Funny how even though I spent hours and hours and bundles of cash setting up an awesome home entertainment system, that the television remains predominantly my wife’s domain. It’s OK, because mostly I think TV is filled with crap. We enjoy movies together and show photos and home video (thanks to AppleTV), so I get my slice. So last night I took advantage of having the apartment to myself (oh and my dogs) to turn the volume up, crank up the sub-woofer and watch the animated Batman - Gotham Knight. Navigating the AppleTV interface is, as you would expect, perfectly intuitive and quite enjoyable, and when I landed on said movie, I thought that maybe I’d want to own it. However, my options were restricted to: Rent, Rent HD and buy, but with the buy option you only get the standard definition version.

DAMN!!! Content providers are still, unbelievably fighting digital distribution and hiding behind ignorance and paranoia. Their fear being that if they allowed you to buy the HD version, that you would automatically go rip it, burn it, duplicate it and sell it buy the thousands down on New York,s Canal Street , thus financially crippling the studios, networks and anyone else who’s cowering in the ignorance corner.

The fact remains and always will that piracy will always be here but will always be restricted to those making a (small) business out of it or/and are bothered to go through the countless steps to do so. Personally, I have the ability, technology and infrastructure to rip/download movies strip out the DRM and share with my friends and family. But I don’t because I can’t be bothered. I have endless better things to do with my time and sooner charge my time out to clients, who need me, for multiples over the value of a $15 movie.

As we all know, Apple boldly made this step with iTunes much to the derision of the entertainment community who mostly believed it wouldn’t work and that everyone would continue to download music via peer-peer networks. Wrong. Give people the right way to do things in an easy to use manner representing an enjoyable and utilitarian experience and they will (well over a billion songs sold on iTunes so far). Yes, the big record companies are still crying in their milk but their just too big and too old to change quickly. So is it just me, or is it crazy that the studios and networks are still fighting it?

Back to last night and my personal experience: I rented the HD movie for $4.99. I wouldn’t buy the SD version for $10, not with my awesome home entertainment system, no sir!! But, I would have gladly given them $15 of my hard earned moolah for a copy of the HD version, which would have sat very happily on my AppleTV, without ever being ripped, burned and shared with anyone else.

The next in my line of fire is the Telcos - an industry which has basically devolved into a monopoly once again - and the slow development of wireless technology in infrastructure and handsets compared with the rest of the world. Again, we see Apple rock the boat . Regardless of the shambles demonstrated at time of launch for the new 3G iPhone and regardless of what you or I think of the device. The most important aspect has been the incredible approach to digital distribution, here in terms of the developers kit and the application store. Super Monkey Ball has already made approximately $5million for Sega! Bloody incredible. I read a fantastic blog posting regarding mobile app development this morning. Worth a read and further evidence that traditional distribution channels are altering - significantly.