I just watched Air Force One on it. A really dumb, but mindlessly fun, action movie. Didn't cost me a thing, because I have Netflix, and I watched it on Netflix's streaming service—in HD, on my 50-inch HDTV, with surround sound, because AppleTV does that for me.
I'd been looking for the movie on DVD, because one of my kids loves it. I could only find it in 4:3 (non-widescreen) and so never bought it.
Now I never will buy it. Because it's . . . out there. In the cloud. Anytime I want it. (In widescreen HD and surround sound.) And my kid can access it too, where he lives, through my Netflix account.
Also out there is all of the new Doctor Who, and great episodes of the old one, and all of Farscape, and all of Babylon 5, and all of Firefly, and tons of old BBC miniseries, and tons of great movies. Anytime I want to watch them. No extra charge (minimum cost for this service from Netflix, which includes one DVD at a time, is $9 per month).
And, I can only see the selection getting better. Plus, the AppleTV gives me access to the Apple Store and rentals there (lots of TV series and recent movies)—plus anything I can access through my computer, which I can stream to the TV through the AppleTV. YouTube, Hulu, Comcast, name it.
The time's coming, and very soon, when DVDs will be as archaic as videotapes.
This has NOT been a Netflix commercial. This has been an I told you so, because this particular science fiction writer predicted this twenty years ago. Not, unfortunately, in print, only to my family; but I did. And here it is. And here we are.
So there.
![nana :nana:](./images/smilies/icon_nana.gif)