You're spot-on with this, Buck-eye.
I've been following the development of downloadable media for many years, both audio and video, and have written articles on the subject as well.
It's so funny to hear naysayers rip on Blu-ray and HD-DVD by saying, "Next year, we'll all be downloading our movies anyways, so who wants to buy physical media anymore?"
The truth is that for any delivery method to succeed (whether it be physical or digital) you must have the proper packaging that allows it to be transferred safely, quickly, and cheaply. You cannot have just 1 or 2 of those 3 factors and expect it to succeed in the mass market. Imagine if every time UPS delivered something to your door, you only got 70% of your box, or it took 8 days to deliver something "overnight", or the box was so big it wouldn't fit through your doorway.
These are the problems plaguing movie downloads. Some cable services are starting to offer HD downloads, as well as Xbox Live, but just because it says "HD" doesn't mean the content isn't rife with artifacts, compression and a crappy audio track. I'm sorry, but if I want to watch a movie in hi-def, it damn well better be the highest quality PQ and AQ available. Anything else is an insult to me and the money I spent on my HDTV.
Nevermind the ridiculous time it takes to download said movie. Imagine trying to download 300 in 1080p with an HD audio track? It would take the average user 3-5 DAYS to complete it. My time is more valuable than that. (Music downloads succeed because it's near-instant gratification and loads of impulse buys. Not possible with movies. At the 36 hour mark, I'd be having some serious buyer's remorse!)
Then answer the question of where you would store it, because at those transfer speeds, no one is gonna want to download the same movie twice. If you had a 1.5 TB storage device, you could only have a library of around 30-50 movies, which it took you a collective 4-6 months of non-stop downloading to get. Do you think the average household has a Dell Blade or an Apple Xserve with a 2TB RAID just lying around? And if a drive fails... yikes.
Do I think downloaded media will eventually overtake physical media? Of course. But I (1) think that time is still at least a decade away, and (2) believe that physical media won't be 100% replaced, it'll just be less common. We've had streaming media online for over 10 years now, and it really hasn't improved at the same pace as other technologies, despite its prevalence.
|