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Originally Posted by Andrew H.
This is as true now as it was in 1960. The big question, though, is when.
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I've made my prediction.
In the 60s the question was "in what decade or century will we have the technology?"
Now, it's "in what month or year will consumers make the choice?"
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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.
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You can already stream the same res as bluray in about 5mps of bandwith with better compression (like the HDX system of Vudu.com.) Of course 'resolution' is not the be-all-and-end-all of image quality, but the reports online seem to indicate that people who use those 1080p streams are currently happy with them. They will only get better.
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And of course a lot of users just have 768 kbit/s "broadband."
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A lot of people don't have bluray, or HDTVs too. We are predicting the future, not talking about the standards today.
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These issues are going to slow the adoption of purely downloaded media.
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Download and streaming media is speeding up and set to pass physical forms imminently. Netflix is working toward being a streaming business, Redbox said they know they are an interim solution, Amazon and others are combining digital and physical media sales into one purchase, and how many new video rental stores, or even CD stores, have you seem opening recently?
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But I don't know for how long.
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Place your bets, people.
The physical medium of paper books hold a special sort of value in many cases, so that's a little different. People like touching a book and looking at it and turning the pages. No one I know fondles optical disks, they just want the content on it.
ApK