| Noooo... While HD-DVD and BluRay may both be dead or dying, there will have to be some kind of disc-based video format for the foreseeable future. Not enough people have access to broadband to make it a universal distribution medium, and only a small percentage have broadband of the speed which could enable the delivery of a high-definition movie in reasonable time. For that matter, ordinary broadband is barely fast enough for standard definition movies. Look at it this way: if you figure a feature length movie, encoded at 700 MB (taking a de facto number popular online, which yields good quality) and try to pipe it through a 1.5 meg DSL line, it'll take well over an hour to download. Now that may be fine if you're streaming it, and doing that only, but if somebody else wants to use the internet too? If you want to download it and put it on a portable device for a trip? No dice. And HD would be even worse. Figure 4x the file size even for so-called "HD Lite," and you'd need at least 5 Mbits of speed to even think about watching it.
Now think of the tens of millions of people who don't have or can't get broadband. Slate's grossly jumping the gun in an effort to sound prophetic and cutting edge, and to draw in people to read them. They should try getting out of the upper middle class suburbs now and then.
As much as I love the model of downloadable video, it's not going to kill the DVD any time soon. Maybe in ten years. |
