Costs
So kind of you to allow that "people are entitled to your opinions", and to thereafter offer yours.
Your comment contains a non sequitur, one on which much of your argument is founded; you have to prove that the view that "digital formats mean 'free', or at a fraction of the cost" is prevalent and, moreover, the extent to which it is in percentage terms. Further, you necessarily have to show what this means in marketing terms to anyone offering a product of this nature. Would there be any point, for example, in persuading a market significantly (notice the empirical term here, it is placed not by coincidence but by design) populated by people "foaming at the mouth" over prices that they must pay them?
Moreover, comments about cost and such miss the point; if it is not cheaper than books it is not going to attract the purchasing power of many people; paying a large sum for the reader *and* high prices for books will result in people not buying them. Not buying the reader due to cost has damn all to do with piracy, it has to do with the cost of electronics at a time when consumers are cutting back their expenditures, when (e.g.) back to school shopping levels have dropped 'alarmingly'. Indeed, a time when people are supposedly not buying as many books as has been the case.
The cost of this product will come down, either because it is selling and the development costs are recovered, or because it is not selling and the manufacturers do not want to lose their costs. It certainly is the case that lazy people prefer to watch candy on their screens - not the HD candy they are unable to afford during a recession at a time when debts are at 1.4 trillion (20,000 per person in the country), and from which they probably would not benefit due to a mixture of eyesight problems and ownership of screens on which HD would not demonstrate any improvement.
We have to take the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. Failing to do so will result only in grief, especially at a time when most people have cut their spending habits by a considerable amount. This means that arguments to the effect that people will have to pay large sums are doomed to failure, and the product too. Where the market goes there goes the product, or it dies.
As far as your comments about blue ray are concerned, whether or not there are people "foaming at the mouth" about costs (and you have to prove your anecdotal experience can be generalised to the population as a whole by means of a soundly designed piece of empirical research, not your personal experience and use of florid language), it certainly is the case that people are not buying, isn't it? Perhaps that has something to do with our current fiscal difficulties, perhaps you could learn something from that, and thus unlearn your legislative temper.
Then there is your use of the straw man argument, namely comparing your interlocutor with a participant in the One show, when there is as yet no basis for such a comparison. It is in fact a non sequitur. You plucked it from nowhere, it has nothing to do with the data that have so far been presented.
As to your arguments about costs and payment of authors; few authors make more than a few coppers from their work. If you had not noticed, there is a tendency for some authors to be vastly rich. One author who writes badly about fairy tales is a billionaire, and it is obscene.
I've not even touched on the reduced costs of transporting digital files vs large clunky pieces of paper and card, the benefit to that thing of which we are a part, the environment, and the spin offs this would bring. I'll let you do that.
To review; because of your techniques in argument, which include non sequiturs, argumentum ad hominem and generalising from the particular (your personal anecdotal experience rather than extrapolating from soundly designed empirical research, by means of statistical tests that were selected during the design phase) most of what you argue falls to the ground. It seems more to be an exercise in puffing your chest out to tell us about your anecdotal experience.
So you *are* talking tosh. I don't think so, I know so. From the benefit of my position of having one arts degree and three science degrees (2 postgrad) I give you the mark of 5/10 for enthusiasm. Must try harder.
I expect you'll want to follow up but, as you do, just mouth the words one point four trillion pounds of debt, twenty thousand to each adult in the country. It may help you to understand why people are showing no interest in new market ventures.
Personally, I can't wait for a decently powered one with sufficient facilities to become available. Then I'll watch http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page for the conversions of old philosophical and scientific tracts. I won't watch for your comments. They'll be but culturally relative steam in the morning air.