Can Blu-Ray Beat, HD-DVD, DVD, and Streaming 1080p Internet?

DVD's don't have anywhere near enough capacity for HD video and audio. That is why we have HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

The HD download issue has been discussed to death. The long and short of it is, because of bandwidth limitations downloaded content needs to be at a much lower quality than you would see on media. This might be ok for some people, but is definitely not ok for many others, particularly those with high-end setups. You don't drop $5K+ in a home theatre to play low bitrate downloaded HD movies on them. The only promising product I've seen in the HD download market is XStreamHD, which is essentially like a digital netflix. You queue up movies and it hogs up all your unused bandwidth for the hours/days it takes, and a movie appears on its local storage every now and then with high bitrate video and lossless audio (same as HD-DVD, Blu-Ray). It's still a ways off though, and unproven.

Streaming 1080p will happen, but not be mass accepted for many years. That doesn't mean geeks like us aren't doing it today, but it's not a viable business plan yet. I remember the first time I logged on to CompuServe in 1986 - I thought EVERYONE would be doing it within a year (I didn't even know I was 10 years late to THAT party). 10 years later my predictions proved correct - but obviously 9 years off target. Same goes for using a computer to watch TV/Movies. Until Windows can let Junior plug his MP3 player and download music WHILE Mom & Dad watch a high def movie without knowing he's in the room, it will be a while for the masses to accept the technology.

Streaming 1080p downloads are find for some, but unless our internet connections become fast enough to be able to match the p/q of BD at a high bitrate and I will not be using the internet for any of my movie watching/purchasing.

Disc based media is where it is at for me. It's not like I read any books online, I buy a book, read it and put it on my bookshelf.

Can this be moved tot he correct forum?

Digital downloads will happen, but the bandwidth isn't going to appear without beefing up basic infrastructure (to some extent we've been coasting on the massive overbuilding that happened during the dot-com bubble). And the DRM issues will make RIAA's war on MP3's look like child's play. So in the meantime there is a fair amount of money to be made in sales of physical media.

But first, the market has to be grown. The format war was just one roadblock. The price of players has to come down. Blu-ray's success slows this down vs HD-DVD -- it is more expensive, for sound technical reasons, to build Blu-ray players and produce Blu-ray discs. But even more important, people need to upgrade their TV's to the point where the advantage over SD DVD's becomes visible to all. This will happen a lot more slowly than we'd like. SD DVD's look plenty good to most folks right now, but over the next few years I think perceptions will change as higher-definition images become the norm on computer screens and newer TV's, HD camcorders get as cheap as SD camcorders are now (it was just a few years ago when a decent SD camcorder cost what HD camcorders cost today), and so on.

However, I'd bet on a fairly long life for disc media from the time HD starts to achieve mass market penetration and before next-generation broadband is deployed widely enough to supplant it with digital downloads.

OT: What is up with people spelling fine "find"? You're the FOURTH person I've seen do that in the past week on this forum alone.

i def don't see downloads as a threat to hd media at all. media is seen as a collectible by a majority of the consumers. i work retail and know that many people pride themselves on the collection they have gathered whether its all about quantity or quality. there is nothing "collectible" about a hard drive full of media. don't kid yourselves, even gates knows this...

So far as media downloads go, the bandwidth isn't there and won't be there for quite some time. Also, there's still a large number of people not even on dial up let alone paying $60 a month for broadband. Then you add the outrageous cost to "rent" or "buy" a movie you download. Yeah sure. I've got access to downloadable films already, Tivo Unbox, and it's a no go. The limits are ridiculous and they just don't fit in with my lifestyle. If I start a film I rent I want to be able to watch it the next day if for some reason I get interupted. Tivo unbox gives you 24 hours once you start watching a movie you rent. Quality of picture is not impressive and download times stink. I'm never going to buy a movie from Unbox either, not portable and some movies you "buy" actually expire in a year.

I really don't care so much about media, but I do want to be able to buy a movie and watch a movie as many times as I like. How does this work with downloads? Can you own a download?

You can "own" a video and still lose the rights to player it (see google video fiasco). I still want physical media... at least for the next 3 to 5 years.