You are a special case. In many ways.
You're watching them on your ancient LCD display that's destined "for the history waste dump", no?
I don't need to say more.
No, I'm watching them on my 93" projector screen run on a 720P projector that is destined for the dump soon so that it can be replaced with a 1080p 3D projector soon. The upstairs TV is a plasma, not LCD, but the wall mount will support 160 pounds so it can handle anything light or heavy for years to come. The playback mediums are thus incidental and upgradeable at any time. The LIBRARY, however, is going NOWHERE seeing it's all stored on hard drives and multiple (including offsite) backups. But it's just a file database. The movies and tv shows within can be updated with higher resolution or special editions or whatever quite easily. That is the advantage, after all, of having mass storage archives as opposed to walls and walls of plastic discs.
For movies, I just don't understand how you guys see bd as bad option. You get movies in very cheap price, best possible quality, great resale value and as ready-made backup for off-site archiving. What more can you ask? If storage space is problem, you need to think again. One cubic meter holds all content you probably have.
It's not a bad option for dumping and then storing or encoding to a digital archive (i.e. higher quality video data rates than most/all current streaming options available). But IMO, it's a horrible option for day to day watching, though with all the annoying previews, advertisements, animated menus, FBI warnings, etc. that have plagued most playback media since the dawn of the VCR. Fortunately, the movie can be easily extracted from the disc its stored on and leave all the GARBAGE on there behind. The disc can then be stored in a basement or similar for legal reasons, but I'll likely never need it ever again.
The point is that once you've switched over to and experienced an all digital archive of ALL your music, movies, tv shows and photos that can be easily watched from any room in the house and easily transferred to any portable medium from USB thumb drives to iPhones, iPads and Macbooks, there is simply NO COMPARISON. Besides, new Macs lack even DVD drives so if you want to watch an HD movie, you're going to need a digital form or an external BD drive and frankly, once again, who wants to carry that extra garbage around when it's not necessary?
Before I go on a business trip, I load up a notebook with a couple dozen movies and tv shows to watch if I get bored. They take up no physical space what-so-ever and a very short amount of time to transfer them from the main system over Gigabit Ethernet.
Frankly, a better question is why do Blu-Ray supporters just LOVE that physical disc format? What advantage does it have over digital (other than coming with higher data rates video which is neither here nor there in terms of an advantage since it could change at any time and it can be dumped at the full rate for storage if desired).
Do you realize how much music I listen to these days now that my music collection has all been dumped of CD to the digital storage archive drive attached to my Mac Mini? I have so many CDs with one or two good tracks on them and when I had to dig through over a half dozen storage cases (I have around 600 CDs) to find them, I wouldn't bother for just one song or two I might want to hear. But when they're all digitally available, I can pick and choose anything I see on the menu that suits my fancy or make playlists, etc. I would think MOST people today that own an iPhone or iPod would know exactly the kind of experience I'm talking about. It's absolutely liberating and makes finding and transferring music a breeze. In my car, the music is stored on a tiny USB thumb drive and is plugged in the arm rest out of site. I don't even need an iPod (although I can send that music from inside my pants pocket to the system via Bluetooth if so desired, not even needing an iPod transfer cable to connect it!). I have only used the CD player in the car twice ever (once to make sure it worked and once when I bought a new CD at Best Buy on a whim and wanted to hear it on the way home).
Having only ONE cd in a car is AWFUL (I had a 6-disc changer even clear back in 1993 even!) And why have 6 discs when you can have 600 or even 3000 at your fingertips? The same is true of movies/tv shows on a computer when on a trip. I'm not sure what I might want to watch at any given moment so I take a large selection with me but don't have to juggle all those discs or even take a computer that has a disc player (internal or external) with me. If all my movies were only on BD, I could not do this. It would suck. But I realize that I didn't know just HOW MUCH it would suck until I got the system in place in the first place.
In other words, it's easy for someone who is used to loading up a BD movie to say that movies are typically 1.5-2.5 hours long and that it's no real bother to get up and pick one from the rack/shelf/whatever for that length of time (unlike music which typically is 3-6 minutes for most songs and so gets changed more often), but what about multiple rooms, especially with a family? You have to find the disc on some floor/room or another and then take it there. You have to pack them up with you for a trip and risk the discs getting stolen (whereas I have them still on my archive and backups at home and a backup off site as well). I don't have to worry about insurance deductibles or proving I owned them, etc. or worry about losing a movie that is now out of print.
I've even moved my old VHS movies (including home movies from VHS and Hi8 and laserdiscs that weren't' available on DVD) over to digital with the appropriate hardware. I've scanned all my old photo albums in and cleaned them up (including photos that were turning purple, etc. or in otherwise poor shape that now look new again) and I can take ALL those photos with me in my pocket in my iPod Touch with no problem. If I talk about some old event I had a photo of, I can show it immediately to the person I'm talking to because I have it with me. I can send all those photos to family members, etc. just as easily. The point is that with digital it's SO EASY to move data around. It might be a pain in the butt to get it there at first, but the long term dividends are worth it, IMO. I can show those same photos that used to be 4x6 prints on a 93" HD projector screen as if I had pristine slides to show on a slide projector. I can play music by trip with them, etc. It's just plain a better experience all around.
With movies, the ability to just click/search through the entire collection with covers/descriptions and even ratings is so superior to looking at boxes on a shelf. Visitors can peruse at their leisure through music, movies and photos and select whatever they want to watch or listen to, even in the guest bedroom. They can connect their own iPhone to my guest network and play back their own media in the guest room off their own devices with Airplay or watch a selection from my own archives or off Netflix. No unseemly DVD/BD/CD drives are needed. The install is clean (e.g. AppleTV can be attached to the back of the TV out of site hanging on the wall).
