BBC News: "How the PS3 led Blu-ray's triumph"

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by donaldheil

They say this is because a growing number of consumers are already turning their backs on DVD players to download their movies via the internet instead, or from their satellite or cable television provider.

Adding that electronics companies are wrong to assume that viewers want ever better picture quality, they point to the failure of high fidelity music formats Super Audio CD and DVD-Audio in the face of the explosion in the popularity of music downloads.

Portable music is very handy... Blu-ray, not so much!

With an MP3, I can burn a mix. With an MP3, I can carry hundreds, thousands of songs. With an MP3, I can pick and choose only the songs I want from an album.

With downloaded movies, I'd have to put in on hard drive which takes up space... space that could be used for Blu-ray movies. With downloaded movies, I can carry quite a few (depending on what I'm carrying them with), but on something that will take up a lot more space than what you can carry the same amount of songs on. With downloaded movies, I can't pick what scenes of the movie I'm interested in (though I can with TV episodes).

Picking and choosing only what you want and portability are the main reason why downloaded music is so popular. Other than TV sets (which I prefer in sets), you can't pick and choose parts of a movie, and portability isn't as much of an issue as you're probably not going to be watching a movie while you exercise, drive a car, or etc...

I don't really see downloading taking off for quite some time, and I'm not sure it will replace physical media completely in my lifetime.

~Alan