High Definition discs or download movies

[richard lichtenfelt]

Some people think that download movies are a direct threat to blu-ray.
I tend to think of download movies as a rental option, and therefore more in competition with Blockbuster, Netflix, etc.

Many people have collected 100+ hd movies in less than a year. At an average of 35gb per movie a 100 title collection would = 3500gb. Are people going to be willing to purchase a 7000gb set top box to hold their collection and still have room to grow?

Hard drives have an anticipated life of 5 years. Can you imagine trying to re-download a collection of hd movies if hard drive failure occured?
I imagine it would be a DRM nightmare trying to move movies between drives.

It seems as though downloads will only work as rentals, and dvd sales have co-existed with rental options all along.

I live in an affluent area of Houston, the fourth largest city in America, and fiber optics isn't even available in my area. Downloading a hd movie would take a day. If there was a glitch, would I have to wait another day for it to download again?

I just can't see download movies being much of a factor.
What do you think?