"Something else is gaining popularity; and surprisingly, it's not Blu-ray."

Blue Ray is not catching onto computers either, have you looked at the price of blank Blue Ray media, ouch.

I'd stream video content, but my ISP wants $42/mo for 1.5meg cable and they'll send me a letter if I exceed a smallish bandwidth limit monthly.

1.5meg speeds will barely stream standard def. material. I don't feel like paying upwards of $70/mo for 5meg speeds.

why would streaming be popular now? cable and sat companies offered pay per view movies and also on demand for years now and people still go out and get the DVD copy of the movie.

doubtful...

DVDs are still useful media for games, movies that don't need HD treatment ie older TV shows and kids movies, and easy backup media...

until blu-ray becomes more popular in PC, DVDs are going to stay...

now only if we can get rid of them useless CDs, then i'll be happy....

The only way I see this happening is if we are able to download the movie on the player and keep it as long as we want.

You get very many more people to start streaming and the ISP's will go back to wanting caps on data usage, and expensive charges when you go over.

I'll always prefer a DVD over streaming. Unless the streaming gets to DVD quality. And it's not through Net Flix at the moment.

I own several hundred DVDs, and I get to watch the contents as often as I choose without paying extra. This will NOT be the case if I have to redownload a movie every time I want to see it, unless there's a complete mental breakdown among the Rights Holders.

Currently my Internet access is the same charge no matter how much I download, but that could change, rendering downloading an expensive proposition.

So, I doubt that DVDs will be 'out' within a reasonable timeframe, without a massive paradigm shift that still involves us emptying our wallets directly into those same hands...

Honestly I like blu-ray but the problem it has is it isn't being adopted fast enough and there is still the choice of DVD.
If DVDs dropped from the planet blu-ray would take off and we would laugh at the crap streaming offers now.

Backwards compatibility is the devil.

I still prefer going out and buying the DVDs I want so that i can watch them when I want and have the additional content available to me. I'll by blu-ray when the prices drops to be more in line with a traditional DVD, in most cases there is at least a $10 markup for blu-ray.

I have no desire to RENT DVDs by streaming or downloading from Netflix or other suppliers, the rental aspect plus time to download and potential bandwidth caps are all barriers to me downloading DVDs.

"Thumb drives" are getting cheaper and require only a USB port to record or play through.

I have the Netflix plan with 3 DVDs out at one time; and I find that I use the steaming movies FAR more than the DVDs. Pretty much, I just get DVDs for stuff that I can't stream online. They do, however, need to expand their support to the PS3. I don't see why they are exclusive to Xbox 360.

I use netflix streaming quit extensivly and it's fantastic. The comment above that it is not DVD quality is inccorrect. You can actually stream HD quality for many programs. The quality is not as good as a Blue-Ray.. but depending on how big your television is.. that may not matter.

No they are not. They will stay forever just as papers and stamps.

I don't understand the US, those high prices for high speed internet. In The Netherlands, an ADSL subscription 20Mb down/1Mb up (unlimited) with VoIP is about €40 (~$50) a month. I myself am switching to cable with 30Mb down/3Mb up (unlimited), VoIP unlimited, HD TV for about €50 (~$65). I guess we're blessed here in Holland...

And audio cassettes and Beta?

The Netflix streaming service is pretty bad. I have yet to see it perform better than a home made video made from a phone camera.

Streaming to the 360 FTW... we dropped our Netflix subscription to 1 at a time since we use streaming FAR more than physical media from netflix these days.

I still buy Blu-Ray movies though... typcially ones that I really liked and wanted to own.

I think physical media will be around for a LONG time... it's just that it'll never be as popular as DVD and VHS was. People with High Speed internet will only use it for movies that they REALLY want in High Definition - and folks that don't have high speed net will be a smaller and smaller market as time goes on.

At our house, Streaming Netflix SD is much better than broadcast TV quality, almost as good as DVD quality. Netflix HD is a bit better than DVD quality, not quite 720p hd quality. In any case, it's been VERY viewable.

We use both PC's and a 360 to stream (360 most of the time), and our Broadband is FTTP, 30mbps down, 10 up. I've never seen the 360 signal check drop below full bars.

no kidding DVD's are on there way out!
Unless you have been living in the forest you should have known this two/three years ago when the HD-DVD/B-Ray battle began.

