Sensible approach from Tosh
"Until they offer High-def, full 7.1 DTS, downloads of BRAND NEW CINEMA releases, i'm not the slightest bit interested."
Whilst not there yet, I am certain this will occur and not that long away. Though personally I find most brand new cinema releases today to be utter drivel, but anyway ;-)
The SD delivery will be an intermediate method I expect, whilst the high street store still exists. It could also be paired up with a downloader box at home also which could just be set to queue up a load of downloads overnight, and you have a media card ready to go stuffed with films.
Broadband speeds are constantly moaned about and deemed the reason for the download option to fail. However, look at how much the net has sped up in 10 years, and note the heavy push by governments and industry to role out super-speed broadband.
Next year ADSL2+ is being heavily pushed by various ISPs, and this is another intermediate stage with faster still speeds on their way. Come 5 years, speeds will be up to the job, certainly by 10 years.
Thing is there's an impression that it has to be streamed and on-demand to work as no one wants to wait for a download, and yet almost everyone is prepared to wait for a DVD to be delivered or take a trip to the store.
Anyway, frankly I'm probably not going to buy into Blu-Ray now. Got my fill of cheap HD with HD DVD, cheers Sony! :-), but I see Blu-Ray now as being no more than another Laserdisc. Why buy two formats that will be defunct in 5 years time? I may as well cut my losses with one defunct format (at least it was cheap).
I will wait for the replacement. Be it downloads, flash media, or another optical format.
Oh, and yeah with downloads, those in the back of beyond will be screwed. Yep, well that's what you get for living in the back of beyond (which I learnt when I did live there, hence why I moved into civilisation!). But still. Sure there will be decent delivery methods available. e.g. a data feed by satellite of all the latest movies.