boxee supports both downloading and streaming of content, so we don’t have a religious view as to which one is better.

some argue that with 100MB (or higher..) bandwidth to the home downloading will become obsolete, while others draw the complete opposite conclusion.

i think both methods of consuming content are here to stay.

for a streaming only world you need to be always connected (subways, trains, cars, rural areas, planes), for the bandwidth to be at least 30MB all the time, and for the bandwidth to be unlimited and priced reasonably. does not seem this is going to happen in the next 10yrs (i am not going to make any attempt of tech predictions beyond this time frame…)

for a download only world you need to not care about storage and for content providers to not care about paying for distributing their content to consumers who may never watch it. i think the latter is the bigger issue. it is more likely that content providers will look to optimize their delivery with P2P and multi-casting, or find other ways to minimize their distribution costs.

so i don’t think there will be a winner here. both methods of consumption will continue to thrive. on boxee i have access to thousands of videos over RSS. and they are all currently being streamed. if boxee would have downloaded each RSS feed i have access to, even my new Drobo with 3TB of storage would not have been enough.