Glad to hear Best Buy can see the writing on the wall. No matter how people want to deny it, streaming is the future. Discs/physical media will always exist as a niche market for videophiles -- the hole laserdisc once filled -- but they aren't going to be the predominate form for long. ISPs are going to have to stop screwing people and start adapting, stat for this to work though.

while i'm sure this'll be the case, it won't be for a long, long while. While i don't mind streaming movies, i would never download movies to keep instead of buying the physical Blu-Ray. I don't wanna have to wait a few hours to download movies and I definitely don't want them hanging in the balance on my hard drive taking up space when i can be sure they'll always be there on my shelf. Streaming movies: great. extremely convenient and downright awesome. Downloading movies: definitely ot for me and it'll be a long, long time until this is a reality, if it will be at all.

Music can stay digital, since most people just put it on their hard drives anyways, but I'm not for downloading games either.

plus, i don't want my movies or games confined to ONE computer or game system. I want to be able to take them anywhere and watch/play them anywhere. That, and i love displaying my Blu-Rays.

A few hours to download a movie? The last movie I downloaded was Jennifer's Body, which took 45 minutes at the most. It would have taken me longer to drive to my local Best Buy, purchase it, and drive back.

Internet connection speeds are increasing and digital distribution is becoming faster and simpler. Having your hard drive "crash" is not going to rob you of your purchase, I imagine there will be some sort of managing system similar to Steam that tracks your purchases and allows you to redownload whenever you need to. I'm not sure you are seeing the big picture.

I think its time people revaluate their material posessions, frankly I'm sick of the clutter. The product will probably be cheaper as well since you aren't paying for the cost of disc cases and pointless cardboard sleeves with your movies.

This isn't something thats "not going to happen for a long, long while", the transition has already begun with other media, its time for movies to catch up.

I think that is essentially a straw man argument that isn't related to streaming, but rather current download methods. Most streaming companies will work toward 3rd party hosting for multi-platform, multi-system use to address that very issue.

As far as display and collection purposes, I kind of agree, but I think you and I are in the videophile, "laserdisc" market, which is shrinking. We want to own physical, higher quality copies. Most people don't give a shit if they can see the film with minimum hassle.

it would have taken me 20 minutes tops to drive to best buy or target or walmart to pick it up, but that depends on where you live. and 45 for some shaky cam footage, fair enough. it took me a good half day (at the least) to download shaun of the dead in 720p, which is two levels lower than the highest quality available which is becoming the standard. I know there'll be something like Steam in place, but it's still much more inconvenient to have your hard drive crash and redownload ALL your movies, especially when some internet providers (Who deserve to burn in hell) put caps on peoples bandwith limits. Plus, the only reason the transition has begun with other media is because it's made other simpler, not more inconvenient. thanks to iPods and other MP3 players, digital distribution (or at least storage) has not only made the process necessary, it's made it easier. iPods are small and meant to be taken places, so people take them everywhere, and it improves their experience since they now have all their music in their pocket. eBook readers like the Kindle and the new Nook from barnes & nobles are the same way. (most) people love to read, but don't want their hefty hardcovers or paperbacks taking up space in their bags or whatnot. thanks to eBook readers, they take up considerably less space than a book, they deliver the same experience, and they hold more than one book. Movies are different, especially high definition movies. Internet providers are actually in the process of figuring out ways they can legally slow down peoples internet speeds so it saves the providers money, and it grants them bailout money from the government (there are a few articles on it over on consumerist or gizmodo). Besides the fact that it currently takes forever to download a decent HD movie, it still takes up a lot of space. And no matter how much hard drive space you'll have, you will eventually run out. Not jut cause of movies, but because other things will be taking up that precious space. Not to mention the fact that unless it's streaming, it'll be more of a hassle for the average joe. Most people probably don't even know what media streaming is, let alone how to do it throughout their homes. It would require they buy either a separate desktop computer for their TV or they buy a slingbox and somehow manage to set that up. Not to mention the fact that literally everyone and their mom has a DVD player. While DVD sales might be slipping a little, people would still rather be more willing to just go to the store and rent/buy the movie or use netflix as opposed to buy hundreds of dollars worth of new equipment. Not to mention the fact that a huge percentage of the country doesn't even have DSL. And who says that it'll be cheaper cause the disc and the case aren't there? it costs them mere pennies to manufacture those things. If it's digital, they can charge extra and claim it's a "premium" service.

Sure, you don't like the clutter, and to each his own, but some people (like me, my dad, and a lot of my friends) like building up their DVD/Blu-Ray collections to display.

there's no doubt that it'll be many years, if at all, before digital distribution can catch on to the general public.

But once they manage to actually bring DSL/Cable internet to the entire country, get it to an actual acceptable speed to where downloading movies won't be a complete pain in the ass (and with the FCC thing and the internet providers, small chance), sell the idea to the public, who all already own DVD players and have a good amount of the movies they like on DVD, simplify the process so that joe sixpack can easily learn how to do it without the hassle of sending ethernet cables throughout his house or forcing him to buy a wireless router, somehow manage to sell millions upon millions upon millions of units/hard drives to the masses in order for the idea of even having a hope of catching on to the world, and then keep the prices down, then yeah, sure, it could work.

I'm sure you've got some valid points somewhere in that mess, but until you learn how to break up text into readable paragraphs, I'm not going to read it.

I did catch the first two lines though, and no, it was not "shaky cam footage".

