Is the importance of Blu-Ray overstated?

[jalsonmi]

Stockstar1138:

You make some good points, but I'm not just talking about HD digital downloads, I'm talking about the entirety of digital distribution. You might not be able to take over a ton of movies to a friend's place (assuming you don't want to watch the movie on your iPod--something I personally would agree with but not something that is hard and fast for all that download movies to iPods) but you would be able to go over that friend's house and download/stream a DVD quality movie from Netflix onto your computer or DVR. In this way, portability becomes a non-issue when it comes to the internet--it is ethereal, so your ability to watch the film is anywhere you can access it.

As for the potential format war for digital video formats, I doubt it would go down in quite as heated a manner. Primarily because first off, the PC/Mac divide doesn't work quite in that way. Disney might go iTunes exclusive, but iTunes is a free program available for both PC and MAc--indeed, it's prey much become the standard non-streaming media player for both OSes. So you don't have to worry about studios going with Mac vs. PC, as all digital files are available for both (hell, windows media player is easily run-able on Macs). I also don't think Sony would be so stupid to stay out of the digital format game because of Blu-Ray. That'd be cutting off their nose to spite their face. They're already losing money hand over fist in their music and music related technologies departments (whither the discman?), ignoring digital media in order to push Blu-Ray could spell complete collapse on their part (as it is, pre-PS3 the games division was the only division of Sony that wasn't losing money. That was true even for both the studio and theater chain divisions.

And it's not that higher ups at Paramount and Universal "don't want to talk about" Blu-Ray, it's that they don't talk about it. There's a difference there. When they talk about the shape of the future, it's not something they're afriad of, it's just a thing on the way to something much bigger and more lucrative. And, in addition, it's not just big wigs t competing companies, it was analysts as well (also, the former head of Paramount has no love for Paramount-sans-himself)