Philip Berne's latest Slashgear column provides a well argued view for buying a Blu-ray player despite the rise of downloadable and streaming content.
Full disclosure: I also write columns for Slashgear. If you click on the link, I get… nothing. So I guess that's more of a plug than a disclosure.
The advantage of Blu Ray over DVDs has been touched on but not fully explored. I think Blu ray looks better than dvd because their discs have a lot of more storage space than DVD.
Blu Ray is the best technology we have now so far