Apple announced today that they will have digital downloads up the same day as the DVD release.  This is part of the download problem, but once again I don’t see downloads being anywhere near ready.  Not only the bandwidth problems, which has lead to non-HD downloads and/or poor audio/video quality, but are the masses ready to pay $14.99 for a digital download with convenience being the main factor?

I’d like to see companies embrace the fact that DVD is still the mainstream format.  If I’m going to pay $14.99 for a digital download, how about a digital coupon that I can print out to go pickup the physical DVD for a discounted price?  Now is the time to work with DVD, you’re not going to replace it yet.  The same basic concept is at play with the few DVDs that include a digital copy to copy to portable devices (Example). Remember that convenience of obtaining the content only goes so far, when your download fails to scale all of your devices (eg. DVD player at your friends house, or in the car) the concept dies.

Apple might finally be getting somewhere with the content owners, but no one (Microsoft, Apple, et al) is going to replace DVDs with digital downloads for several years to come.