When game & movie discs = plastic mini frisbees

[Action Jackson]

I have a PS3 I'm debating whether to keep building my blu-ray collection. I think in only a few more years everything is going to be downloaded and actual CDs, DVDs, and even Video Game Discs will be obsolete. I'm curious if anyone else has a prediction?

-AJ

[Midnight_Walker]

Originally Posted by Action Jackson

I have a PS3 I'm debating whether to keep building my blu-ray collection. I think in only a few more years everything is going to be downloaded and actual CDs, DVDs, and even Video Game Discs will be obsolete. I'm curious if anyone else has a prediction?

-AJ

I predict not. Then again, I did buy into HD-DVD, so feel free to ignore me if you like

There will always be a market for physical media. Think about it - how many Hi-Def films can your PS3 or 360 store? 2, 3? It's not a lot at any rate. Your PC can probably hold 100 or something, if it holds nothing else. The point is, there will always be a point at which you hit a wall and can't store anything else. What do you do then? On the other hand, you can buy as many movies as you like on a DVD or Blu-Ray, and never worry about not being able to buy more. What happens if you somehow have unlimited space, but your drive with all your movies on dies? You download (and maybe pay for) everything again? At best it's a terrible inconvenience. No, people will always want something to hold on to. I think that Blu-Ray will be with us for a long time, and you won't have to worry about it becoming obsolete for a long time yet.

[OME6A]

I agree, probably in 5 - 8 years though.

There are two key problems standing in the way: DRM/Copy protection, and user management.

[BoyEngland]

I don't think disks, whether they be CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/etc, will be made second class media forms soon enough to make me stop buying them.

Some tech dinosaurs still use VHS religiously for movies and look how long that has been on the market. I think it is safe to say we will be using disks (Blu-Ray most likely) for at least another 5 years minimum.

[tina.anderson]

It's going to take some time for the switch to happen, and even then the actual physical objects like CD's and DVD's will still be valuable to some people.

[LesPaul2510]

i highly doubt it'll be any time in the next several years, for one, look at how long it takes to download something from the playstation store even when it's hardwired. if that issue isn't fixed, it'll take a day to download a whole movie. then there's the issue of hard drive space. my ps3 is the 60 GB, a blu-ray disc holds 50 GB max, so to download that big of a movie would leave me with 10 GB, and then subtract 5 GB from that for system information and stuff like that, i'll only have 5 GB left. one more issue is that the physical disc is always more reliable than downloadable content, and there's always a back-up. i'm not condemning the idea, infact I would love to see it happen, the 360 already has it, but i can't ever see downloads ever replace physical media. it would be great for the environment too, because there would be less plastic around and less oil used to make it, so it's good for the war and the economy. i can see downloads supplement discs though

[discombobulate]

I'm another one that doesn't see this happening any time soon. Sure, soon enough we won't have anything physical, but for the time being we still do.

Personally, I'm keeping my dvd (not even BR) collection until I die and I'll keep building it until then too. That's how I have all my movies, why let them become obsolete?

[BoyEngland]

We will move to solid state drives such as SD cards and stuff before moving to downloading as a primary means of getting media.

[Dboyz-x.etown]

We've already had this discussion in tech talk, and I stick by my position. Discs let you keep your hard drive free of clutter, they are more easy to transport, more versatile, and they'll always be there if you have a hardware failure.