@Godot - I think you can say every industry is threatened by piracy and theft. The movie industry is skeptical of digital distribution because of piracy concerns, that is why the movie libraries made available to digital distribution providers is of much lower quality than the libraries made available for pay per view, DVD, and Blu-ray. You cannot fit a full length movie encoded at near DVD quality in a 700 meg file. I know you can encode a movie at 700 megs but the quality of that encoding is substantially less then DVD quality.

you missed some keys to digital download, most people who have bradband, already use it for other thngs, so you cant really bundle in that cost. and satalite would eb fine, as long as your not streaming, wich is more just a rental anyway. storage will only increase, one of the rules is your need will increase based on avalible storage, so really no matter how much you get it will not be enough.

also where is this data getting curupted in transfer, most of these people will use the home console, or media center. and if not that a monitor with high definition.... honestly this point is moot because you need an hd tv anyway and a device to play it. 

as for no hard copy, I keep 2 back ups of all my stuff an hd back up done incramentally which all computer users should do (I know they dont) and a disc copy stored off site incase my home burns down. also the whole reason i went digital is someone broke in and stole my dvds, and cds.... nothing else just those it pissed me of and though  i was paid back the 2.5 grand that they stole i  went digita to protect my  investment. 

with disks you also have to worry about scratches, and rot.... disk rot sucks. 

something that must be very worrying to blueray is apple lack of support, with them being on the board of blueray and all and not pushing it. steve jobs speaking out saying blue ray is not something worth doing anything about... that hurts even more given his power at disney, there he could effect blueray rollout, and keep it minimal ... 

and your final point, your pushing blueray to sell ps3s, here we are talking about blueray having issues making something of itself in the future, not sales for players and tvs this christmas

I think most of this has to do with studios not giving up control enough with video, the poor quality of early down loads on larger screens, the limited selection (really  is it that hard to give us all of rocos modern life? its not on dvd even) 

the studios saw how much power that the music industry lost, and did not want a repeat even if it ment losing more money, though i think they are slowly coming around if the growth of the apple stores movie section is an indication

also itunes does not have a killer product for video it  will always be an also ran on the ipods ot music, and apple tv is only a modert succses they need to port itunes to xbox360, and ps3, they would make killer amounts of money. it would most likely hit the ps3 first with its more open nature, Ms wants the 360s video revenue to itself, which will only  hurt ms in the long run

I dunno why people ever bought into the Blu-Ray idea -- I see it as basically being the new Laser Disc.

Incremental improvements aren't going to radically shift an industry like this that already has such deep market penetration; most people aren't going to turn in their DVD collections for Blu-Rays for a moderate or even a good increase in graphical output or what have you.

As obvious as it was that Blu-Ray wasn't "replacing" DVD or anything like that, it was equally obvious that DVD was going to destroy VHS. It had everything over VHS: better graphics & sound; more space for features, etc.; more convenient storage; easier to manipulate discs than tape; less breakage; cheaper to mass produce. DVD's many advantages let it do things that VHS couldn't allow or sustain, like cheaply producing and storing television seasons, or a mail-order rental business.

Whatever takes out DVD will have to be similarly advantaged. I like digital distribution to eventually get the job done.

If your answer is "but it's too expensive/slow" that well may be. Right now, that is. But technology and prices change (usually the first up, the second down), and people will always want the convenience that comes with being able to click for something and have it magically appear in their homes. Companies simply have to figure out how to deliver this technology in a way that people will enjoy and afford, but once they do, that's how it'll go.

Till then, I expect people will continue buying their DVDs -- Blu-Ray is too expensive a transition for too minor an upgrade.

I think "worried" is too strong a word. After all, they can still release on DVD.

just a quick reply to those that comment that download speeds are too slow download movies. it's already been addressed and fixed...

http://www.foxdigitalcopy.com/

digital copies of your movie on a disk sold at retail. i'm not saying this is going to be an instant hit or anything but as far as i've seen this just popped up in the last couple of months and counts as yet another form of competition for blu ray.

Man, thats worded as if i wrote that...  recession talk I mean

Dish HD service has been upgraded (Turbo-HD) is now full 1080p.  Yes, it's not broadband Internet, but it does provide for HD downloads.  Sorry.

http://www.cnet.com/1990-7874_1-5108854-3.html?tag=hdtv;hdtv_l

DirecTV just went 1080p this week as well with their HD service.

They updated the HD boxes 2-3 weeks ago.