[Terpfen]

No offense, but this was exactly the reasoning in the board rooms of BMG, Universal, Sony, and the other RIAA members around 10 years ago when the MP3 format first started taking off. It was certainly true for 1997 when a 10GB drive, no CD burner and dial-up were the norm, but technology makes such predictions look bad very quickly.

I agree, but I was talking about the current situation and the foreseeable future. I have trouble believing streaming media will ever catch on with things the way they are:

* People want to own, not rent, content
* Most of the traffic on the Internet comes from Bittorrent clients, botnets, spam, and viruses
* Storage on the scale necessary for companies to hold decades worth of 1080p content at multiple sites across the country is prohibitively expensive (though this will change in a couple of years)

Basically, I don't see streaming media coming anywhere near the neighborhood of viable for a long time, if ever.

Why on earth would he need to distribute through Comcast?

Because, under the proposed scenarios, streaming content would be delivered through companies like Comcast, AT&T, Time-Warmer, etc directly to PCs and TVs through the Internet.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

I have trouble believing streaming media will ever catch on with things the way they are:

* People want to own, not rent, content

I agree - I didn't mean to imply that I think streaming video is the future of video distribution. Digital download is, with the ability for the consumer to archive his purchase and to use it on multiple devices.