Here's a question. Where does the future lie? Is it in downloading to memory stick/hard drives or is it blu-ray?

See personally (and it's just what I personally prefer). I really hope downloading DOESN'T become the mainstream 'thing' for getting your films/music/TV shows.

Now I do download, but that’s for 'brand new' episodes of TV shows I want to see. I hate the idea of having 'downloaded' or virtual copies of things as like the 'permanent' keep. I like to have a 'psychical' copy to hold in my hands or keep on a shelf. See when the newest film comes out. I like to have the thrill of buying it, 'owning' it. In my hands with all the packaging, then keeping it on my shelf as part of a collection. The idea that release day means going on and downloading something on a little stick yuk. That's just not right to me. I don't really have it in my head, so I really want DVD to stick around for many more years, then blu-ray staying on longer after. Then another 'optical' successor to that. I'm sure it won't happen though and I'll have to adapt.

It's guaranteed (in this country anyway) that optical medium will be reigning supreme for a few years to come yet. The telecommunications backbone of this country is poor at best what with the copper twisted pair making up about 90% of households 'last mile' so to speak. When this service improves we will see an increase in media (especially HD) being offered to us on IPTV systems and such.

If you tried downloading a Blu-Ray movie (~30GB-ish) over the average broadband connection in this country (~2.5Mbits) it would take you the good part of 24 hours (if not more) to download. Imagine waiting at your IPTV set-top box for that to load.

Edit. Oops, re-reading your post you didn't actually mean downloading over the internet did you!

I think both physical and download are the medium term future. I doubt that optical will last that long though because solid state memories (not FLASH) will prove cheaper and more reliable. I'd say 10 years max for optical though I'm not a prophet and could easily be completely wrong (no one really knows).

I think the 2 will co-exist just as MP3 and CD have, downloads will re-place rentals and the likes of sky box office, but for people who want hard coppies of films then blu-ray will offer that.
Plus, too much money has been poured in to blu-ray for it to wave a white flag at downloading, the hard ware and movie industries will if anything supress downloading for as long as possible.

Box-sets.... I love them, and plenty of other people do too. I just can't see Blu Ray being replaced entirely by downloads for the simple reason that many people, like myself, love to have a physical object sat on their shelf to look at. Downloads are invisible, and just not.... sexy! I'm not into Blade Runner, but I'm aware that a 5 disc box set has come out in the USA for it. And for fans of the film, that box set is just cool in a way that a download can never be. As for myself, I bought the Resident Evil trilogy box set, and I like to see it there on my shelf. No way will I go down the download route!

That's my view anyway! Long live Blu Ray!


Dave

The core network in the UK is as good an any other network, the reason why"the last mile" is copper twisted-pair is because we have a network that's primarily designed for telephony traffic and not data, the same as every other European telephone network. The only country where things are slightly different is in France where they took the decision to have a digital last mile and an analogue core network. This has made it easier for them to upgrade their entire network to a digital network, whereas in the UK we kept the last mile analogue with a digital core network.

I would say that even as little as three years ago, no one could have predicted the massive increase in demand for capacity end users now want; so to blame BT, with potentially milions and millions of home lines to upgrade is a bit rich.

What will be really interesting, with Local Loop Unbundling (LLU), is how keen the likes of Talk Talk are to spend the money to upgrade their customers lines to fibre, because BT will say it's no longer their problem if you've moved to a different service provider.