I guess Microsoft is still reeling about losing the HD format war to Sony! tbh, I think everyone knows that video streaming is the future and not physical disks. I give the format two years.
I have several Blu-Ray discs, but I've loaned them (and my PS3) to my parents until I get around to getting a BD drive for my Linux box. I do miss watching video in 720p, though; interlaced DVD is unpleasant, to say the least.
Hulu and boxee would be nice for some things, if the streaming servers for baseball games wouldn't get bogged down, or something causes a stutter or pause as bandwidth runs thin.
Also, I get poor cell signal in my new ground-floor apartment, so my $80/mo cell bill providing service to my smartphone isn't doing me any good. I switched to using Google Voice for the time being, but that doesn't well if something's hogging bandwidth. (Just because I can rate control going out, doesn't mean I can rate control what's trying to come in from the other side of that pipe.)
I wired my apartment to avoid wifi noise, but 6Mb/s DSL just isn't good enough for some common network multitasking activities. DOCSIS in apartment contexts is a horrible choice; you quickly get too many people on the same loop. VDSL may or may not be available; tech says one thing after a test, phone company's system says another. With VDSL, though, I'll get tied to a crap router with a built-in 802.1x identifying key, so I can't use my own setup.
Rate control of what's trying to come in from the other side of the pipe is half the point of putting voip traffic in its own QOS class. (The other half being rate control of data going out.) You may not be able to for some reason, but any good QOS system should let you do that.
So your comment sounds particularly naive, in this part of the world.
Things have a long way to go before a majority of westerners have access to solid, reliable 10Mbps connections.
Clearly you do not.
My connection is somewhat above the surveyed "average" speeds and stability for the UK, as frequently reported in the media here. One such story puts the average true throughput of a 10-12Mbps DSL connection at around 3.3Mbps: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitaltv/news/a251311/uks-avera... .. As mine is usually around 5-6Mbps (though dropping to 2-3 at peak, sometimes) my connection is, I believe, "reasonably good" by national standards.
Yes, I can. It is an absolute measure. Yours may well be well above the average for the region or even the nation, but it is still not good. Mind, slightly tongue-in-cheek since estimating actual required level of service is a bit tricky. I meant it mostly in the sense of "do not let the telcos tell you that is 'good enough'".
Personally, I would put the "reasonably good" barrier for this day and age at about 20/10Mbps. (I pay about 40€ for a nominal 100Mbps - which, in a quick test right now, gives me 24/13Mbps to/from the UK, over Wi-Fi LAN).
Even if you assume "everyone [and that's 1/3 the country] still on dial-up is such a late-adopter they're not even interested in HD yet", a lot of that broadband is less than 1 Mbps. And many broadband consumers have monthly bandwidth caps.
People with >1Mbps uncapped broadband is probably too small of a market to make purely digital distribution viable.
The latter part of your statement is true. They're not wiring up rural areas. However, I live in a neighborhood that doesn't have a home newer than 30 years and am receiving AT&T U-Verse, 20Mbps down (and consistent).
I don't believe the future is in shiny discs. The near-future probably isn't in exclusive streaming video, but the longer term likely is. We're a few technological break-thrus away, perhaps, but for what my opinion is worth... I believe it'll get there.