Will physical media die because we care more about convenience than quality?

For most people it seems near enough is good enough when it comes to sound and picture quality. I’m amazed at how many people think that Blu-ray is dead because you can download HD movies from iTunes. The same goes for CDs, with people favouring digital downloads.

I’ll concede that most people can’t tell the difference between a 256 Kbps AAC rip and the original CD, even if they’re listening via decent speakers. But it doesn’t take a videophile to see the difference between Blu-ray and a HD download on a decent television, particularly the horrid black crush in some online content which sees all the darkest shades of grey turned to black so you lose detail in the shadows.

Part of the problem is that many cheap and nasty LCD televisions suffer from the same black crush problem. So if you’re satisfied with a terrible television you won’t even be able to see the difference between a good and bad picture. As for music, most people don’t listen with decent speakers or headphones so they wouldn’t appreciate better sound quality anyway.

Few people seem to care about the impact of squeezing content into mobile devices or stretching it across the internet. Even I’m guilty of this at times. Once the unwashed masses get a taste of NBN-style broadband access the optical disc will be living on borrowed time. Urban digital hipsters will tell you the optical disc is already dead but I think they’re jumping the gun. I still think it will take a generation to die away, as qualityphiles cling to their optical discs as they do their vinyl collection.