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1. Comment - For 1.3 million HD DVD customers, what's next?

   (Feb 19, 2008 - 9:51 PM)

   Erm, yeah. Ok, here's the scoop. HD-DVD is dead. Discs are being cancelled, studios dropping support as they can. Existing inventory will be sold off if lucky. Since you seem to like dead formats so much, I've got some Laserdiscs you could buy. I've got a mostly working playing.
   
   There's a lot of talk on the High Def forums about this digital pipe dream too. All I can say is you better get started on ISP legislation now as these are the problems with Digital Distribution:
   
   * Traffic "shaping"
   * Catalog (content) issues
   * Download Caps
   * Download speeds (even 8-10gb over a 2mb/s connection sucks)
   * Less than Hi-Def Picture & Sound
   * Can't stick extras in there
   * DRM that makes Blu-Ray look good
   * no physical media, permanent renter status
   * Probable similar limitations as the ill-fated Divx Disc
   * network congestion means your movie stops in the middle
   
   Digital downloads are at least two decades away, maybe longer. Take FioS 20/20 and get that to 60% of the US and then you have DD. Well that is until the TV's are upped to a higher resolution and then require even more data to make the picture look right...
   
   There might be some random breakthrough to allow DD of movies, but we'll probably have one or two successive physical formats yet. Why? The size of good transfers will continue to increase. The speed of the lines will not keep up (last mile). Physical media will probably remain cheaper long-run than near permanent renter status.