I strongly believe that digital distribution of movies will inevitably become the mainstream choice. There's no way around it. The young of today are not interested in physical media, simple as that.

About bandwidth, I actually don't think it will be a big problem. Technical solutions will arise that ease the distribution, such as legal p2p networks, and network capacity will improve. The bigger problem is the business side of things, and perhaps the biggest problem will be copyright legislation. It's incredible how ingenious innovations can be thwarted because old geezers passing the laws have no clue of what is going on. For example, here in Finland an ISP is offering a digital set top box with 5 terabytes of storage space in their servers. You need a minimum of 8Mbit connection to view your recordings, but the upside is that you can record as many channels simultaneously as you wish, and you can set up recordings via the net or wap. And what is the problem with this? Well, the quirks of the new copyright law in Finland (passed in 2005) dictate that you can't transfer those recordings to your own storage, you can't "record" past programs (although they probably exist in the servers) etc. The ISP has to dance a pretty complicated routine around the limitations in the copyright law to be even able to offer any kind of service. Technically it would be possible to offer an experience that is vastly superior to the current situation, but legally it's not possible.

Anyway, all physical media are slowly in decline, but it will take a long time before the situation reverses from now. Even though you can get vastly more convenient services digitally, the flipside is the complexity of those services. And until the usability of those services equals or surpasses current alternatives, there won't be mainstream transition.

I'm pretty sure Blu-ray will stick around for quite awhile, as of today, in the United States full 1080p Blu-ray quality movie downloads are not practical, we're talking 25-35GB movie files, not only would that require an insane amount of bandwidth for the seller and the consumer, but it would require massive harddrive space.

I mean, I have 10GB of harddrive space left on my 500GB drive, and all my TV shows are in SD or below SD quality, and I have about 20 movies in 720p, the rest of my movies are DVD quality.

Harddrives may be becoming cheaper, but for HD downloads to become a realy competitor, you'd need mass adoption of Super fast internet, massive harddrives, and probably a substantial adoption of Wireless-N for family homes.

It's just not practical, and won't be for quite sometime. Not to mention movies aren't as enjoyable on computers, and your Apple TV/TIVO HD/ HD DVRs can only hold so much.

Blu-ray executives can go ahead and enjoy that champagne.

In fact, his research firm projects that in five years video on demand will account for 30 to 50 percent of movie rentals and sales via cable, satellite, telco or the Internet. "The majority of that marketplace will be high-definition fare," he said.

Wasn't that Mircosoft's original plan to dominate the digital world? Governments in Australia are already trying to push people to get broadband.

LMFAO


ohh god how delusional can you people be.

Digital anything wont be a threat for another few decades, mass public is just NOT ready to do away with physical media.

mp3s that are 192kbps are indistinguishable from cds (at least to most people).  However, mp3s have not killed off cds.  How many times do people have to make this argument?

As others have said:  the big thing about itunes and others is that you can download indivdual songs.  However, you don't get a booklet with that, nor do you get any other special features.  CDs are still around.  Oops, I made the argument again.

I agree we are years away from online distribution being used for purchases of full movies with special features.  Until then, it will just be competing with rentals.

In order for me to consider buying a movie online I would need several things: 

1.  1080p streaming

2.  special features

3.  movie stored on server with instant access from any location I can sign in from

The problem with that 3rd condition is no company can allow that because I could just share that account with other people.  Therefore I will be tied to whatever box I'm using (apple tv, tivo, comcast, etc).  That sucks.  I can't let people borrow the movie and I can't watch it in multiple rooms without networking or multiple boxes.  I also can't take those movies on a trip with me without location-free equipment.

However, let's say I just want 1080p streaming with all the special features available instantly at just 1 location.  Well, blu-ray bit rates can be quite high, and I'd need a broadband connection significantly faster (72Mb/s would require 9MB/s connection which is 9 times faster than I get).  That would only work with no connection interruption.

So yeah, I think it's pretty far off.  Online distribution only competes with video rental stores.  I look forward to trying Netflix's online rentals, but I will still buy movies.  Most people buy and rent movies.

really? and you know this through what? 

Accidental post, ignore

I'm not a BD hater, I'm a disc hater. BD is just DVD in higher quality.

As for "mp3s have not killed off cds"...they're not dead yet, but not feeling well. With vinyl in the end of it's life you could get the huge releases, but not much else. That will be the case with cds in a few years.

It's like you agree with everything I'm saying, but somehow manage to make it seem like we disagree.

CD and MP3 quality are nearly indistinguishable to most people? So... you agree it's a drop in audio quality? That there is no advancement in audio quality at all, but instead a (minor) drop? We agree on this then? Good.

And the iTunes example only further proves my point as well, doesn't it? Not having to purchase entire albums is another convenience. You can just buy single songs!

Add that to the list: you can buy single songs and not just albums, the players are smaller, they don't skip, and they hold significantly more songs without having to put in new data.

I think we're going to keep repeating the MP3 adoption because.. it absolutely proves the point so clearly that it shouldn't be forgotten. I'm sure Sony is glad to hear that CDs are still alive (Which they are, but declining as every format does as its gradually phased out), but Sony clearly isn't happy about the near-complete collapse of their Walkman empire. That huge mistake was likely the single largest reason that Stringer was brought to the helm. He's done an admirable job since then, but the damage to their music-player empire was already done. 

As others have said, you can't just buy a single song in a movie, so the advantage is lessened.  Itunes also has DRM that is annoying, which is why Universal, I believe, left them.

mp3s are the same quality as cds to most people, but movie downloads are not on par with blu-ray quality.

mp3s have been around for many many years, and yet cds are still around.  I said we agree that if streaming movies happens it will be 5 years as mentioned by that article above, and even then blu-ray will still be successful.

 On this point:  "Add that to the list: you can buy single songs and not just albums, the players are smaller, they don't skip, and they hold significantly more songs without having to put in new data."

Just to respond in order concerning the comparison with movies:  you won't buy single chapters of movies; the players are not smaller; blu-rays don't skip because they are unscratchable, but streaming movies can freeze and skip if your internet connection screws up (or cable connection); and you can hold more data when it is compressed but the quality of streaming is not 1080p.

I just don't think it will be any time soon that movie downloads are as good of an option as mp3s, and it will still be more of a rental thing.