| Sansui said: Not to mention that digitally distributed media doesn't have the environmental impact of physically produced goods. No plastic that will live on longer than we can imagine, no CO2 emissions. It's a good way to reduce your carbon footprint. |
I share your motives for wanting to swith to digital media. I just don't think the 5 year timeframe is realistic. Certainly in urban areas it might be, but in large countries with low population densities, such as Canada and Russia, I don't expect enough rural areas to have the infrastructure necessary to have digital downloads in a timely manner.
To continue with the Canadian example:
The Statistics Canada 1996 Census found that 22% of Canada's population (6.4 million) live in rural areas. This is based on a definition of rural areas as "sparsely populated lands lying outside urban areas" or in other words those areas with a population concentration of less than 1,000 and a population density of up to 400 per square kilometre.
http://www.rural.gc.ca/cris/faq/pop_e.phtml
Rural statistics for 2001: http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/demo62a.htm
EDIT: I don't think it would be financially viable to set up the infrastructure for those people especially given the cost of the last mile (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile). Which means that, just in Canada, 22% of the population probably would not have access to the media.
