[LUconn]

Obviously BluRay trounced HDDVD many months ago. But what if something made bluray obsolete?

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/10/29/hd ... 360-first/

HD Netflix streaming comes to Xbox 360 first



It's something you can't get on the Roku. Nor on LG's BD300. Nor on Samsung's P2500 / P2550 Blu-ray players. Nor through Netflix's own "Watch Instantly" portal. It's high-def Netflix streaming, and it's coming first to Microsoft's Xbox 360. Yes friends, when the all new dashboard hits on November 19th, with it will come HD Netflix streaming for (US-based, presumably) Xbox Live Gold members. You should know that this is only a "soft launch" with about 300 titles available for now, and the litany of details you're surely craving simply aren't available at present time. At any rate, we'd say things just got a lot more interesting in the world of digital downloads, but there's really no need. The real question is: when will everyone else follow suit, and how quickly can we expect current Netflix streamers to get the HD upgrade?

This could be the start of getting rid of physical media all together. It looks like it's really just Xbox that has it right now, but this seems like what things would obviously move to in the future. I wonder if newer generation DVD players will come with some kind of online capabilities for this, or a new device altogether that is just for downloading movies.

[Hold My Own]

This is to you what Google is to me, isnt it. Either you're extremely intrigued by this or your trying to figure out what you're going to buy Black Friday

[LUconn]

No, I just think that technology is interesting and think it's funny that the big expensive winner of a format war could have a very short life. Or maybe this will be a flop. Who knows. It just seems like an obvious progression.

[belcherboy]

IMO Blu Ray is already dead. Most people don't buy CD's for their music anymore, and the same thing will begin happening to video. Downloadable HD movies on a thing like an Ipod will be the next big thing. The movie industry is fighting it, but it will eventually lose to the demands of the consumer. Can u imagine having all your movies on a device the size of your cell phone? Having the ability to just plug it into your HD tv and watch movies. IMO this will be the way things work in the next few years!

[phoenix]

The only thing holding back HD downloads right now are the ISPs throttling bandwidth. Otherwise, DVD sales would be negligible. Figure in another 5 years or so, DVDs (even Blu Ray) will go the way of the VCR, CDs will be something you use to back up files on your computer, and everything will be digital downloads.

Unless, of course, the MPAA and RIAA screw everything up.

[qkslvrsrfrboy]

Its called ondemand, and it has been doing this for several years now.

I still think dvd's will come in handy for college students who wont have all the nice stuff. It will be another 10 years at least before they are completely obsolete. Having said that though, I also remember 10 years ago having Juno dial up Internet, and it was pretty worthless.

I like what Mike Birbiglia says about technology, and how its to the point now you can make stuff up and people will say "yeah ive heard about that" and it will be around shortly after

[mrmacphisto]

LG has a Blu-ray player that supports Netflix HD streaming. It's advertised on the Netflix site, but I don't think it's available for purchase quite yet.

[TDDance234]

They can't make it affordible enough to worry about downloading media...like HD movies. It would take hours upon hours to download each individual movie at our current speeds. By that time, you could have run to WalMart and been on the couch with a bucket of popcorn in 15 minutes.

[LUconn]

They can't make it affordible enough to worry about downloading media...like HD movies. It would take hours upon hours to download each individual movie at our current speeds. By that time, you could have run to WalMart and been on the couch with a bucket of popcorn in 15 minutes.

actually the quoted speed when Netflix first announced was with a regular broadband connection it downloads at twice the speed of it playing and it downloads while you watch. So, if you just wait a minute to play it after you've started the download, you'll never know the difference.