Blue-ray will replace DVD eventualy, it is inevitable. Blockbuster WILL NOT have stores to rent movies from anymore. You will download movies.

The question is WHEN? 1yr? 2yr? 3yr?

My guess is 3 years.

Here we go go again. Another major change coming and I don't even have a blue ray player.

Netflix may offer unlimited streaming, but your ISP will nail you to the wall when your data usage goes over your allocation for the month. I'd rather have content that I can watch infinitely with no additional charge to me and streaming content sucks for picture quality, let alone when MS comes out with a fix, patch, update, whatever that makes your decoding of videos so glitchy and shaky that you want to throw your PC out the window. I'll take physical media any day.

I have nothing against streaming, but the ISPs are already giving bandwith limits for downloads. So, someone streaming 13 movies will have more than 100GB of downloads which easily break almost any ISP download limit.

whats a... DVD?

haven't had or wanted an optical drive of any sort in my rig for a good 4 years now

Climber you hit this exactly.

I myself stream movies & shows but if I really like a movie/show I want the hardcopy everytime.

Netflix streaming is way better if you don't make the mistake of "upgrading" the player to the silverlight version, once it's upgraded, you cannot go back

now only if we could rent Games digitaly

What was the purpose of this 'news tidbit?' A bit of free market research for someone or what? Sure, some of the people who have and can afford unlimited broadband have a new option where it comes to viewing movies online. I don't think this in anyway poses a threat to the dominance of DVD rentals anytime soon. And Blu-Ray was always a videophile format IMO and offers little more compared to DVDs.

I'm agreeing with D_Kuhn. A physical medium for rentals will be around for awhile to come. Not everyone has or can afford broadband and streaming has a number of drawbacks: You can't easily view the movie whenever or whereever you might want, You don't get access to other features that are on a DVD (alternate scenes, commentaries, etc.), the quality of the decoding and hence the viewing is bound to be varied depending on the equipment used and how its setup and its just too 'iffy'...too many things can go wrong to interrupt your movie experience; whether it be net-congestion, a virus, some miscellaneous or hard to disagnose computer hiccup, etc.

Of course, if you could download a movie or movies ahead of time to your HD and view them at your whim that might work, (Maybe queueing a number of selections to download while you're web surfing, AFK, etc.) though everyone would balk at the DRM such a scheme would inevitably require.

And just admit it, its a minor pain to leave the house to pick up a movie, but it gives you a *perfect* excuse to drop by the store for whatever snackies you might feel like. And you probably need the exercise anyway you loafer.

Is streaming a nice idea or not is all dependent on the user groups. Streamin download is a good replacement for renting movies if the person has good enough internet access.

However for people who like to own the movies, a BD + digital copy is a much better choice. If people know when to buy a new movie, a BD+digital copy is ~$20-25 for new release movies and $9-$14 for an older movie. For this price, it comes with 1080p, DoblyTrueHD, extras, freedom to watch it on the go on your ipod/zune, freedom to play in any BD eq player/computer/PS3, nobody will tell you how many devices are you allowed to play on this movie, you will actually "own" the movie, no backup required, with "right" software it is also possible for us to back it up. When you are tired of the movie, you can even sale it to your friends, on eBay, or other placers, on some extreme condition you can actually use it for decoing your room, frisby, ninja weapons, or making it in to a clock..lol

Anyway... if people likes to rent their movies, streaming can be great... but if people like to own the movies and have a 1080p HDTV/monitor (and of course a BD playing device)... then BD+digital copy will be the way to go. In the mean time... DVDs will still be on the market for a while.

By the way, I know we can upscale DVD on HDTV very well these days... but how about the downloaded SD movies? I believe they stay SD no matter what.. correct?

By the way, for the people who get their own movies from teh "alternative" routes (which is usually..."free"), you can forget my comments above. Since with a nice "bay", neighter streaming service, DVDs, or BD, or digital copy, will mean anything to you.

No matter who wins.. it will never be "free" of charge.

I watch old movies on Hulu in 480p, and they don't look too shabby on my 32" TV. Streams using Move Networks (e.g. Fox's website) look almost as good as the 720p broadcasts. If they could offer the same service for new movies, I would definitely be interested. I know you can rent movies from Amazon and the like, but right now their prices are higher than what my local mom-and-pop video store charges.