How We Watch Movies

The new format is dead, long live the new format!

Several years ago, I stopped listening to CDs.  Well, except for occasionally in the car.  You see, I got an MP3 player and just put my entire song catalog on my computer.  Today, I wouldn't even think of purchasing music in store.  Tower Records and several other records stores are out of business because I wasn't the only one to think this way. 

I will not buy a blue ray player because I see the same thing happening with movies.  I have an HDMI cable running from my HD capable video card to my HDTV.  The DVD's I do have, have been backed up on hard drive.  Memory is so cheap.  With cload computing, I won't even have to waste space on my personal drive and my library will be available wherever I happen to be.  Netflix will stream on my computer, or over my computer through my HDMI cable to my TV, or over my Wii to my TV.  Blockbuster is dead and FYE might be next.

I see a world where TVs are connected to the internet and physical copies of movies are just wasted space.  Currently my DVD player is kind of sucky and makes the movies too dark, so I copy everything on to my hard drive and watch them using my computer over my TV.  I don't have to pull out my DVD boxes and shuffle through cases to get what I want.  I don't have to worry about the disc being dirty or scratched.  I don't have to worry about a disc not being in its case or putting it back when I am done.  So, Why would I spend money on a Bluray player?