I'm going to miss the DVD.

The humble 12cm disc in the form factor we've grown to love will one day leave us. Its a format that will eventually fall from the earth with a whimper, not a bang and will leave behind a loyal group of followers, afraid of a world without them.

Unlike VHS before it, people of my generation will yearn for a simpler time when you had to take down a disc from the shelf and insert it into a player. A short wait whilst the menu would load would provide ample time for one to make a cup of tea or even rescue some muffins from the oven. And from there, simplicity itself. Start the movie, select the chapter, view the extras.

I enjoy the ritual of scanning my shelves at home, looking through the collection of DVD's I've amassed to see if something is calling out to be watched. I buy DVD's several at a time. Probably 20% of my collection has not been watched. When I see something that interests me at the right price, I'll buy it and it will wait wrapped in plastic until I am ready to watch it. For some discs that may be a tram ride home, or for others, it may be more than a few years. ( I have a copy of rumble fish purchased for 11 dollars four years ago that remains unwatched.) The thought of not having a shelf full of media for my guests to peruse seems foreign to me.

Blu-ray, the supposed successor, though it may ultimately usurp DVD, but it just doesn't offer enough difference for the average consumer to migrate from the well worn DVD path. It has no radical new features, just outstanding video and audio quality. While this may convince the early adopters and the enthusiasts, a lot of people still have their DVD player hooked up via composite video. I'm still not sure that better picture and sound are an incentive enough to re-purchase my entire DVD collection.

The real future will be the digital download market. But we still have a long way to come. Storage needs to ramp up considerably (and I have no doubt it will) if you wish to amass a decent library of titles. And internet download quotas must ramp up considerably if you wish to watch more than a film a week.

So although the writing is on the wall for physical media, I'll remain faithful to my collection, long may it prosper. Eventually though I can see the day when there is no drive to insert my silver coloured circle into (tried buying a floppy disc drive lately?) and my only hope by then is that we have a decent system in place to backup all of those download.