We only have a decade or two to wait I reckon. The telephone age was about making connections with other people. The internet age added access to information and content we wanted that other people had. The coming Multi Service Single Access, Next Generation All-IP networks blah blah will add the ability to connect us with our own stuff. When we are away from our home (and loved ones - our music), whether we want to see what's going on at home, or open the front door for the plumber, have something downloaded to the home server, or get access to our music, photos, or videos, or turn on the heating you will just need a network connection and a connectable device. So you won't need an iPod to carry your music around with you but you will need to carry around some kind of connectable portable DAC with a headphone amp. It may just be your mobile phone. At that stage flexibility will be the key and if you want high res encoding schemes you will be able to get them, it will just cost you more.
The more things change the more they stay the same. The any to any telephony network architectures will come back into vogue and today's chaotic underperforming IP protocol will be unrecognisable and as anachronistic as the wild west of the past, and today's cable TV broadcast architectures will be a thing of the past. The key things holding it back are short-sighted regulators, internet socialism, telecommunications executives that lack the imagination to change their business model, Hollywood and the two big music conglomerates that do not want telephone monopolies anywhere near their value chain, etc - but most importantly a massive investment in replacing copper with fibre. This isn't science fiction. It is already more economic for a telecommunications company to put fibre to the home into greenfields suburbs (new subdivisions), they just cannot justify doing it where there is perfectly good copper, and because they really don't know whether they will be allowed to get a return on it (for the reasons outlined above). But check out what the likes of SBC are up to and you can see it coming.
Sorry guys. That was a bit off topic wasn't it. I feel better now I have had my rant.
