be content with poorer image quality. In addition, a) As the technology develops (and indeed it's pretty much already at this point), the image quality won't be noticeably worse than DVD quality (similarly, MP2 did not take off as a musical format because quality was still very low. MP3 was the "close enough" demarcation point), and b) if you want to see a movie in a high quality format that actually makes a difference, go to the theater.