hothardware.com — A great debate is raging as to what the future of video distribution will look like. On one side of the debate are those who claim that physical discs like DVDs, Blu-ray, and whatever format will eventually supplant Blu-ray, will always deliver a superior viewing experience than anything that will be available via streaming or on-demand content.
Feb 20, 2009 View in Crawl 4
mountain991Feb 21, 2009
I think we're forgetting that we're something like 16th in the world in broadband speeds which means bandwidth which is already being strained. Large portions of the country still don't have broadband or even cable access of any kind. How do you think streaming is going to work on HughesNet. Yeah, right. Even on Direct TV, how's it going to work. All I know is right now I want the DVD in my player until the infrastructure is in place to make streaming mainstream.
senchouFeb 22, 2009
Can you tell me what episodes are missing from Red Dwarf? From what I've seen the only thing missing is on the last two series and those aren't episodes.
antdudeFeb 22, 2009
250 GB can be easily achieved within a month for high quality videos!
tendonutFeb 22, 2009
"isn't streaming just like cable tv pay-per-view"Yeah, except the whole..paying per view part.
happyscrappyFeb 22, 2009
Streaming isn't going to take over because of something Netflix does. The problem there is an awful selection of movies available for streaming. And the studios are doing this on purpose. They don't want to hurt sales and rental (online and disc) in favor of all-you-can-eat streaming. So they offer the same movies that are already available on an all-you-can-eat basis to the movie channels (HBO, Showtime, etc.) and pull them after a period of availability (like they do with HBO and Showtime where the movies are only shown for a month and then gone).If Hollywood wants to replace sales with all-you-can-eat streaming, the Netflix will be sitting pretty. But apparently they don't, so instead they'll just become the online equivalent to The Movie Channel, which is merely a supplement to purchases and rental, not a replacement for them.
happyscrappyFeb 22, 2009
What are you watching now? I have 18 BluRays in my Netflix queue and only one of them (Casablanca) is available to stream, let alone to stream in HD. You can't even watch Shrek the Third which is a piece of s**t and came out in 2007! How about Kill Bill Vol. 2? 2004 and not available.Anyone right now who says they have abandoned buying and renting discs in favor of streaming is an automatic write off to me. They've clearly are willing to give up a lot of selection and I'm not willing to do so.When streaming is viable in terms of selection, then we can go back and argue about quality, multichannel audio and bandwidth caps. Right now, it's no better than having HBO. Instead of getting to watch pretty much whatever you want, you get a small rotating selection each month.
lili009Feb 22, 2009
Streaming movies, albeit titles are not new and blockbuster hits, was what convinced me to return to Netflix. For under $10, it's a great deal! My husband and I have watched all previous seasons of Heroes by Netflix streaming---it was nice to watch one season without commercials and within one weekend. We've also watched some great independent and old movies. Netflix sure beats waiting for watching movies on cable with a lot of time-wasting commercials. We have Windows Media Player so we usually set the cable movies on record and when we watch them, we skip the commercials. Every once in a while though, we'll only get in on a movie in the middle and we have the option to go and look for it in Netflix to see the whole thing by streaming.