In response to Andrew:
My stance is that I'm a collector and always will be. I prefer a physical product to a digital one.
Since the coming of HD though, I would definately choose watching it on the computer than on a 480i DVD, which most of the time has encoding issues, mediocre translation, etc. Basically, I'd rather prefer to watch something on my computer of a quality fansub standard, in HD, and that's the only thing that would make me want to own anime but not physically.
Of course, I'd like to own the series at the same time on a physical level, but that doesn't really matter if it comes out a month or so later.
I think a business model could be to offer super high quality fansub-style anime to download, in HD - unscaled or not, because most people have a computer capable of playing HD files, but not many have a huge HD TV with a Blu-ray player and all the other equipment needed. Maybe that is what I want - but on a larger scale, people want to see anime quickly, so any kind of fansub-style thing would be good. It's like applying the Japanese model here. The showings on the TV are for the mainstream audience, and the DVD market is for collectors, that's what's it's always been, and how it will always be. Not everyone can afford massive collections, and that's what English producers/distributors are asking for, and that's not fair.
If a company can provide the high quality fansub-style anime releases, then that's the way to go. I mean you only have to look at the download figures of a hell of a lot of fansubs - that's an incredible potential amount of sales.
Anime is artwork - people want to see it in the best possible quality, and HD can provide that. Any HD file I've watched at around 230MB beats any DVD quality I've seen, and HD doesn't seem to have aliasing problems and many of the other compression problems in general.
I know you know all this already, I just think some of what I've written puts a slightly different spin on things. I hope.
Just how long is it going to take companies to realise that this is the way to go.
Oh, and on that note, it'd be nice to have super special collector items released instead of the standard artbox with a series [I know this is exactly what you're doing now and have always done, it's a shame that the companies who
aren't listening won't read this]. Not that that can be done at the moment, but as producers/distributors should be appealing to a collectors market, who can afford to buy a lot of special items and generally want to part with their money (if not all of it!), and offering an "ultra deluxe limited edition" item certainly does the job there. That'll generate the extra profit that's being 'lost' and will grow the collectors market/fanbase considerably. I'm sure. As soon as companies stop trying to appeal to the mainstream, because let's face it - that's never going to happen (except for a few exceptions) - the sooner the anime industry can get back on track.
Mainstream has gone digital.
EDIT: Just want to emphasize what I mean, and scanning above to Dracos' comment about the demographic being teens-20's.
If someone comes across some website with some huge bright colourful picture, or pictures, moving pictures, videos, music,
coolness, which is what is the case for such a massive amount of shows, then people are going to be excited by that, and when they read something saying "download this super high quality crystal clear episode 1 for free" they're going to be interested. Viral marketing can help massively here as well. If you have someone making MySpace pages (but properly done), or Facebook pages, or whatever other pages, just something that's going to mutate around websites - that look just incredible - then you're going to have people wanting to find out more.
It always seems to be the Japanese websites for anime that really make this impact (and some of Funimation's websites), of course it doesn't go far enough.
Just look at the Soul Eater website -
http://www.souleater.tv/ - Bones always know how to make something look awesome.
).
