So, in Ady's ESB:R thread there was a discussion about whether Blu-Ray is on it's way out and will be replaced by streaming. I wanted to continue the debate without derailing Ady's thread.

My opinion is that physical formats are not on their way out and Blu-Ray is currently the best physical medium commercially available, so I expect it to stay a while. I think Blu-Ray is to DVD what LD was to VHS and LD was around for over 20 years.

I think Blu Ray will still be replaced by a better physical medium in a few years, rather than streaming, because the only problem with BD is that it's still got too much compression; 1080p is what many theatres use for digital projection on huge screens and it looks great, so I think that will always be enough for home presentation, at least in terms of content, but what will be needed is higher bitrate.

I watched Aliens on BD some time ago and the film was really grainy, as it well should be, but the compression algorithm couldn't quite cope with the grain and it often got pretty pixelated. I noticed the same effect to one degree or another in practically every film on BD, so I think if there's going to be a future format, rather than more resolution, it should add enough bitrate to accommodate lossless 1080p; and it will probably be a long long time before most people are able to stream a movie with a bitrate of lossless 1080p, while some physical media can already provide that now.

It's also owning a physical copy of the movie that's important to me and I'm sure many others, so I think physical media are not going anywhere for at least the next decade but probably longer.