Tickle, perhaps if you hadn't purchased "over 1000 DVDs," you'd be able to afford more than slow DSL. I don't know many people who can't afford broadband (musicians and aspiring actors, maybe), and I know even fewer who refuse to let go of VHS. They'd have to either be 80 years old or just indignantly stubborn. I think you'll find as compression algorithms continue to evolve and bandwidth becomes cheaper for content owners, we'll begin to see a slow migration toward the death of physical media. It's just a couple more steps past on-demand cable television-- which is already here.

While you may get increased bandwidth and such, there are a lot of advantages of DVDs, or any type of storage like that, over getting data from the internet.

First of all, it is optical, which means if you store it, it will not decay like magnetic media. Also, the internet is not always up. Sometimes you lose connections and that is not going to change in the near term. Also, some people do not need to spend money on more expensive connections like broadband. For a lot of people the extra money is important, and if they don't need it, they will not pay for it. Consider developing countries, for example, where broadband is not even going to be available for a lot of people.

Also, how would this work, this downloading to hard disk? You pay to view it each time? Or, you just download it to your hard disk and pay for it one time. Obviously, the second is not going to be attractive if you watch something a lot, whereas the latter presents issues as you upgrade machines. The average person does not want to be bothered with moving all this from one machine to another.

What about people that have typical DVDs sitting on their TVs and don't want to be bothered with computers and downloading? A lot of people are allergic to computers, and don't want to be bothered with the "complexity" of them. Nevermind they are simple, they are not perceived that way.

This sounds like the same arguments we heard before about books becoming obsolete and paperless offices. It presents the world in an idealized state and leaves out its imperfections and the human equation. I hate reading on a computer, and like reading books, for example. The paperless office never happened, and it never will. Unless we find something better than paper to write on.

Also, some people use DVDs to back up data. This is great because it lasts longer. What do you use instead? Hmmm, a tape drive? Yeah, sure. So, you'd have to replace the DVD with another backup form, and also create something for transporting data without a LAN connection. Unless you put the OS in ROM, what do you load it with?

I don't see DVDs going anywhere.

Now, how about Bill Gates caring about the consumer? Since when? Everything he does, or close to it, is anti-consumer and monopolistic. This is not opinion, look at how many lawsuits they have lost and been forced to take corrective action on. He is entirely disingenous and deceptive, and thrives on inveiglement by confusing the brainless masses that thinks he is some great visionary. Most people forget his great success was buying an operating system that IBM chose for its PC. Lady Luck was smiling on him.

He is obviously choosing a format that competes with Sony, to make the Playstation 3 less competitive and desirable, to help the X-Box. Big mystery there. Bill Gates would say anything and do anything if he felt it would help sell his products, and obviously backing Blu-Ray would help the Playstation 3. So, what else would he do? Of course he backs the competition. Then he rationalizes it with some rubbish, and hopes that people believe it.