"Good Enough Revolution

Blu-ray may have won the war with its rival, HD-DVD--but does anyone care? While consumers were waiting for the two formats to duke it out--nobody wanted to plunk down several hundred bucks on a losing technology--they discovered that downloading movies to their homes has matured into a great way to watch their favorite titles. A Harris Interactive poll in June found that only 7 percent of consumers without Blu-ray players planned on buying one in the next year. What's holding back a format that everyone agrees is showstoppingly gorgeous to watch? Money is a big part of it, of course. Getting video over the Internet through iTunes or Amazon Video on Demand can be much cheaper than purchasing physical copies. Sometimes the value is truly insane: all it costs to binge out on seasons one, two, and three of Friday Night Lights is $8.99. That's the price of the cheapest monthly subscription to Netflix, which allows unlimited streaming of some shows and movies to your PC, or to your big screen if you own an Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, newer TiVo, or a similar device.

Yes, a Blu-ray disk provides better quality picture and sound. But as Wired magazine argued in a recent cover story, consumers are enjoying a "Good Enough Revolution": we're nuts about MP3s, even if they sound kind of crappy, and we can't watch enough YouTube clips, even though they're pixellated and choppy. The feverish pursuit of top quality is no longer our only concern. Sometimes convenience matters more.