Yeah, I can see the upside for the companies, but consumers still dictate what succeeds...
To a certain extent maybe. They might give consumers the choice between two new formats and let us decide which of those formats succeeds... like introducing VHS & beta, and we chose VHS. Or recently giving us HDDVD & Blu-Ray, we chose Blu-Ray.
But when they really want to steer away from something they don't give us a whole lot of say in the matter. For instance I don't think the general public really wanted vinyl to disappear, there is still a strong vinyl following today. But they moved away from it and simply stopped producing records. Then there is the recent switch to digital television... that was overwhelmingly the telecommunications decision to make that move because it was so lucrative.. The general public was so against it that the switch over date got pushed back and back and back some more (the original date was sometime in 2005). But they finally got their way and basically said to people without digital tv's, "tough luck"!
So I have no doubts that if they really want to go in this direction, they will give us a few choices on WHICH download service we want to use, but that's as much choice in the matter as we will get. The players will all have the ability to hook-up to the internet and stream the movies all by themselves, people won't even have to own a computer.
There's just too much money to be saved by moving away from physical inventory not to do it really. I'm not saying I want it any more than you do. I'm just saying from a business standpoint its going to save studio's a TON of money. Not to mention the ability to control piracy, which is enemy #1 in their eye's.
