If you are talking Renting, then I think the only thing holding it back will be the state of Broadband in the United States. I think you need at least 12-16mbits / second to provide a kind of instant-start experience you can get off of say On-Demand or you will need more advanced compression techniques than AVC where you can get these files down to about 5GB total for a 1280x720p/24 with 5.1 sound at 2 hours and not too much compression. Also with all but Verizon announcing that they are looking at caps on broadband, that will also limit some of the uptake on downloaded rentals.
If you are talking buying, besides the broadband limitations listed above. I need to have someway of backing up and/or a way of making a disc readable on a standard Blu-Ray player (BD-5 and BD-9 or BD-25 and BD-50 if I have a BD burner). There is no way, I am going to purchase a movie via a download service if it is depending on the reliability of a hard drive in either a computer, game console, or dedicated device like an Apple TV. It's a deal breaker even if the service allows me to re-download in the event of a failure, a moderately sized collection (50 to 100 movies) could easily take up 500GB to 1TB and it would literally takes days or weeks to re-download. And if Caps are common, you could literally take up 4 months (at Comcast's 250GB Cap) if you did nothing else but download your movies back...or you one have one hell of an overage bill.
Here is what I see in 2012.
Blu-Ray is the reference format for HD movies (What I would use for the movies I really like and want the best possible copy of).
Downloads would be for either rentals or for lesser titles that I don't necessarily want to pay full price for but would not mind having at the right price (say $9.99) as long as it was at least 720p/24 at 5.1 Dolby Digital.
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I have to agree that There Will Be Blood was awful. I would have only given it a 3.
If you guys think 2012 is a good time frame for Blu-Ray to pass DVD, don't you think digital downloads, SD and HD combined, will pass both by then?
Depends.
Are you talking renting or buying?
If you are talking Renting, then I think the only thing holding it back will be the state of Broadband in the United States. I think you need at least 12-16mbits / second to provide a kind of instant-start experience you can get off of say On-Demand or you will need more advanced compression techniques than AVC where you can get these files down to about 5GB total for a 1280x720p/24 with 5.1 sound at 2 hours and not too much compression. Also with all but Verizon announcing that they are looking at caps on broadband, that will also limit some of the uptake on downloaded rentals.
If you are talking buying, besides the broadband limitations listed above. I need to have someway of backing up and/or a way of making a disc readable on a standard Blu-Ray player (BD-5 and BD-9 or BD-25 and BD-50 if I have a BD burner). There is no way, I am going to purchase a movie via a download service if it is depending on the reliability of a hard drive in either a computer, game console, or dedicated device like an Apple TV. It's a deal breaker even if the service allows me to re-download in the event of a failure, a moderately sized collection (50 to 100 movies) could easily take up 500GB to 1TB and it would literally takes days or weeks to re-download. And if Caps are common, you could literally take up 4 months (at Comcast's 250GB Cap) if you did nothing else but download your movies back...or you one have one hell of an overage bill.
Here is what I see in 2012.
Blu-Ray is the reference format for HD movies (What I would use for the movies I really like and want the best possible copy of).
Downloads would be for either rentals or for lesser titles that I don't necessarily want to pay full price for but would not mind having at the right price (say $9.99) as long as it was at least 720p/24 at 5.1 Dolby Digital.