Whither Blu?

Via the estimable Digital Bits, I am directed towards the following enlightening piece about Blu-Ray: 9 Reasons Blu-Ray Will Succeed, by David Carnoy.

An excerpt:

I can't see Time Warner and other cable Internet providers suddenly delivering more bandwidth anytime soon (if anything, my connection seems to have gotten worse in recent months). DSL is even worse in a lot of cases--unless you're willing to pay ridiculous rates for top-of-the-line bandwidth offerings, which are usually geared toward businesses not consumers. And there's also plenty of talk about ISPs throttling back on bandwidth to police illegal downloads of music and yes, movie and TV shows.

The incoming Obama administration is reportedly going to be offering incentives to providers for building out broadband offerings and increasing bandwidth (eventually, anyway). Whether that has any impact or not, I still think we're a good 3-5 years away before the pipes really get fat enough for many of these IPTV/ streaming video services to reach their full potential and move from niche to mainstream status. In that time prices for both Blu-ray players and discs will look a lot like what you see today on their DVD brethren (see reasons #4 and #5).

I recently pulled the plug on the cable, mostly because I have Netflix and I can't justify the extra $60 a month for a bunch of channels neither I nor my girlfriend watch.

Streaming tech is one of the other reasons; the downgraded quality is the trade-off you're forced to accept for a large amount of free content (see here and here, for starters), but as the kinks get worked out it will only improve.

As for Blu-Ray, I'm sure I'll make the transition sooner or later, but I have to wonder what they're cooking up to eventually supplant it. Ten years from now, it'll be some new format that makes Blu look like dirt.