i've been a big supporter of dvds owning about 400 so far and for me blu ray is pretty much meh. yeah, it looks a bit better but overall there isn't much to really distinguish it from dvd. i certainly don't feel compelled to repurchase my old movies like i did when i upgraded from vhs to dvd.

netflix is what is really getting me excited specifically their download service. the reason i like buying dvds is being able to watch them whenever i want. now netflix has 7,000 titles available for immediate download and unlimited viewing. the idea that i could spend a similar or less amount of money per month and have access to EVERY release is soo amazing to me. oh sure, netflix doesn't quite have enough content yet but i'm certainly rooting for them.

...and in all honesty i'm getting tired of owning all these discs. do you realize how much room 400 dvd take up. well let me tell you, i'm on my third bookshelf and that is annoying.

...but if i had to pay per view - then i would hate downloading services.

MAIN POINT: unlimited content + not having to have physical storage >>>>> higher resolution.

Havent we been hearing this forever? DVD is also touted as a competitor to Blu Ray... maybe we should start a thread on that!  

There will always be those people who would rather buy a physical media cause they feel like they are getting somthing for their money. For example, you can watch all 4 seasons of LOST in HD on your computer for FREE...but there are still people out there who will buy the DVD's and Blu-Ray versions.

I think in time as the younger generation gets older there will be less physical media and more downloads.

i aint got a week to wait for a film to download, down a HD film with a size of 30GB will take forever, and it will be a lot longer than 5 years to sort the speed out

This is the best argument against download movies:

According to The New York Times, the Internet movie download era is more distant than pundits think, for six colossal reasons:

First, downloadable movies require high-speed Internet connections — and only about half of American households have them. That number won’t change much for years.

Second, downloaded movies don’t include the director’s commentaries, deleted scenes, alternate endings, alternate language soundtracks or other DVD goodies. It’s just not as rich an experience.

Third, movie downloads don’t deliver the audio and video quality of DVD discs — even standard-def ones. Internet movies are compressed to download faster, which affects picture quality, and offer older, more compressed audio soundtracks than modern DVDs.

Forth, today’s movie-download services bear the greasy policy fingerprints of the movie studio executives — and when it comes to the new age of digital movies, these people are not, ahem, known for their vision.

Fifth, no matter which movie-download service you choose, you’ll find yourself facing the same confusing, ridiculous time limits for viewing. You have to start watching the movie you’ve rented within 30 days, and once you start, you have to finish it within 24 hours. For example, the 24-hour limit. Suppose you typically don’t start a movie until 7:30 p.m., after dinner and homework are put away. If you don’t have time to finish the movie in one sitting, you can’t resume at 7:30 tomorrow night; at that point, the download will have self-destructed.

Sixth, there’s the fact that to protect their cash cows, most studios don’t release their movies on the Internet until (at least) a month after they’ve been available on DVD.

The rest of The New York Times article reviews and rates four currently available movie-download services — Apple TV, TiVo/Amazon Unbox, Xbox 360, and Vudu. Xbox 360 receives an overall rating of "D", the lowest rating of the four services.

http://n4g.com/tech/News-113808.aspx

The point is that pundits on both sides are trying to convince people they are right...we can post articles back and forth if you want!

The truth is we're not talking about technophiles with the latest equipment or movie enthusiasts who buy 5 - 10 films a week. We're talking 'average Joe' and how they will get their digital videos in the next 5 - 10 years.

Take my wife... go on take her... but no, seriously, she just about 'gets' itunes - has set up an account and bought a few songs. Yet she has downloaded the last 3 eps of LOST on itunes (£1.89 each) with no problems and the quality is fine for her.

So the question is really convenience vs quality.

But this is where itunes started isn't it? MP3 tracks are OK quality - nowhere near CD quality - but the mass public loved the easy accessibility of itunes and really couldn't care less about the quality.

If an industry standard service arrives to download movies (HD or not) onto your home HDD - Blu Ray will never capture the market like DVD.

Oh and 'Hello I'm new please don't abuse me...'

But it seems to me these download movies will be competing against blockbuster and rental stores and not dvds/bds. If being able to watch a movie once could be such and end all for movies then dvds would never had taken off. People by dvds and bds cause they want to own them not just watch them once. Millions want to own them. Hard drives are not big enough yet for people to own them. So therefore streamed movies will not take the place of dvds bds yet because that is more like renting them. And this on demand stuff has been available through cable and Sat for years...

Blu-ray has beaten HD-DVD. Now it just has to fight DVDs...

Once the price of a basic (not superfancy) Blu-ray setup can rival the price of a basic DVD setup (SD TV + $0 DVD player) then Joe Sixpack will actually think about switching to Blu-ray.

Good luck Sony.

@xenophon13

Wow...

1. Time will tell, but available bandwidth is increasing fast over here. Is the US really that far behind Europe?

2. Downloads *could* include extras. It's not set in stone.

3. Hm? If you're downloading SD content, there is no bandwidth problem and then 1. would not be an issue.

5. More flexible than most DVD rentals I've tried.

As for the article's ratings, it seems that the biggest problem is movie selection. That problem will be go away fast.

I liked to wife joke.

The difference between movies and iTunes is that in the case of music, people simply don't want to own and pay for full albums when they only want 1 or 2 songs off of it. With movies, you'll want the whole thing, not just certain scenes. I don't see iTune's succes to be a direct tie-in with movie download. Although I do admit that iTunes has been essential to getting mainstream people comfortable with downloading media (and paying for it).