Quote Originally Posted by filecat13
What happens when we add in the number of illegal music downloads and focus solely on music distribution rather than music industry revenues? Seems to me that's the real size of the consumer market, and the industry is too stodgy and entrenched in its habits to construct a business plan that will recapture the nonpaying portion of the market. I mean besides suing people, or course.

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/4206.html
First there is no evidence at all the support the RIAA stance that illegal downloading is sapping away profits. Study after study has shown the exact opposite. Illegal downloading has had either no effect on sales, or it has actually increased sales of some albums. In all reality, the music industry did finally address illegal downloading by offering songs one at a time, instead of a bundle album to places like Apple Itunes, and Amazons unbox. Since revenue is what interests EVERYONE, it is impossible to exclude revenue out of any equation unless you are strictly talking about illegal downloads.

I enjoy reading David Pogue, but often see his vision as not in tune with the marketplace. The only of his four points that I would grant is the quality issue (point three), and even that is not nearly enough of a big deal to most people as it is to some of the rest of us. I believe price and convenience trump it in the larger market.
Well actually it is in tune with the CURRENT marketplace. You are just a little ahead of the curve. Quality is a huge issue to the folks that really have the purchasing power to make music downloads huge. The audiophile spends four times as much for music media than the average joesixpack. Until the quality improves, you will not get the audiophile. If the downloading industry skips the audiophile and heads straight for the joesixpack, downloading music will grow very slowly over the years, and will never take off like CD or DVD has.

He sees high speed penetration half-empty. I see it half full.
I cannot see how either is wrong. Yes music downloading is growing(half full) however it represents less than 4% of overall revenue, and that has not change all that much over last year(half empty). Both perspectives represent a 50% view.

He sees DVD extras as a big deal and potential sticking point. I see them as inconsequential to the market as a whole, especially compared to price and convenience.
Unfortunately your perspective is not in line with any studio survey conducted in the last 5-7 years. DVD extras are expensive to produce, and the only reason they are still found on any DVD is because the consumer demands it. And apparently there is a huge demand for extras, and it has a much louder voice than those of us who just want a high quality copy of the movie itself. You cannot offer something, and then switch to a new distribution format and take something away. The consumer will perceive it as a low quality copy of DVD. The market is not going backwards, its going forward. Larger, higher resolutions displays will demand that the downloaded product at least equal to DVD for standard definition sources, and bluray for HD sources. The quality genie is out of the bag, and you cannot stuff it back in.

I agree with his comment on the movie studio executives and their unreasonable demands, but not on his conclusion. Those very people will be the ones who force the download market to explode outside their control. Rather than stifle the move to downloads, I believe these ill-conceived ideas will force innovation to break down the controls and put a big, heavy boot on the neck of the man.
Downloads cannot explode outside of their control when they make the movies, and decide who get to distribute what. The movie industry is not the music industry. While it was easy for music to get traded P2P, and the pent up demand for single songs instead of albums was there, there is no pent up demand for low quality movies with no extras. If the studio stop offering movies to downloading services tomorrow, their bottom lines would hardly be effected. The studio I work for has stated that if offering movies to downloading services results in more piracy, it would have no problem cancelling contracts, and refusing movies to those services. They would wait for another secure format(post bluray) to release to before allowing more piracy via the internet. That is the reason the studios want to get away from the DVD format.

Anyway, though I've never been interested in either BluRay or HD DVD, good luck to BluRay. At least it supports standards we can all get behind.

Good starting post.
This is a very mature statement. I have always said that if you are not interested in bluray, that is fine. But do not piss all over it because YOU do not care for it. Somebody else might.