[squiggleslash (Unverified) Posted Jan 3rd 2009 8:08AM]

They're getting cheaper. They seem to double in capacity for the same price every four to six months or so. This time last year my wife bought a "cheap" 8Gb card for about $70-80. Right now an 8Gb costs $15, and a 16Gb (twice the capacity) card costs around $25 (about a third of the price of that year old 8Gb card.)

What Toshiba is banking on is that long term SD will be cheap enough that you'll be able to buy, say, a 128Gb card for around $10, and then just load it up with movies either at a kiosk or using some kind of Hollywood approved secure software at home. SD has DRM mechanisms (CPRM) built in, and it's somewhat more robust (to put it mildly) than optical media, and you could add a reader to most modern HDTVs for around $1 - and wouldn't increase the dimensions of the TV.

So if it wasn't for the high cost of the cards it would make a lot of sense to distribute movies on the format. That's pretty much the only aspect of the technology that's stopping it from being popular, and it does appear that time will fix that.

Murph should stop being an ass. This is potentially a very exciting technology that could do a great deal to bring HD to the masses in a way that satisfies everyone. While the media may be expensive, the hardware isn't, this kind of thing can be used to bring about sub-$50 portable movie players. It means future TVs can (and will) have players built in alleviating the need for a separate player. It means small laptops will be able to play movies (removing the optical drive from smaller laptops, even premium laptops, is fairly common these days), and do so with amazing energy efficiency.

There is no downside, except that in 2009 the media is just a little bit pricy.