So I saw the full-screen video examples the other week using the new Flash 9 update, but the example at the end of this post really pricked my attention.

I went out and got a HD TV a couple of months ago because I figured it was time to make “the leap”. As yet I don’t think I’ve made any sort of decent use out of that particular feature apart from watching some Lost s3 over the wifi via a ye olde xbox-1 with media center (convergence is beautiful). Now I’m a firm believer that this whole Blu-Ray, HD-DVD thing is a flash in the pan; a very temporary stop-gap. The last time I bought a physical CD was probably 5 years ago. The last time I bought a DVD, probably a couple of weeks. Why? Because until now only Apple and two companies in the U.S. only have offered full movie downloads in any sort of reasonable, legal manner.

Now we -and it’s up to you to define “we”- have pretty much unlimited hard disk space, especially when it is hosted by someone like Google, and of course a fairly fast connection to the internet. So why on Earth are we still buying films on physical media. Apple’s solution is ok, but I’m not sure I can access it in the UK yet, regardless the quality is pretty poor at 640×480. So where do we go from here…

I for one would be extremely happy to pay a good price for the latest movies, maybe a flat rate yearly subscription, if they came in the sort of quality that Flash 9 is now offering. Check out this example from Fabio Sonnati for one. No noticeable buffering, glorious high-def fullscreen video. If the rate is low enough, forget hoarding a collection of space hogging DVDs, let’s have an enormous collection of online up to date movies to dip into.

Here is that example again (1024 x 576).