Janskeet said:
I don't know what the data transfer rate to watch movies in real time is but for a 20 Mb connection you maybe close to watching standard DVD movies in real time with little or no lag. I'm looking forward to the time when you can watch movies online because I hate renting them, they're always scratched, it's too expensive to buy every movie you watch, and the red box only carries movies from like up to a year ago. A lot of people are starting to post movies on youtube and the quality sucks but at least it is free and with my 4.7/640 DSL I can watch youtube videos in standard quality with no lag.

20 Mb is more than enough for a SD DVD with no lag. DVD maxes out around 10 Mbps. Blu-ray maxes out at 40. It's not going to be 5 to 10 years for the technology to catch up. Maybe 5 years tops.

If the studios do start offering HD streaming video, you can bet your ass that they'll have huge pipes serving the content. Think multiple 10 Gb connections. There's no other way they could serve that amount of data in a reasonable fashion. And that's assuming the studios are even the ones that do the setup. It's far more likely that the studios will make deals with Verizon, TimeWarner, and Comcast to serve HD movies over that existing infrastructure. We already have HD on demand for movies that are PPV and Netflix has a set top box that you can use to stream those rentals right to your TV now too.

I dream of the day when I can watch a brand new movie (I mean brand new in theaters) directly either from my cable box or from a Netflix (or similar) account. I'd be willing to pay about $5-$10 to be able to do that. That way I wouldn't have to worry about a baby sitter, some dork on a cell phone, or anything else. I could watch from the comfort of my couch.

Verizons FiOS is definitely capped right now. Fiber can easily reach speeds over 1 Gb. As the Internet backbone infrastructure is upgraded, your speed will slowly be increased.