Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has a far reaching vision for the future of home entertainment-- one revealed at the Wall Street Journal's WSJD event to include "pharmacological" alternatives. Pills, in other words.
"Movies & TV shows will be like the opera & the novel," Hastings says. "There will be substitutes." What kind of substitutes? A "pill that entertains you" is one such example, although there is no indication Netflix plans to substitute media streaming servers with chemistry sets, at least for now.
Of course, talk of entertainment drugs is pure science fiction-style speculation, even if human history is rife with the imbibing in weird substances in the search for the ultimate high. However, putting talk of drugs aside, installers still need to keep an eye out for the future. After all, the situation can change at any moment's notice, and it wasn't too long ago that VHS was the media format of choice before it was replaced by DVDs and Blu-rays. And even then, streaming media appears set to kill physical media, or at least further limit sales.