A few week ago I saw an article about Netflix teaming up with LG to produce a HD Disc player(I think it was Blu-Ray)/Netflix HD Streaming Combo. I did a little more looking on the Netflix deal and it looks like they have started working with multiple companies. I know they have been working with Tivo.

Anyways, my question is here in the United States where broadband internet is growing rapidly do you see us going to streaming or downloading movies? And if so will that replace hard disk copies for you?

My personal thought about how Netflix is going about this is good. They are going to allow people that use the Netflix service to use this service if you have the hardware at no extra cost. Sounds good to me! Who needs hard disks anyways when you have a full library of films to grab though a service like this?

I hope you aren't implying we should want a new video standard falling between DVD and OTA-HD in quality.

If not, just keep reminding yourself that good HD wants an awful lot of bandwidth, and HDM starts out with much better compression algorithms than a DVD uses.

I'm glad I won't have to hear about hddvd much anymore soon.. But damn, this downloading talk is already OLD.

I'd rather see a seperate forum area setup for it, and let that languish than it polluting the media areas.

Well overall I can say goodbye to my favorite French movies like Taxi, Taxi 2, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Irréversible, Dobermann and quite a few others since region coding will enforced again if Blu-Ray wins.

No more cheap region-free units like we had with DVDs. Sigh.

As I said, Warner decision did a HUGE disservice to movie lovers.

Downloadable HDM has even more issues trying to get off the ground than blu/hd-dvd. The country is so large land wise it is just going to take decades to get the fibre to enough homes for something like that. Look at the countrys with superspeed internet. They are tiny for the most part. Hell many can't even get broadband outside wild blue. My area just got high speed 2 years ago and that is only 1.5 meg.

The future of movies is IMO going to be like the 80-90s. You will have 2 different formats to cater to different people. You will have DVD for the masses especially families with younger kids and blu for the HD-tv enthusists. Maybe in 10 or 15 years over time people will have replaced all their DVD players with 50 dollar blu players 100 dollar blue portable players making it feasable for a family to go blu.

The mistake that will cause blu to be a more popular LD is not being a twin disc that will work on DVD players. People are so far entrenched in DVD with players in the bedrooms, cars portable units ect. It makes no sense to go blu and spend 30 bucks on a movie they can't take in the mini van. People have to remember when DVD took over for VHS people still primarly watched movies in the living room. DVD changed all that when players got to 30 dollars and portable units got sub 100 dollars. People watch movies all over the place these days it is just not replacing 1 or 2 players it is replacing a 3-5 players including those hard to replace portable units in the mini-van. It is just like in music. MP3s have changed the game there will never be another mass market optical music disc after CD.

The mistake that will cause blu to be a more popular LD is not being a twin disc that will work on DVD players. People are so far entrenched in DVD with players in the bedrooms, cars portable units ect. It makes no sense to go blu and spend 30 bucks on a movie they can't take in the mini van. People have to remember when DVD took over for VHS people still primarly watched movies in the living room. DVD changed all that when players got to 30 dollars and portable units got sub 100 dollars. People watch movies all over the place these days it is just not replacing 1 or 2 players it is replacing a 3-5 players including those hard to replace portable units in the mini-van. It is just like in music. MP3s have changed the game there will never be another mass market optical music disc after CD.

valid points and the reason why HD DVD is/was the best mainstream format.

Downloadable HDM has even more issues trying to get off the ground than blu/hd-dvd. The country is so large land wise it is just going to take decades to get the fibre to enough homes for something like that. Look at the countrys with superspeed internet. They are tiny for the most part. Hell many can't even get broadband outside wild blue. My area just got high speed 2 years ago and that is only 1.5 meg.
Downloadable? I agree, it will remain small for sometime..........though given the progress of technology who knows. The real killer will be VoD - what % have cable in their houses? If they change the laws & open up the access (like they did with the phone lines).............??????????

Is it "HD-Lite"? Yep. Does the consumer care? Nope, looks fine to them.

Downloadable HDM has even more issues trying to get off the ground than blu/hd-dvd. The country is so large land wise it is just going to take decades to get the fibre to enough homes for something like that. Look at the countrys with superspeed internet. They are tiny for the most part. Hell many can't even get broadband outside wild blue. My area just got high speed 2 years ago and that is only 1.5 meg.

The future of movies is IMO going to be like the 80-90s. You will have 2 different formats to cater to different people. You will have DVD for the masses especially families with younger kids and blu for the HD-tv enthusists. Maybe in 10 or 15 years over time people will have replaced all their DVD players with 50 dollar blu players 100 dollar blue portable players making it feasable for a family to go blu.

