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a) Selection. The chances of an old obscure movie being on one of these services vs emule is so tilted in emule's favor, because everyone gets to contribute, not just a few people who think they may have gotten every movie people will care about.

b) Choice. Do I want a 720p x264 for the HDTV? Do I want a moderate sized file at 960x544? Do I want a lower quality one for a normal TV or a portable at 624x352, or cross compatibility across devices that can't handle?

Do I want the original DVD? Do I want a DVD shrunk with CCE? Do I want a 1 CD xvid, or a 2 CD xvid of that movie?

c) Codec. x264 and xvid are better than DivX and whatever else they'll be using. I'm sure they'll encode using the worst settings regardless of what codec they use anyway.

Right now, the standard for buying music is 128k WMA or AAC. At least eMusic has it right with --alt-preset standard MP3s. If they encode video as well as they encode audio, it'll be awful. 128k isn't bad, it's sampling quality. I don't pay for samples.

If I want to buy from the iTunes music store, I want a choice. Do I want AAC, do I want FLAC, do I want MP3, do I want Vorbis? This issue hasn't even been addressed in the music market, much less the video one.

d) Freedom. DRM? No DRM. Am I going to replace my Cowon A2 that cost $330 at time of purchase with something else, that's probably worse, so I can play their video? Hell no!

DRM locks you into using only certain players, with certain formats. It's so easy for companies to abuse, it nearly destroys free market.. imagine if there were more major chip makers than intel and AMD, say ten, and each one had a different PSU standard. ATX, CTX, JTX. Imagine it changes over time for each chip maker. That's kind of like the current state of DRM.

e) Price. Downloadable video costs almost as much as the original, why the hell do I want to pay as much for a compressed file as I can for the original?

People are willing to pay - see giganews, UNS, newshosting. See people upgrading from 768/128 $17/month DSL to $45/month cable, or better DSL, or fiber. See the average consumer buying 750 GB drives because he ran out of space on his 500. The issue isn't in the price. Overall, it's freedom. It's "I don't want you controlling content I pay for." I want a choice in what I pay for, and that's what the content cartels either get but don't want to admit, or are dumb enough to not get. Either way, it's killing them.

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