HP signs deal with Sony for on-demand DVD pressing service.

[Moraldo Rubini]

This looks promising. I'll be interested to see their menu of items to choose. But I hope this doesn't mean they won't put effort into some deluxe packaging (including audio commentaries, and so forth). Not that Sony ever put much into it anyway...

[Mr. Arkadin]

I'm ready with a hefty order!

[Ollie]

I've seen four parts of different urban areas in the US are being targeted for Gb-or-more download capabilities on new fibre systems. In Europe, there are a growing number of users with 8Gb download capabilities. THAT will make high-quality downloads a much better possibility.

As it is, however, I think the incredible quality sacrifices won't be too attractive to me. The so-called "On Demand" marketing campaign is just another over-hyped lie - "Customers can claim to demand it, and we'll only give them what we want, when we want and in the quality we want."

HP's customer-service is not a high-quality operation. Not even mediocre. I believe they'll use this same standard.

Sony is heralding in more restrictive digital rights management than any other company.

Between the two of them, I think we can deduce the calibre of product we'll see initially. It may be enough to kill it off entirely.