Well, I've been in the "computer biz" for 15 years and I've never heard of anyone going that long without a drive failure.
Well, now you have. I've had approximately 13 drives in that time (although 7 of those are in service right now on my current 3 computer setup). I guess when you have the 80+ drives you are talking about, you are going to have a few failures.
And drive/backup failure isn't the only risk with downloaded content. If the content provider is not around in the future to provide you with the tools to watch your DRM laden content you're hosed.
I won't buy DRM content except music videos. All my current content (other than some of my music videos) are conversions from disc formats plus a few downloads from misc. sites.
At least with BD you can always buy a used BD player, even if the format is "dead".
Unless software players stop playing .H264 formats any time soon (like there wouldn't be a conversion option at some point regardless), I don't think I have to worry about my conversions running in the future.
And, finally, the quality on the small PC screen isn't the entire issue. People want to author the HD content from their HD camcorders and DSLR cameras onto a BD disc that they can watch in high bitrate 1080P Blu-Ray on their nice home theater setups.
If you can't understand that then you need some help.
What you don't seem to understand is you can do that ALREADY. Final Cut Pro handles HD video just fine. Toast can burn BD discs for you from the output and supports BD burners in Mac OS X. Unless you need to WATCH commercial BD discs, you can already do the things you are talking about.
Despite certain 'perfect vision' types in this thread, you're preaching to the choir. I've already agreed several times Apple should add BD support to OS X. I've only argued against nonsensical claims about 1080P from people who clearly have neither the setup or the seating distance to make the claims they make and to put down this BS garbage about the supposed awful quality of Apple's 720P movie rentals. I'm not blind. It IS BS (or said people have very very POOR scalers in their 1080P sets, which is entirely possible). Insulting my vision proves nothing.
My other point has been to point out some of us don't want another DISC based format, regardless of resolution. I'll take 1080P as a format, but I want a digital mass storage playback system for my house. I don't want to store/handle and move hundreds of plastic drink coasters anymore or watch all those stupid FBI warnings (like everyone on the planet hasn't seen that warning a million times already and as if one more warning will make any difference one way or the other to ANYONE regardless of their position), advertisements and long-winded menus most discs have. Yeah, it would be nice if AppleTV had 1080P support or if it would get it in the next hardware revision (if there is one) and it would be even nicer if Apple would add more official features (without me having to hack it to get them). But that hardly makes AppleTV useless. I'd like to see an AppleTV with a built-in BD/DVD drive with the option of automatically moving titles into the iTunes server library feeding the system, but I doubt it'll ever happen.
The whole point is a modern home theater should be all about convenience. High quality playback has been available for a long time now (relatively speaking). It's time to refine the experience. This could be as easy for the masses as iPods were/are.
Wrong. They're not estimated to surpass CD sales until 2012 or later.
What forum geeks don't understand is that very few people have their computers hooked up to their TVs. Physical media still has plenty of life left in it.
Forum geeks? Is that not supposed to be offensive?
