I’ve been thinking for some time that (legal) digital downloads of anime would be a great idea. The episodes are relatively short, and there are lots of them. There’s a relatively small but very dedicated fanbase. Animation compresses well, compared to live-action. It just seems to me that anime is a much better fit for the iTunes treatment than most of the stuff that’s already up there on the iTunes store. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any sign that Apple is interested in this.
ADV has just opened their own store for digital downloads. I’m a bit disappointed in their model though. They’re charging $5 per episode, which seems a bit high; I think $2 or $3 would make more sense. They’re using Windows DRM, too, so you can’t play the files on a Mac. Nor can you burn them to (watchable) DVDs.
I guess I’ll stick with watching whatever shows up on Cartoon Network, and buying the occasional DVD.