As far as I can tell, writing for Anime Dream, Matt Brown asks the question: "If you did not have Internet, and all you could do were to buy or rent DVDs (not VHS), what anime you might really want to watch, but could have a difficult time doing so"? Ironically, he asks this on the Internet. Frankly, it's difficult to see the point of setting such contrived conditions. For crying out loud, Steven Den Beste has an account on Bakabt now. The is no point in denying the downloadable content's existence anymore. It does not make you "moral" to pretend it's not out there. So, what is it that he's trying to communicate?

Sure, I buy DVDs (even R2s). Since DTO (minus DRM) is not where I want it, and I want to own, not rent, there's no other way, yet. But Matt's points appear to be watching, not ownership (at some point, he mentions Netflix).

UPDATE: Steven adds a new angle: "If (same no-Internet premise as above), what did you lose that you otherwise would see on fansubs"? The result is more familiar, that of series that were never released, while in Matt's case they were and have gone out of circulation. The basic idea can be bent in various ways. For example, ANN has a "Buried Treasure" column that has formalized indicators for series that were available on fansubs, were not available on fansubs, Laserdisc, random screening at certain events in Japan, and so on. There's a lot of stuff out there. And Matt chose perhaps the silliest way to set the conditions.

UPDATE: We reminded Aziz that his blog is notionaly about anime, as he relates yet another horror story of out-of-print woe. He also thinks that "[i]t’s really just the torrenters keeping [anime] alive right now." Plus, Hulu made to kill Boxee?! That is certain to reduces the number of people watching Honey and Clover.