People being resistant to change will cause stagnation. Unless people adopt the reality of new forms of distribution, the technology will take that much longer to catch up. I don't think anybody is saying this is going to happen over night, but its definitely happening sooner then you probably want it to.

So it sounds like you downloaded Shaun of the Dead off of P2P and it took you forever? :P Great self admission! Ultimately you're going to stream content as you need it, like Netflix Watch Instantly, instead of downloading entire files.

The bandwidth to do so in 720p is well within typical cable/DSL speeds, and it's also becoming more and more realistic to stream 1080p (as home internet connections get faster, compression gets better). What we haven't seen much of yet is streaming surround sound, but that will come in time as well.

How about streaming in Canada through my Xbox for a change? Can they really afford not getting by monthly 10$ ?

Damn, this is upsetting. I always go into Best Buy and look at the DvDs that I want to pick up, notably the Dragonball Z seaons pictured. I'm a guy who likes to have the hard copy, so this really peeves me. It's just that I can't spare the cash between my other expenses to justify purchasing everything I want.

Also, hard copies are permanent copies, in addition to being able to be displayed, collected. We already have to buy separate digital copies for different digital devices and such. I'm not against going digital, I just like to have the hard copy for those reasons and more.

I absolutely agree. I buy the movies I love because I want a tangible things to proudly own and display. I love great box art and covers and whatever booklets come with real DVDs and Blurays. I'll be the first to admit, however, that discs are cumbersome and I've converted most of my collection to digital form for my WD TV. This doesn't mean that you can't sell some kind of digital media in a physical form.

Sure, some people just want the file but why not sell USB drives for example where you can plug it in to a device like the WD TV and play it like a DVD where you have the option to either just play it from the flash drive or copy it to a large hard drive. This is where I really see the potential. If you take away physical movie formats completely I think a large increase in piracy can be expected because the one bonus of buying something is taken away.

As an old-school geek, I'd have to say I agree on the physical copy being essential, especially in the case of companies like Disney who have a history of release moratoriums and outright discontinuation of controversial content like "Song of the South." And being that I may be the only person on the planet not using any of the streaming/digital services, what exactly happens when you want to collect and own a lot of crap? Are we going to upgrading hard drives on playback devices now instead of PC's? And considering the region locks-outs seen on DVD's and sites like Hulu, won't the dominance of streaming content end up limiting what audiences are exposed to? I have Laserdiscs and non region-1 DVD's of anime and movies by Dario Argento, John Woo and Jackie Chan that are perfectly legal imports which were released way before any localized versions and in some cases not at all.

About damn time.

Catalog titles have always been a problem with Best Buy. Racks and racks of New Releases and TV Shows have pushed older (and by older I mean 2yrs old) movies aside.

I recall a friend in retail once telling me that stores aren't in the business of selling product, they are in the business of renting shelf space. They really need to turn product over and stuff that stays on the shelves for extended periods of time are really dead weight.

If i want a new release, i will generally go to Best Buy where it is generally really low. But after that, I'm going with Amazon or DVDPacific. During XMas time, I'll probably pick up some HBO TV box sets when they are super low (Curb for $19, etc) but I've learned to not depend on Best Buy to get any older titles I really want.

I'm not really sure how this new digital revolution is going to take place. The big thing that really started the iPod revolution was that you could just stick your CD into your computer and rip it. You had the CD AND the mp3s and so the eventual transition to mp3 only was relatively easy. Not quite so easy with DVDs and BluRays though. Ironically the whole DRM issue may be what holds the studios from really leveraging profit in this new era.

The big thing that Best Buy may have to offer is Geek Squad. They can offer to sell media servers, set them up, and the connect them to Best Buy's middle-man digital service.

Fuck Best Buy.

Issue #1: Who the hell buys DVDs/Blu Rays from Best Buy anymore? I am yet to walk into a Best Buy anywhere that isn't overpriced on all their media. Any movie you want is online cheaper anyway with a larger selection.

Issue #2: For all the people who think Digital Downloads are right around the corner consider what happened with our switch to ALL digital. 40% of America was still using rabbit ears!! 40%!! Thats a huge number - meaning most of these people didnt have cable for all these years?? You expect them to be on the cutting edge of digital downloads?? Never.

Issue #3: Biggest issue. The internet is running out of space. Thats right.. not physically but datawise. The infrastructure the ISP's laid out cannot handle the throughput needed to send large packages back and forth today.. and thats with an estimated 15 to 20% of people sending large packets. Imagine if 50% of the population were to send large packets? It would grind to a halt. Go to google and search for "Internet out of space" and you can read more. ISP's know this and that is why they are trying to put caps on their end users so they dont slow other people down.

Issue #4: If you cant deliver the best.. why bother? The best right now commercially is 1080p with lossless audio. If you cant give me that in a reasonable time frame of download.. why bother?

2. 74.1 % of Americans have internet access in their home. A lot of people who were using rabbit ears probably just don't give a shit about TV or use their computer to watch TV shows. Regardless, people who aren't into movies obviously wouldn't be much of a consideration in a delivery change for that market.

3. The internet is running out of space because ISPs are too lazy/unwilling to invest in new technologies. Right now most of them have no competitive reason to do so because they have monopolies on their given markets. When the demand is high enough, ISPs will upgrade.

4. People said the same thing about mp3s -- who would want worse quality than what we have for the same price? Apparently if it's more convenient, almost everyone.

Thanks man, just what I was looking for. Worked like a charm Thanks so much…