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Originally Posted by ApK
It is. All physical A/V media distribution is doomed.
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This is as true now as it was in 1960. The big question, though, is when.
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There is no need for any one to manufacture, pack, and ship a million plastic disks when the same content can be streamed directly to the customer on demand.
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The "same" content can't really be conveniently streamed yet. The same film can be streamed, with similar, but lower, resolution.
Maybe that will be good enough, though.
A related issue, of course, is bandwidth. I have a 20 mbit/s download speed, which is respectable for the US - it's probably significantly faster than 90%+ of American residential users have. Yet - unless my math is way off - it would take me more than five hours to download a Blu-Ray disk. And that's assuming that there are no bandwidth caps and the connection stays good.
And of course a lot of users just have 768 kbit/s "broadband."
These issues are going to slow the adoption of purely downloaded media.
But I don't know for how long.