@Elric:
There is a fansub industry? :D
Sort of. It's more like a community, but the currency is Point Electronik Not for Official Release, rather than USD or Euros or whatever people use to buy stuff.
@lelandlancaster:
Seriously? What about the people who buy DVDs because they want to own a high quality copy to rewatch?
Trends have shown that's a matter of convenience. Someone sees a movie in the theatre, they walk by Wal-Mart and see the film on DVD, it's cheap and they get an impulse to buy it.
OP is not like that. The market is narrower, so the DVDs are more expensive. They are also harder to obtain, usually only through online transactions with a shipping cost.
We're talking about $15 versus $50, which is a lot when the average salary of a young person is minimum wage.
I'm not saying people who watch streams, then feel obligated to buy the DVDs don't exist, but they are very rare and are not a good source of money for companies.
@lelandlancaster:
I watch a crapload of online streams of plenty of shows and buy DVDs for the shows I really enjoy. Plus online streams are an easy and quick way to make sure the DVD is worth buying. I would figure that online streams would give more people a chance to check out the show for the first time.
Downloads can be just as quick as streams if you know how to configure your ports correctly (I get an average of 40 kb/s, but many people can get upwards of 400 kb/s) and quality is only limited to the technology used to rip it, whereas streams are inherently lower quality because of their size compression.
And anime companies would want you to buy DVDs for every show you watch stream, not just the ones you like. Theoretically, there should be someone somewhere who likes a show you don't like, but those people are so few in number it doesn't justify licensing the show at all, or making 5,000 DVDs only to sell like five.
@lelandlancaster:
I know that I would have never bought a couple Harlock series boxsets, if I hadn't seen Gun Frontier and Cosmo Warrior Zero on Hulu.
You mean the new OVA's? (Herlock)
I refuse to buy those Harlock sets because friends have told me they're full of errors since the translation quality is rather poor. Plus, I don't care for dubs or any of the extra features, and buying online is too much of a hassle.