I don't know that either will win. As mentioned earlier, so many people buy an hdtv and hook up their dvd player and think, "hey, I've got hdtv". Everything I've read indicates that most people sit too far from their screen to tell a difference between standard definition and hi-def, so it should be interesting. I think most Americans are more about convenience now. They went to cd's and dvd's because you didn't have to rewind anymore. But then look at mp3 players. You actually take a hit in quality, but it is far more convenient than lugging around a case of cds, and average everyday joe can't tell a difference anyways. I think that compressed video is where things will go. As long as a movie looks good enough that it is comparable in quality to a current dvd (as most americans did appreiciate the quality difference between vhs and dvd), I think people will prefer a hard drive based player where they simply click the movie they want to watch, and it plays. This is of course if the movie industry learns what it appears the music industry is slowly learning, and just accept the fact that pirating will exist and just sell the stupid movies. However, drm appears to be rearing its ugly head for physical disks, so I don't know that this will provide a benefit over downloadable media or not. I'd imagine that in 3 years, it won't be that unusual to have a 50-100 mbps internet connection, which should be fast enough to stream a movie. In my opinion, moving to a new physical medium for movies is almost as pointless as moving to a new physical medium for music. Most people just can't see that much difference in the quality, and convenience is more important.
Edit:
I state compressed video but I realize current video is compressed, but I guess I mean that the size of the video file will become more important so that hard drive / flash drive based players can be used in place of removable media.
