Nooooooooooooooooo I still like my disks.
There are still plenty of places in the US that do not have any real internet and need to use disks.
No. Unless the world's infrastructure is truly upgraded to handle way more data than it already is, no.
Currently in the US, it is quite literally cheaper, not to mention faster, to purchase an 8TB HDD, load it up full of data, and mail it to someone. While this is an extreme example, the same can be said about DVDs, Blu-Ray and CDs.
Not everyone in first world countries have access to first world internet.
I live in Australia and came from a country town where we received satellite internet at a rate of around 350kb/s max speed and 1500ms+ latency. We had a data cap of 15gb and peer to peer is disabled completely. We go over our data cap and we are throttled to 20kb/s. Websites like youtube are throttled.
I can safely assume that there are many many places around first world countries that are the same. And I don't think this situation will change for many years. And for that reason we will not see complete abandonment of physical media until it is certain that a country can supply digital media to everyone that wants it
It's clear from the discussion so far that infrastructure in most of the world is lacking. The question of content availability remains. Do people on the street have the knowledge of how to access digital content in a non-pirated way (i.e. where the content creators get paid for their efforts)?
A few months back, I read an article that claimed that in the UK you have to subscribe to something like 26 different services to get the 500 most popular movies. I have to emphasize that's for the most popular movies, not obscure indie ones. I can only imagine the number of services required for the next 500. Can most people handle that kind of fragmentation?
In my experience, most people with access to content through a legitimate service start to look for content there (e.g. Netflix/Hulu for streaming TV and movies or iTunes/Google Play/Amazon for more downloadable things). If they can't find it on there they do a Google search. It's usually something along the lines of "watch X online." The things that come up where you live, are they legitimate websites or is it mostly pirated content?
Last year I did everything in my power to go "physical media" free.
I bought all my movies through digital download, magazines, comic books, music, video games, etc.
I came up short despite my best efforts.
My daughter has a Nintendo Wii U and 3DS and my wife begged me for a few movies and TV series on blu-ray. So I ended up buying a few Nintendo games for my daughter and blu-rays for my wife.
I would say we managed to go about 95%.
There are things about digital downloads that I find a pain! The DRM is a huge bugbear with me! When you buy a CD or DVD, you can use it in any player. However, (from what I understand and my experience with Apple), digital downloads can only be used on one machine pretty much! I no longer use Apple and yet I have several episodes of Stargate Atlantis, Cloverfield & I am legend which I paid good money for but which are now just sitting on an old external Western Digital drive that is sitting in the front room gathering dust.
The general idea of Digital downloads is a good one, but the DRM is very restrictive!
@Damon_Breckheimer1 I have planned on going "physical media" free like you... But we are a long way IMHO from the ideal solution!