I completely agree with you. In fact, I have similar media streaming set up between my PC and my PS3/360. But that is a whole different ball game than the streaming media that we are comparing to Blu Ray here.

I take your point and the figures obviously back it up.

But downloading movies at the moment takes hours, at least in Ireland where I live.

Also the older generation myself included still hit the local video store most weekends.

So my original point been with your swanky HD TV sitting there BR would be a nice option to have on 360.

I would just like to see the option to get it on 360 and wouldnt take it as a comedown on anyones part.

Wait, so what BS did I buy into, then?  As I use the new Netflix HD streaming option and the quality is great for my 720p(1080i) HDTV.  Seriously, if you think streaming is a worse option than adding a pricey Blu-Ray addon, you're delusional.  Sure the quality is not up to the "elitist" 1080p 9.1 Surround Sound of Blu-Ray but for the price and the ease of use, it's a hell of a lot better option.  If I wanted, there are methods of using Windows Media Center and PlayON to do it on my PS3, but it's so much simpler to be integrated into the 360.  And since I own a PS3 anyways, a Blu-Ray addon would be a huge waste for me :p

Although, it could be the incentive I need to sell off my PS3 and become a single console man again!

But we don,t get netflix in Europe.

As in, no Netflix at ALL or just not via 360?  If you still have Netflix available, you can still access streaming via PlayOn and WMC.

If no Netflix at all, get a $150 (= whatever in euros) Blu-Ray player.

@nightsurge

Well, I don't know about your case but my own 20Mb per sec bandwidth is far from being stable at the max theoretical value, thus I only see an average of about 600KB per second dl. Thus it would take me something like 4 hours per movie, hardly "on a whim".

But let's say that your connection is enough for you, I see that you agree that it will take years for practical bandwidth to be available, and that's still being optimistic: for example here in Italy the most common broadband medium is ADSL through old phone lines, last time I checked less than 3% of broadband users had access to optic fiber, and there are still relevant parts of the territory that are not reached by any broadband tech. We are probably one of the worst cases in Europe, but I guess it will take 8-12 years to have enough infrastructure...

I don't think MS will release a BR reader add-on, but they painted themselves in a corner re the software medium. The DVD is showing its limits _right today_, and at the same time I'm sure we all know that they will want to repeat this gen's strategy: reach the market first and estabilish a foothold against Sony. I'm sure the next gen console is being designed right now, and will come in 2011-2012 with a BR reader, and all the talk about digital as the main mean of distribution will have to be pushed to next-next gen.

PS: in theory no Netflix outside US I think, but I'm sure  that with client software on the PC plus some proxy wizardry so that it looks like a national connection it might be possible. Once you're pulling a PC in, there are so many ways (legit and not) to get content and then stream it to your Xbox or PS3 locally... but the whole point was making it practical for the most of the userbase, though.

Edit: added the PS

I didnt know that was available.

I have stated earlier that I have a dvd player with my sound system plus 360 console plus PC tower so would like something small and sweet.

Sounds like FiOS must be doing something right, because I am rated at 20mbps, but constantly have about 21-23Mbps speeds. Downloads through good servers like Microsofts I see about 3-4MB (32Mb) every 3 seconds or so.

I definitely agree that digital distribution will wait at least another generation. Check out my thread on The Next Xbox. It's an interesting article by Extreme-Tech that pretty much matches my beliefs of what the next Xbox should have.