The discussion of today's HDTV manufacturers, HD disc distributors, ISPs, online TV providers, disc delivery providers and disc player manufacturers continues to be, "what will people want in the future, Blu-ray discs or streaming content to their televisions." It is easy enough to say one or the other or both, but what causes this dilemma and why is the answer not clear cut.

Below I discuss both sides' arguments, both sides' weaknesses, why generational differences contribute so much, and why the money may not be the deciding factor as it usually is.

But first I need to describe what I mean by both. Blu-Ray is the newest form of physical media distributed and sold in stores that consumers purchase or rent to watch at home. Former physical media includes Beta, VHS, and DVD. Blu-Ray has the ability to carry 1080p video and lossless audio codecs bringing a home experience as close to the movie theater experience as possible. Streaming is a much more convenient method of distributing video as selections can be made without prior decision making or going to the store. Streaming can be done several different ways, but for the sake of this discussion I will speak of "on demand streaming" where a hard disc somewhere (usually off-site) stores the information and transmits it to the viewing location via the internet.

The disagreements about which will be the future have only come about recently because streaming content has only become a legitimate source of material in the last few years. While YouTube began several years ago, it was not and still is yet to be a convincing method of watching TV programs that you missed. YouTube has been a method of watching home video, as the bandwidth needed to deliver low resolution highly compressed video is much easier than high resolution compression techniques.

DVDs have been selling missed seasons of television shows as well as missed movies for years, but the future of the DVD for physical media seems to be diminishing, and the next technology seems to have been established, and that is Blu-Ray. The format war was decided between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD back in January 2008, as movie studios sided for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD quickly began to become obsolete. Streaming in January was very limited, as HULU did not launch until March of 2008 and VUDU until April of 2008.

So, which will be our future? To take the easy way out I will give the most obvious answer. Both. It is already beginning to shake out this way from the Blu-Ray drive manufacturers. The newest Blu-Ray players are including Netflix Watch It Now streaming capabilities, meaning the player can play Blu-Ray, DVD, and streaming content. Netflix is one of the first models of online streaming by subscription. Amazon on Demand is another. These two take different models of the pay-to-stream system, Netflix streaming anything they have available to stream on a monthly subscription basis. Amazon does it through a pay-per-view basis.

The difference between the two that will cause the answer to be both can often be determined through generational differences. The younger generations enjoy watching television, playing games, and listening to music through convenient methods, iPods, Portable game systems and computer screens. While these are valid methods of watching these, there is a significant difference between they way they reproduce the content compared to the older generations methods. The convenient methods compress, downsize, and convert the content to the smallest size possible so it can fit on small pieces of equipment. The older generations watch television, movies, and listen to music on HDTVs through Blu-Ray players, DVD players, CD players through large amps inside stereo receivers. This takes much more space, but produces a much better end result. HDTVs show the finest pictures, deliver surround sound in 5.1 or 7.1 packages, produce the sound in codecs such as Dolby TruHD and DTS HD, lossless codecs which reproduce the sound as it was originally produced.

The argument comes down to do you want convenience or quality? When you purchase music, do you buy it digitally or do you purchase a disc? If you know a movie that you want to see is coming to the theater, do you go to the theater or pay attention to when it will be available elsewhere. When you watch television, do you take particual care to see if it is available in HD or do you settle with what you get? Have you converted every CD you have to your iTunes account, or do you still own some vinyl? Have you watched television or a movie on your computer or iPod, or do you wait until you can watch it on the TV. Usually the answer to these questions can also answer which generation you belong to, and that generational determination can often determine whether you will be a "streamer" or a "disc buyer."

Myself, I go to great extremes to get the best quality video and sound that I can. I refuse to settle for convience at the cost of quality. I spend extra on quality speakers, I spend the extra several hundred dollars on the HDTV with a better video processor (but often the same technical specifications on the box).

If you can classify yourself one way or the other, you will very likely understand the difference. If you use both methods, depending on where you are, then you may also enforce the opinion of both. If you have a differing opinion with me, let me know.

Jeremy Sauer