Blu-ray/HD DVD vs Downloads

[Poggy]

Is it just me?

What is all this rubbish that people (e.g. Bill Watkins, CEO of Seagate Technology and Bill Gates) keep saying about 'the war' having been won by downloads rather than physical media. At CES Bill Watkins is quoted as saying ""People are saying ... The war is over physical distribution versus electrical distribution, and Blu-ray and HD lost that."

Clearly he has a slightly biased view on this but how many films have people in the world so far bought by downloading them. I don't have the patience for my so called broadband to download HD film trailers, let alone full dvd or dare i say it HD quality films. And then, what do i do with them, do i store them on a PS3 (60gig max at the moment in UK), external hard drive that connects into it or on my PC. How many people who have either bought PS3s/XBoxes or PCs actually plug some kind of mass storage device into them to watch films from. Ok so i realise there are some other ways of doing it but compared to the number of people in the world that actually watch films - the percentage of those that currently download as opposed to buy discs must be miniscule.

I also realise that music downloads took a while to catch on but quite frankly, MP3 is not suitable quality for Hifi listening - i can't listen to a CD played using the PS3 through my Hifi (my dedicated cd player is worlds apart) let alone listen to some kind of further compressed form.

What i'm tryig to allude to is this: Downloads may very well become a greater reality in the future but it's certainly not yet to the extent that the big CEOs want us to believe and i am of the personal opinion that the disc forms of media distribution have quite significant life left in them yet.

[oxygenuk]

like you said, its the future that will happen, most things eventually will be like that, cd singles aint sold everywhere anymore due to mp3 downloads i think

should happen with dvds / blu ray in the future too i imagine

[Goooner]

I prefer to have the physical disc rather than downloads. It's different with music, quality isn't so important, to me anyway, I'd rather have all my MP3s on my Zen, which I can carry around with me and listen to, normally in the background while I'm doing something else.

It's going to be a good few years yet until we can get fast enough broadband to be able to watch a movie as and when we want, without having to plan ages in advance to allow for the download, and what happens if it's corrupted when you get it? You have to start all over again! ISPs are going to have to be a bit more realistic with tehir download limits too. How many Blu Ray/HD DVD size downloads are you going to be able to get, before you're limited to dial-up speed for exceeding you limit