Even though Blu-ray has won the battle of formats, that doesn't mean it's going to win the war. Most likely, its win won't even be of benefit all that long, because in the future we will not use physical discs to hold our movies--in the future we will receive our movies through digital downloads.

This is not a revelation to those who are studying the situation. In fact, Warner Bros. is expecting for downloaded content to overtake discs rather quickly.

Netflix began getting ready for the future by starting its "Watch It Now" feature last year. And now Amazon has its own video download service.

According to the Digital Entertainment Group, spending on high-definition discs, both purchase and rental, decreased last year to $23.7 billion from its peak of $24.5 billion in 2004.

Certainly, everyone is very quickly going to get tired of switching formats--it becomes a big expense, and it's pretty redundant to have copies of movies in more than one format. Many people already have a few of the same titles in DVD and HD DVD--and even VHS.

The biggest problem people come across in downloading video entertainment is of course bandwidth. Download speeds are increasing quickly, though, with Comcast, for instance, promising 100 megabits per second by 2009.