lordjedi said:
Ziz said:
The "next generation" of media player is already here - flash memory cards. It's a matter of waiting for cost vs. capacity to come down. That's the ideal "player" when you think about it - no moving parts to break down.

Yeah, but the cost for the amount of storage is insane. A "media player" of any size is going to need a terabyte or more of disc space. Flash memory cards aren't anywhere near that size yet and they won't be for the foreseeable future.

I think he meant "media player" being a device in which you insert a flash card containing a movie, not a mass storage device containing your whole library.

Still, you're right. 32GB SD cards go for ~$150. It'll be a decade or more before flash reaches the cost effectiveness of manufacturing Blu-ray discs. The read speeds aren't anywhere fast enough yet to handle Blu-ray bitrates either.

Downloads and HD on demand are much more likely to end up being the long-term solution, as much as I hate to admit it. As a collector, I enjoy maintaining my own library and would miss owning the physical media. I think that's what I miss most about laserdiscs...the sheer physicality of those big discs, movie poster artwork, and liner notes. But at the end of the day, it's the presentation of the film itself that matters most, so if I can get Blu-ray quality (true 1080p video and 7.1 lossless audio) from a download service, I could deal with it.

Anybody hear of Vudu? I'm considering it as an alternative to cable seeing as my only use of cable these days is watching HD movies.

http://www.vudu.com/product_hdx.html