Blu-Ray's place in a movie download world

So Toshiba have announced they are going to terminate manufacture of HD DVD players. So the HD format war is pretty much over with Blu-Ray left standing. The future for digital downloads looks even more brighter and could even kill Blu-Ray, but not yet.

Our generation is now pretty much accustomed to downloading at the click of a mouse button.
This generation has nearly already abandoned CD’s, and physical media like DVDs and Blu-ray is inevitably next.

However, there are many people who buy DVDs by the millions and will likely buy Blu-Ray now that HD wars are over as generations before bought VHS. Substantial generations have grown up with physical media, and this isn’t about to change tomorrow.

Another aspect of why buying Blue-Ray won't disspear quickly is that many people do not want to watch movies on their computer and prefer to watch movies on their TV sets. I'm also in this way of thinking as my HD TV is a better experience that on my 17 inch Macbook Pro, although the TV set can't easily come to bed with me!

There are ways of brining digital downloads to TV sets, but none have anywhere near the penetration yet to offer a serious alternative to DVD and Blu-Ray. Apple is now offering HD movie downloads via their Apple TV box, but try and find more than a handful of people who own an Apple TV. Others offer a similar service such as Vudu, and there’s even Microsoft Media Center, and yet none are mainstream. Until such time net or network enabled devices become mainstream, TV and physical media will retain the upper hand.

There are also current Broadband limitations with many providers considering capping downloads on internet plans. The problem going forward is the days of cheap unlimited internet access may well be coming to an end as more and more download video and use P2P services.
The low cost of bandwidth itself was a historical quirk that came about due to the first dot com bubble. That extra remnant capacity is being used now, and the costs of increasing capacity will likely be passed on to consumers. If this means more capped internet plans that immediately puts a constraint on the amount of video that can be downloaded.

Outside of the United States this is already the case with capped plans in many countries, restraining potential growth in downloads (simply users will only be able to download so much content.)

Combine this with the need for high speed internet access that isn’t universally available.
Digital video will not become dominant where it takes hours, sometimes days to download, when users can simply rent or buy the title on physical media.

I’m all for the supremacy of digital downloads allowing streaming content from any computer in the house or NAS drive to main TV set or Apple TV. But people who have these gadgets in their home are in the vast minority. Blu-Ray will likely be the last big mainstream physical media technology ever and it will have a strong future. The various factors needed for mainstream digital downloading and viewing will eventually combine to finally kill Blu-Ray (and the domination of all physical media) sometime between 2010 and 2020.