Hard drives aren't becoming more stable. If anything, the dropping costs of HDDs, paired with faster speeds have made them shorter lived. 3-5 years is the average life for a drive these days. I would not want to rely upon a hard drive to store my entire movie collection which would take up somewhere between 5-6TB. If my only available copies of my movies and shows were on HDD, I'd want a back up of everything on separate drives at minimum.

RAID arrays would provide fast and reliable storage, but the premium to set up even a 1TB redundant array (which would hold about 20-40 BR-D quality, AVC compressed HD movies WITHOUT providing redundant back ups) makes optical media cheaper. Additional compression over AVC or VC-1 would be unacceptable image quality wise until better, less lossy codecs can be created.

CES had a lot of coverage for set top digital video distribution boxes and there is a massive volume of potential here as a means of media distribution, but there are many details that need to be established before a total transition to non-tangible media can be made.

Ultimately, it depends upon the consumption habits of the average consumer. If there are enough broadband subscribers with access to fast enough networks and servers to keep download times reasonable for files large enough and keep compression low enough to reduce image loss and digital artifacts to a minimum, at a reasonable price with variable pricing options for different levels of use, it's feasible, but optical media is dependent upon far fewer factors to remain viable. There are a lot of details involved in relying upon digital downloads to keep the movie industry in the black since theater ticket sales are no longer enough.

It's not as simple as "I download 700MB movies for free to watch on my computer, so that's where the entertainment industry is headed."

Very possible, the box has a short life span.

give it s few years and it will simply be a matter of streaming media ---sure you can have a hard copy, but it will be cheaper and more cost effective to just do like a i movie website

Streaming a 1080p movie? Maybe if you had 40mbps internet speed.

give it a few years....

Why would someone who doesn't play games buy a $400 Blu-ray player instead of waiting for a few months to get a $200 Blu-ray player?

Unless of course he needs a Blu-ray player that doubles as a space heater...

If M$ had had some competition in the first year they would have dropped there prices, but it was smooth sailing with only the PS2 and Gamecube to deal with. The PS2 being the only real threat.

If it hadn't taken almost two years for the 360 to hit its first month of profitability, that initial price drop could have come earlier.

If it hadn't been for the persistent QC/RROD problems, a more significant price drop would have been possible earlier in its life cycle. Integrating the HD DVD drive back when the Elite was announced could have given the format a decent chance of success instead of becoming a dead end as a consumer media format.

MS essentially squandered their year lead in all respects other than offering a stronger second year line up relative to the first year line up of Nintendo and Sony.

MS was capable of putting the 360 into a position of dominance for the current generation if they had dropped the price upon the debut of the PS3 and Wii or shortly after the holiday rush. No one expected the Wii to dominate sales or this would have been a more likely scenario. It was not seen as a direct competitor for the 360, but ultimately, game/console sales are game/console sales regardless of what market is being targeted.

I'm thinking only a minority of people in the market for a stereo rack component BR-D player are actually buying PS3s. While many owners aren't contributing greatly to soft sales, it's more likely because they are waiting for the big releases of 2008 (many of which were delayed from 2007). Of course it never pays to buy a console until it has games you're ready to buy at the same time (prices drop), but there will always be a percentage of buyers who do this anyway.

Seriously, I've seen worse posts by some other "members" of this forum that have not been banned... and whenever I've complained about those posts, usually a mod will state something along the lines of "They explained their opinion." and leave them be. Gotta love equality.

KrisisKore

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