Good-bye DVD & Blu-Ray

Are DVD’s and Blu-Rays going the way of floppy disks?  The decline has been coming for years, but new numbers are showing that 2012 could be the year that people refer back to as the year the DVD & Blu-Ray stopped being the norm.
Firstly, the research firm IHS is projecting that paid online viewing of movies and TV shows will, for the first time, exceed that of DVD’s and Blu-Ray combined (USA) in 2012.  Please note the word “paid” – this is content that people are paying to view (ie. Netflix, etc), not the free offerings like YouTube or all the illegal downloads.  I know that my own DVD purchasing has decreased significantly due to Netflix and what I can watch On-Demand from my cable company, and I never bought into the Blu-Ray ecosystem.  Canada may not achieve these same numbers at the same speed, but as we get more online viewing services we won’t be far behind.
Secondly, Microsoft released numbers yesterday that more time is being spent on the Xbox watching online video or playing online music than people playing online games.  What’s really interesting about this is that the number of hours of people playing online games has increased over last year, thus showing how much online viewing has grown in one year.
Thirdly, more and more laptops are becoming Ultra-books.  These are laptops that are incredibly thin and light – as popularized by Apple’s MacBook Air.  To achieve these thin and light Ultrabooks the main component that is removed is the DVD drive.  It is increasingly common for people to not only download all their music and movies online, but more software makers are offering all their product online.  Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 is implementing their own Marketplace to purchase software online – similar to the app stores currently available on all smartphones and Mac OS Mountain Lion.
Lastly, there are rumours that the new Xbox (2013?) will not have a DVD drive.  Instead consumers could get their new games either online or by loading their Xbox USB stick with a game by going to their local retail outlet which would have an Xbox kiosk where a game could be purchased and loaded onto their USB stick.
Good-bye DVD.  So long Blu-Ray.