The rumors of Blu-ray's death are greatly exaggerated {Engadget HD}

Dec 28th 2008 12:51AM One item no one seems to discuss when it comes to HD media coming from the internet is the ISPs. Specifically, the little discussed, but increasingly popular concept, of bandwidth caps. Time Warner Cable's High Speed Internet is currently conducting a test of this in the Beaumont, TX market. Their fastest connection, 22mbs, has a bandwidth cap of only 40gb/month. That means once you've downloaded 40gb, either your internet shuts down or you pay an outrages per megabyte overage charge. (Like cell phone minutes) With your average Blu-ray movie using more than 20gb, and as high as 40gb, you could burn an entire months worth of internet watching a single HD movie. I believe much of this has to do with the increased internet traffic overloading the coax cable supplying the connection. When FiOS becomes more common this may not be an issue, but it took 50 years to lay all the coax cable currently used. So, who knows how long it will be before FiOS has widespread availability.

The other issue I think of is why is 5 years till bluray is replaced such a bad thing? Consdier that in 1997 DVD was first released in the U.S. and didn't get mainstream popularity until early 2000. So essentially DVD has existed for a little over a decade but only been popular for around 8 years. Bluray format was finalized in 2004 and is now starting to see popularity. Sure other formats are in research and development, but remember that the blue laser optical format was first tested in 2000. Just as DVD's were becoming popular. Considering the pace of technological advancements, a 5 to 10 year span of popularity is expected. Just as the lifespan of the next media will probably also be replaced just as quickly.

My point is, a person could say that I'm not paying for something that is going to be replaced in 10 years, and those people are probably still watching black and white 12 inch TV's with an analog antenna on the roof.