The mistake that will cause blu to be a more popular LD is not being a twin disc that will work on DVD players. People are so far entrenched in DVD with players in the bedrooms, cars portable units ect. It makes no sense to go blu and spend 30 bucks on a movie they can't take in the mini van. People have to remember when DVD took over for VHS people still primarly watched movies in the living room. DVD changed all that when players got to 30 dollars and portable units got sub 100 dollars. People watch movies all over the place these days it is just not replacing 1 or 2 players it is replacing a 3-5 players including those hard to replace portable units in the mini-van. It is just like in music. MP3s have changed the game there will never be another mass market optical music disc after CD.

People in cities and locations right out side cities usually have good bandwidth. Also most people live in cities I would think, within the "broadband areas". With Cox Cable I currently have 14mb down a sec. That is good enough for HD movie streaming. I believe services in other cities are better than that. I have heard that some are in the 20+ range.

Would you rather have all of your DVDs on a bookshelf and every time you want to watch one you would have to go pick one out and put it in a player...or would you rather have all your media on a media server? A media server that allows you to browse cover art, lists actors and descriptions of the movie, etc, all from your remote.

HD downloads will be like the media server.

Would you rather have all of your DVDs on a bookshelf and every time you want to watch one you would have to go pick one out and put it in a player...or would you rather have all your media on a media server? A media server that allows you to browse cover art, lists actors and descriptions of the movie, etc, all from your remote.

HD downloads will be like the media server.

Yep, a giant media server with every movie netflix has. :D Either way, we need to get away from DVD.

Downloadable HDM has even more issues trying to get off the ground than blu/hd-dvd. The country is so large land wise it is just going to take decades to get the fibre to enough homes for something like that. Look at the countrys with superspeed internet. They are tiny for the most part. Hell many can't even get broadband outside wild blue. My area just got high speed 2 years ago and that is only 1.5 meg.

Check this out
Published: May 08, 2007 - 11:37PM CT:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070508-160mbps-downloads-move-closer-for-us-cable-customers.html

One highlight:Comcast plans to demo DOCSIS 3.0 at The Cable Show this week and, more importantly, plans to begin DOCSIS 3.0 trials later this year, according to Cable Digital News. Large-scale DOCSIS 3.0 deployments are unlikely to begin until next year, and a November 2006 report estimated that only 40 percent of the cable modems in use will support the technology by 2011—by that time, FiOS will be available to well over 18 million households in the US. Still, it's encouraging to see one of those "three-to-five-years-away" technologies poised to finally hit the market.

FiOS will have 18 million subscribers in 2011 - 3 years. How many millions of subscribers does Comcast alone have? Cable already has the pipes to your home, they just need a little better infrastructure and a clever means of packing the data and buffering the content.

They didn't even mention the Sat providers who are also agressively working on HD solutions.

I love the experience I get from HD DVD and Blu-ray, but I'm not going to put my hands over my ears, close my eyes and start humming and pretend optical HD is a long term format to the likes of DVD. It's a stop gap until VOD rentals and purchases are really humming along.

If HD-DVD can't win, nobody deserves high quality high-definition video and sound.

We need to move backwards to low-bit-rate compressed HD over cable with no special features, low-bit-rate basic surround sound, DRM, limited portability, high-cost, and limited storage.

Less is more. The future is lower quality HDM for everyone.

more bandwidth = more piracy

How do legitimate download services expect to compete with file-sharing, when they produce the same end product: a file on a hard disk. Piracy is becoming the mainstream delivery method of the future, everything else will be the niche.

more bandwidth = more piracy

How do legitimate download services expect to compete with file-sharing, when they produce the same end product: a file on a hard disk. Piracy is becoming the mainstream delivery method of the future, everything else will be the niche.

The way I read is that the VOD service through Netflix will be streaming. So you will get on the hardware, search for any movie you want to watch. Click, then it will stream to the box and download for easy rewind ect.. Then as soon as your done, delete.

smell-o-vision in movies...the future. Then we all have to upgrade and add a scent receiver that takes a digital signal and converts it to release gases to create different smells :D

The mistake that will cause blu to be a more popular LD is not being a twin disc that will work on DVD players. People are so far entrenched in DVD with players in the bedrooms, cars portable units ect. It makes no sense to go blu and spend 30 bucks on a movie they can't take in the mini van. People have to remember when DVD took over for VHS people still primarly watched movies in the living room. DVD changed all that when players got to 30 dollars and portable units got sub 100 dollars. People watch movies all over the place these days it is just not replacing 1 or 2 players it is replacing a 3-5 players including those hard to replace portable units in the mini-van. It is just like in music. MP3s have changed the game there will never be another mass market optical music disc after CD.

Yep, I've been saying this for a while. Also throw in the ability to make extra copies, albiet not legal, then the only conclusion I can make is that DVD will remain the mainstream format for a long time.

If HD-DVD can't win, nobody deserves high quality high-definition video and sound.

We need to move backwards to low-bit-rate compressed HD over cable with no special features, low-bit-rate basic surround sound, DRM, limited portability, high-cost, and limited storage.

Less is more. The future is lower quality HDM for everyone.

And that sums it up perfectly.