To think what Sony could do with all of the money that they threw at movies studios to get them to back Bluray instead of HDDVD.  Sony has always thought that buying their market was the better way to go....look at them now.

I really hope digital doesn't take over for 2 main reasons among others. Audio quality on Blu-ray even moreso than video quality DESTROYS streaming anything. Also, I like going to the mom and pop local store and renting movies and games. $2.50 per week for X1, PS4, PS3 games and blu-rays. Yes please.

I know, Vitro, I understand. But no way in hell I'm paying extra $5 for a better quality. It's fine, I'll live with it.

The other part about grandparents is also 100% correct. I have a friend that had his PS3 hooked up to his brand new expensive TV with those silly RGB cables. He didn't care. I brought him an HDMI cable. Came back a month later, cable was still untouched. He said it was too much hassle to unplug and plug cables and program TV channels again.

It's all about the money. People prefer PS4 over X1 because of better quality for less money. But if you have the choice of paying $30 for a high quality BD or paying nothing for a sub quality download...

Sorry, was posting a picture but it turned out of very low quality...

The irony...

A lot of times topics such as this lead to comaring apples to oranges.  I understand your point, but it isn't always that simple. If my wife and were pay full price for tickets and snacks at a concession stand at the movie theathers, that would easily total over $25.  But if I were to buy a Blu-ray of a movie for about the same price I would normally go to the theathers for instead of seeing it first hand at the theathers, I'd come out better because I can enjoy a movie at my own comfort at my own convenience while having the option of not having to pay again to see it because I own the physical copy of the best version available at the time.  And I am fortunate enough to have a very nice video and audio setup.  Again I understand, and you make a valid point.  But not all valid points apply to everyone.

I have that one, looks gorgeous at 92" and that's one of the lesser looking blu-ray releases. It only scores 3.2/5 for picture quality on blu-ray.com, only so much you can do with an old 35mm print. Compare with 2001 made from a 70mm print, could not believe how much better that looked than the dvd version. Most older movies are worth the upgrade. I recently imported princess mononoke on blu-ray. I have watched the dvd at least 15 times, and in the blu-ray version I immediately noticed the extra detail and the lack of compression artifacts. Plus the sound was a big improvement as well.

Most HD streaming doesn't get you much more than upscaled DVD quality. Sure it's nice when nothing is moving, when the action starts it becomes a blurry mess that doesn't look much better than dvd.

I still have over 400 dvds, still watch them too, but the quality difference is indeed huge. You can upscale 720x480 all you want, you're still stuck with a bit starved mpeg2 encode running 5mbps. The amount of compression edge noise is very distracting. Add in chroma subsampling that quarters the color resolution, which is ok for a 1080p stream, yet upscaling 360x240 color info is just plain ugly.

The switch to digital cinema hasn't done blu-ray any favors either. Early digital movies don't look all that great. Lotr's 2K master is very soft, definitely not reference material. Nowadays the quality has gone up leaps and bounds. Better encoders, 4K masters, new blu-ray releases generally look stunning.

But developers rarely use 50GB space anyway, surely there is other cheap alternative to Blu Ray that won't let quality suffer?

Consumers changed over time.. Average joe doesn't need to own a movie anymore.. They watch it 1 time and are fine with that.. Price and quality for dvd and streaming is prefectly suited for that.. And with streaming it adds the advantage of no need to have space to store them.. There is no need for them to have an infinite playable superior picture and sound version lying around in the living room when you watch it 1 time... It doesn't change the story of the movie

Sony better hope that Xb one (and Wii U) is more successful than it currently is. One of the few ways to keep physical disc manufacturing afloat is as big a 8th gen console install base as possible. While buying digital on consoles is becoming a much bigger thing there are still a lot of disc sales to be had if the install base is big enough.