Blu Ray destroyed by downloads?

[Antirock]

I listen to a lot of tech podcasts like TWiT and Buzz Out Loud. Whenever Blu Ray comes up as a topic of discussion the usual comments I hear suggest Blu Ray was a dead in the water format. That within a few years everyone will be switching to online downloads and Blu Ray will be dead. Has anyone else heard of this??? How does everyone feel about that?

There are a few reasons why I think this is not going to happen:

First, the movie/music industry has not figured out how to offer online services in an easy and convenient way. iTunes has probably come the closest to offering decent looking video in their store. Still in order to get that picture on your television you either have to get an AppleTv or transfer to a different codec and if you have a PS3 you can stream it (with 3rd party software if you are on a Mac.) Which brings us to...

DRM! I don't want to have to go to 4 different services and own 4 different media boxes in order to stream or sync all of my favorite movies. They need to drop DRM all together and change to a business model that gives you the freedom to transfer your collection to your media box (or game console) to your mobile media player (ipod, zune etc...) or to any computer. Until this happens, I don't see the physical format leaving. Last but not least....

Lets say that the industry figures everything out, they are able to offer hi-def downloads and streams, at reasonable prices, non DRMed, and with the same quality as Blu Ray. In this perfect scenario, we would still have the barrier of ISPs capping bandwidth (which true high definition downloads would require a lot) and, believe it or not, there is a huge population of movie lovers that don't have high speed internet!!

So, in short, all of these factors would have to come together in order for a mass industry of high def movie downloads to be successful. I would say we have a good 5-7 years. Until then, I think we are safe with our Blu Rays.

Any thoughts?