After fighting it for a couple of years, I finally bought a Blu-ray player. It wasn't that I was bitter that I bought an HD-DVD player and the format died, it was more that it seemed silly to buy anything that deals with physical media anymore. I haven't bought a CD in years, and I haven't bought many movies either.
But there are a couple of important problems around my movie viewing habits. The first is that I love me some special features. They're worth the price of the media. Unfortunately, they're pretty much banished from the discs that Netflix sends out. They also pretty much aren't available in streaming form at all. Even HD download-to-own stuff like those from iTunes lack these features.
The other issue is that DRM is still there on that download stuff, which burned me more times than I'd like with music. I don't want to play that game again.
Granted, the number of titles I'll actually buy on Blu-ray might end up being small, the collectors stuff and a few new titles every year, but the players are so stupid cheap at this point that I'm willing to just bite the bullet and do it. Even if it makes me feel a little dirty.
At least this time the technically superior format "won" the format war. DRM and slow boot issues aside, HD-DVD wasn't "enough" bigger than DVD to be a useful improvement. And for the foreseeable future, grabbing a disk is still the fastest way to import 50Gb of data into your player.
Plus, a good Blu-Ray disk should give you near-broadcast picture quality, something you're not going to get with most streamed or downloaded media. Yeah, your misgivings and reluctance have merit, but ultimately I don't think you're going to regret buying the new player.
(this coming from a guy who doesn't even have a digital TV yet...)