This is not a thought that had occurred to me, myself.

If you’ve been here a while, you already know that I went on an extended diatribe a while back about how streaming wouldn’t kill DVD in under five years for a whole panoply of reasons.  In case you’re new, you can find that article right here.  But one wrinkle I hadn’t thought of that I just read about is that streaming video just might kill off Blu-ray.

See, here’s the interesting part.  Streaming video is on par with Blu-ray in terms of quality.  Most of the people who would be interested in Blu-ray technology are early adopters, and most early adopters live in urban settings where they’re most likely to be able to get their hands on the new stuff. They’re also most likely to have the highest speeds of internet access available, and without download restrictions or limitations.

Thus, the people most interested in Blu-ray technology are also the people most likely to be interested and have the necessary infrastructure available to engage in streaming video.  Now why would you get a Blu-ray disk delivered to you, or buy one, when you can simply stream the content directly to your TV?

I can’t think of a reason either.  Meanwhile, the people who are the least interested in Blu-ray are enjoying their DVD libraries, not caring about Blu-ray, and couldn’t get streaming if they wanted it anyway.

So this just might be the end of the format wars.