I was really interested to discuss Multicast this week in our Networking class, as a big fan of Hulu (the free version) and Netflix, I think it is fascinating the way that content, such as streaming video, is transported to clients throughout the internet. Although Hulu and Netflix don't necessarily have to use multicast to get their information out there, their protocols are probably similar.
I think this area of networking is important because I believe that streaming and downloadable media will eventually replace physical media, beginning with television and movies. In discussing this idea with my adviser, he felt that large scale streaming would "break the internet" due to the high bandwidth requirements. Therefore, smart ideas such as multicast to create content distribution networks will become more important in the future to ensure that the internet doesn't "break."
As for other forms of media, such as video games on consoles, it may take longer to get rid of people's attachment to physical media. The advent of content distribution systems like Steam on PC and Mac have shifted the trend on computers toward downloadable media, which runs faster than reading from a disk, but requires a large amount of storage, which is probably why it is not prominent in consoles that are limited to 120 - 250GB compared to 500GB - several TB on PCs.
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