The VHS tape had a pretty spectacular run -- over 20 years in the mainstream consumer electronics arena. With the advent of popular and cheap DVD players in the late 1990s, VHS started losing its appeal for most consumers. With $150 DVD recorders now in the mainstream, there is very little reason to own a VCR these days. But with the advent of digital files that just fly from Internet servers to iPods and other devices, are DVDs destined to live a shorter life than the VHS tape?

Although recent standards like HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will only find a niche audience most likely (DVDs look so good to the rest of us, you know), it's hard to imagine that a physical medium like the DVD will go away. DVD players are everywhere, and even recent moves from companies like Apple -- and even the agreement Apple has with Wal-Mart that will let Wal-Mart shoppers buy "digital movie tickets" that can be redeemed for online movie purchases and downloads -- won't cause DVD sales to just plummet overnight.

I agree with this article that states the need for a physical medium will almost always exist. The experience a DVD provides is first rate these days (except that too much non-control is given to the customer, argh), and duplicating that on a streaming platform of download does not exist. Sure, there will be large niche audiences that want to embrace non-DVD entertainment -- but for the rest of us who share DVDs, don't have a huge movie library on demand from our cable, Internet or satellite provider or course, the DVD and the DVD rental store still fit the bill quite nicely -- and will for quite a while.