If I want something enough to own it, I still prefer to have a physical copy. I'm not sold on relying on the cloud for storing everything, nor am I convinced that I'll find a match for my personal interests on a general-interest Web library. That said, while using the Roku Digital Video Player with its new Amazon Video on Demand service, I found some advantages to the experience.

As a science-fiction television aficionado, I discovered plenty of content to devour on Amazon's service. And at $1.99 a pop, it was easy to justify downloading favorite episodes of classic Star Trek (A Piece of the Action!), not to mention catching up on some Battlestar Galactica viewing and downloading random episodes of Stargate Atlantis, Babylon 5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The X-Files.

But soon I caught myself. Those innocent two-buck purchases, I realized, were quickly adding up. And I already have the DVDs...or, at least, I intend to buy the DVDs or Blu-rays (Battlestar must come out on Blu-ray at some point) for current series. As reasonable as the picture quality of the Amazon downloads was for a quick, one-off, $2 investment on my old CRT television, I concluded that I wouldn't be able to tolerate the images' flaws (artifacting, macro-blocking) in something I'd own and watch on a future 46-inch, LED-backlit HDTV--especially if I were to spend $30 or more for a season's worth of digital episodes.