Should the consumer win?

[JohnGalt]

Originally Posted by mystiksuicide

Sorry but we are talking 2008 not 2018. Warner knows that the hardware for that still isn't viable for the average joe so you can forget that right off the bat.

There are many consumer that still are not computer savy to begoin with that want a hard formated disk.

The CE side of the technology could literally be ready in a matter of months if there were a serious push to develop it. Nothing more than an industrial PC coupled with an open software architecture that allows vendors to push their own virtual machines onto the box is necessary. That's essentially a software-only solution and while not quite trivial the only real challenges to its implementation would be from those seeking to carve out a piece of the IP pie.

The real technological problem lies in the lack of available bandwidth for delivery but with consumers abandoning higher quality audio formats in droves in favor of lower quality online delivery there will be a great deal of pressure to factor this "likely" consumer preference into any decisions. You'll never lose money by underestimating the lack of insight of marketing departments. Heck, I watched a multi-billion dollar corporate bankruptcy from the inside that flowed directly from the marketing department's decision to spend 95% of their time pursuing glamor markets while all but ignoring viable but less glamorous meat-and-potatoes markets that would have built a nice foundation for the business.

The killer point regarding online delivery is that each delivery would have a shelf-life since it's virtually a lock that duplication will not be allowed. Thus, once the consumer's HDD is full, they'll have to dump old content in order to secure new which guarantees multiple deliveries of some titles over time. Those sorts of recurring revenue streams are *very* attractive to businesses. But that's all moot if the consumer decides they want a next-gen optical format which remains to be seen at this point.