Digital Distribution is going to be the way of the future, that's for sure. The question is when? Will it be within 5 years? 10? or more?

What digital distribution really needs to take off is a Portable Movie player (500gb min), lasts 15 hours at the least AND can be plugged into ANY HD tv (or TV for that matter) and play the movie in DVD, DVD Upscalled or HD quality on that TV...

They would then need to offer the movie in multi-formats: DVD or HD, Eglish or french, 5.1 or 7.1, subtitles, extra contect or just the movie ... and so on so forth.

Currently, DVD quality movies can be downloaded at well under 2GB with NO video degradation. (those 700Mb movies to fit on CD loose quality)...

HD movies are as low as 2GB with some degridation (still HD though) and 4 Gb for a standard movie with minimul to no degridation... I would say 6Gb would be optimum to have virtually full quality (Not including the extra content, just the movie), Even for a 60" screen.

ATM for me to download a 6 GB movie would take a little over an hour and a half. This is in Australia and is virtually becoming the standard speed for all metropolitan area's.

NOW, if they took advantage of the Peer to peer network, they could save on bandwidth. What I mean is, if they had their own Private peer to peer servers/program, sold a movie and the person who downloads it keeps his connection sharing and when they sell that same movie, the first person helps to upload to the second person, then they offer the first person a $x amount discount for helping with bandwidth. Of course it would need to be done on a larger scale and the saving would not be all that much but I recon it wold be a Viable thing for people to want to share. And a leagal way too. As long as the movies downloaded are locked and can not be used on another player... somehow...

Anyway, that's enough of me.

Regarding this thread, there's a lot more to picture quality than resolution. Just FYI.

Yeah... bit-rate discussions could drag this on for at least another 100 posts.

true, though none of these resolutions or bit-rates hold a candle to the original film quality, they can be graduated to each new level of digital output, where 1080p recored movies will always be 1080p

You just hit on a VERY interesting point.  Unlike traditional distribution optical media, magnetic/solid-state media isn't a "fixed" asset, i.e. - the content can be moved from storage device to storage device.  This means I can move today's HD video files to new storage assets in the future, store them together with better/higher-quality video files, and the only "media" loss is retirement of the older drive.

Contrast this with upgrading a large DVD collection to Blu-ray... dozens or hundreds of old discs have to be "retired" instead of simply replacing older-format video files with newer, higher-quality video files.

Yeah, I like my optical movie storage, but a massive multi-terabyte movie jukebox would be very compelling.  Making the tech drop-dead simple like inserting an optical disc will be important if that tech is every to compete with Blu-ray head-on.

 part of my point though is the original footage is what determines what output resolutions you can get. movies such as lord of the rings will never be higher in resolution then 1080p, where say any film on 32mm will be upscaled for years to future formats/codecs.

I will say dvd is fairly easy to rip if you want to add it to your magnetic library. there are actually 400 disc holder that can automate it for you, though it takes alot of time.

blue ray is also an attempt to keep people from moving formats, there is nothing more profitable for these people then keeping you from moving a copy of something you own, making you buy a new one

I don't know elsewhere, but here in Italy Disney BD movies and the now presented 007 on BD collection, together with lower players' prices and other big movies, should be enough to mitigate crisis effects on BD a lot.
Moreover, last Xmas BD marketing was puny, now is quite strong.

Well, though I agree with what is said, from the other side, up to now; there are multiple reasons behind this.  Im not saying I 100% agree with either side but i do see each view.  It basically boils down to a war against piracy.  You can say its bull all you want, but it cuts into their profits and they are in the business to make profit.  You do not technically own a movie you purchase.  You own a small round disc or a string of binary numbers which gives you permission to view the material that said producer has published.  It's not so much they are forcing you onto a single format to keep you on that format, they are forcing a format because they are trying to narrow it down the number of formats to track.  We probably pay a 100% premium for movies and games these days solely for businesses to make up for lost profits from piracy.  Greed vs. Greed, who wins?

I feel as if this post might derail the thread, but fighting piracy is a legit issue that none of us truely like.

Basically The Dark Knight release on BD is going to be one of the key deciding factors.  It is partially the reason for a somewhat early release.  If it is a strong holiday for blu-ray products in general, we could see prices fall within 25% of dvd prices in the next year.

My girlfriend, LunaAutumn, told me that Playboy is going the way for digital downloads instead of producing DVDs now due to a decrease in sales because of the hardcore porn industry, but meh...I'd rather take a digital download of a Playboy video than an actual DVD, as you can customize and organize them.

But anyways, on topic, I don't blame movie execs to worry about Blu-Ray sales. I mean, I really would like to own the Planet Earth Blu-Ray DVDs because they outdo what the regulars can hold. The Blu-Ray versions have 500 minutes while the DVD versions have 150 minutes. That's a huge difference. But...some stores have really overcharged the prices of the movies. It's so ridiculous. I would love to watch some concert Blu-Ray DVDs...please...lol