Quote:
Originally Posted by
hmurchison 
What you all propose we do is simply accept 20th century ideology. Buy a playback device for every room in the home...hope there is a portable version. What is 21st century is the ability to play content across multiple devices and network this content easily. I have little hope that Blu-ray will be able to meet this challenge given the DRM pileup. It may not be important to you but as people begin to look at the many video capable devices they own they're going to naturally gravitate towards the solution that provides the most convenience and
that is where he studios will be forced to go.
Are you telling me you have a way to stream DRM-free, completely legal high definition digital downloads to every room in your home
without the need for any kind of playback device? Please, tell me what streaming service it is you're using that works on all of the televisions in your house without the need to purchase any additional hardware. And this DRM-free format magically works on your PS3, iPod, and the television in your basement without any kind of set top box connected to it? That's
amazing! No wait, it's completely fictional.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
hmurchison
Based on what? Look at Broadband penetration today versus 5 years ago. Look at computing power and how we have 8 core computers now. In 2003, just 6 years ago. iTunes 4 was announced with the store. Since then Apple has become one of the largest media resellers. I don't know how anyone could state that in 5 years that downloads will be anything like they are today. We'll be on a nextgen codec that delivers today's quality or better at half the datarate.
I realize that some of you have crappy broadband but that's not the norm for city folk. You'll be playing your Blu-ray discs and watching forced trailers and much of the populace will be watching their movies on multiple devices in great quality.
Again, apart from the technical hurdles of streaming 25-40GB movies into people's homes (and the hidden expense that accompanies such bandwidth requirements), the bigger hurdle is the movie studio's distribution model that does not allow for ANYONE to build an endless library of streaming movies. There's no way the movie studios are going to put themselves in the same position as the record companies did, where Apple now dominates the digital market. They'll continue to severely limit who gets what movies, how long they get it, and if they can get it at all. If a one-stop-shop for high-quality movie downloads can't be built, it's not going to replace discs.
As Morpheus says, you're living in a dreamworld, Neo. The world of purchasable digital movie downloads looks absolutely nothing like how you describe it; the selection is severely limited (Apple has 71 movies available for HD purchase), the quality's unacceptable given the price, it requires a proprietary hardware device (what happens when Apple discontinues the Apple TV due to piss-poor sales?), and content cannot be shared with anyone else in the world let alone the other electronic devices in your home (iPod, game console, etc). Blu-Ray may have DRM restrictions, but there are millions upon millions of players and computers in the world that can play any disc I buy; that means I can take my movies to a friends house, I can buy a new player if mine breaks, and I'm not relying on a single proprietary device that if discontinued would leave me with no way to play my purchased content. This idea of a vast library of DRM-free HD downloads that can play on any device you own and without having to purchase some kind of playback device is completely delusional.
