No more downloads?

As companies rush to offer pay-for-download services (see Microsoft, Apple, Sony, et al), I've always been thinking about the potential for downloadable movies for your TV, home entertainment systems where you could download popular albums before hosting a big party, video games that you purchase online and download to your system, pushing aside CD and DVD games. But maybe I'm thinking the wrong way?

The most recent Economist published their "Technology Quarterly," and I couldn't help but read an article about the phone of the future. The magazine concedes predicting the future of gadgets is easiest for the next year, harder when the time-frame is a few years, and nearly impossible for a decade from now. But that didn't stop them from dreaming. . .

. . .about storage space that is so small, lightweight, and yet with so much capacity that every song ever created could be embedded on a chip, put in every phone/PDA/whatever, and then shipped from the factory. Then, when users wanted to purchase a song, their phone would simply "unlock" the song when the user paid, presumably electronically also over his phone. Or users could pay per every time they listened, as the chip could track how many times the song was listened to. Movies could be the same way. So could any digital content. As long as the gadget they're using (phone, computer, game console) was purchased relatively recently, the average consumer will probably have most of what he needs already stored inside, just not "activated."

Obviously, new songs/movies/games etc. would have to be downloaded, but this system would eliminate a lot of downloading it seems. I think now, what do I download? Some new stuff, but mainly movies, songs and games that have been out for over a year or so. Maybe the phone of the future will already come with them on it. Or maybe not.

Or maybe this is completely the wrong way to think, and downloads are here to stay. Besides, if I assume that broadband capacity speeds up in the next decade, maybe it will take just as long to "download" something as it will to unlock it.