Bzzt.
Those $1.6 billion in digital sales were NOT internet movie downloads. The vast majority of that number was cable TV and satellite TV pay-per-view, including both movies and events like boxing matches. Sales for Blu-Ray massively outstripped the tiny amounts of that were spent on internet movie purchases. Most of your other premises fall away, accordingly.
Feel free to be a Blu-ray naysayer. We get it, you don't like it. Millions of us do, and we aren't getting that option from Apple. I want to take the movies I already buy on Blu-ray for much better quality on the road with me, and I hate the artifacts I see in overly compressed digital download "high def"
. I don't want to be cluttering up my hard drive with gigantic downloaded movie files, either.I'm a pretty big Apple fanboy, and I'm even planning on standardizing my company on MBPs when they release new models. But Apple used to lead in technology, like DVD burning and creation, and now they are falling behind. Maybe if they had a better alternative to Blu-ray in their product line -- which they don't! -- I could see them avoiding it. But we deserve the option for the premium price we're paying for their machines.
I don't bother download movies from iTunes either, my broadband provider has movie rentals that cost to watch, but don't add to your data quota.