But rentals did lead to the closing of many, many local theaters, and led to the current system of monolithic cinema houses that infrequently gobble each other up like fat, lazy slugs. So if past trends hold in this instance, all US citizens will eventually have to go to the same 92349723597-screen multimultimultiplex located in Kansas to see any movie in theater.

Criswell predicts!

It's not going to kill the theater, but it will take a fair share of customers away from it.

Nothing in my eyes beats big screen appeal, but there are some people that aren't like me, that given the right circumstances they would never even go to a theater.

That and the movie makers would have to make a major change and deliver a movie right to broadband distribution, which isn't going to happen.

Movies to me are more about being with friends and having a good time, than the actual movie itself.

VHS, DVD and i would assume Blu-ray did have an effect on the movie theater industry. Broadband won't kill it, i don't think anything can kill it, but it will take another chunk out of it.

You had very good ears for a 1-year-old.

I kid, I kid. In fact, my kidding is so great that I will instead be just +1'ing you. I clearly remember local moviehouses that weren't attached to malls or didn't have at least five screens either going under or switching to film porn (the death of which VHS definitely is responsible for) and then soon after going under.

However: Speaking of porn and video formats going the way of the dodo, wasn't Blu-Ray supposed to die because Sony and Disney wouldn't allow porn on the format? I saw a lot of conventional wisdom from the VHS/Beta war go out the window on HD-DVD/Blu-Ray, and I imagine the same could be said for on-demand broadband. I still agree with bean, however, in that broadband will kill brick-and-mortar video rental stores, or at least make it so that only Blockbuster and the random suicidally-motivated private businessperson will have storefront video rental. I do not think that NetFlix will be seriously affected for a while, if at all. It doesn't seem like the competition from Blockbuster on share of the mailbox video rental has slowed NetFlix down too much. Rah rah low overhead, I guess.

Or television, for that matter. Though I wasn't around for that one.

I was just reading about this somewhere; I'll see if I can find an article. To sum up, though, porn is allowed on Blu-Ray, but the future of that genre is really broadband distribution.

Amazon is on board.

You know how I solved my Blu-Ray/HDDVD/PS3/360/Wii dilemma? I bought them all.

Fanboy looking to stir shit up "Hey. Blonde, brunette, or red heads?"

King of the Assholes "Yes"

Teary eyed fanboy "Fu...fuck you"

I can't wait until redheads stop being supported by developers.

When the price drops, I'm buying them all.

As soon as I get around to buying a PS3 (which, really, is just going to take 2 or 3 decent exclusives I'm actually interested in, which hopefully will someday arrive) this will be pretty awesome to me. I don't see much point in actually owning a copy of a movie at this point, what with netflix being so insanely affordable and convenient. And at this point, there's no extra charge for blu-ray over dvd rentals... Seems like an entirely positive development. I don't understand why people seem to WANT new technology to fail.

Who is saying the want it to fail?

Jerks, that's who.

Hell, I'm still waiting for some new releases for my Betamax...still waiting...
You know, it's kind of funny, when my parents moved out of state, i was stuck with all of their old crap- including two vintage VCR's...
After employing a local company to use a forklift and a crane, I got them both placed in the living room, I hooked them up, and then tried playing them...The Beta machine fired up and worked well, though my most recent tape was ET...The 250# VHS machine tipped over on it's obsolete LaserDisc Player stand, fell over, and briefly caught fire...so I just put the tape in my VCR, at which point I got to watch what we all were used to before digital...the BETA tape actually played back well, the VHS, was, well, a good reason to switch to digital media....
P.S. I still own LP's, and play them, though my cassette tapes, well, have committed suicide...

Aside from Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, there isn't a damn thing on that console that should compel you to buy it over a 360. I use it primarily as a Blu-Ray player and after buying 3:10 To Yuma, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and The Getaway (McQueen, I'm sticking with Netflix until the prices on those discs drop.

The PS3 is one hell of a media device though and after using the 360 for years it's nice not having to deal with the bullshit lag associated with...every...single...thing...you do in the menus and blades is a joke because Microsoft has to verify everything through Live.

Get a PS3 as soon as you can swing it. It has built in Wi-Fi so updating the Blu-Ray codecs is seamless, you can use fucking laptop hard drives to upgrade the internal storage (whereas the 360 makes you pay nearly $200 for their proprietary bullshit) so that's going to come in handy when Sony stops dicking around and begins offering HD flicks through their online network.

I don't think brick and mortar rental stores are going to last long enough for broadband to kill them. Online rental services like Netflix are already more than capable of doing that job. I haven't even been in a brick and mortar video store (except to look for used videogames) since first subscribing.