On that note, I've been thinking about the various ways to support the program, and I once again have to say that offering a blu-ray disk at $900 is insanity.

I'd pay for a blu-ray... if it cost the same as standard blu-ray disks. When I think about what $900 could buy me... a 26 minute HD sheep video is not high on the list.

I bought Spotworks. It's fine and dandy, but in terms of what's offered for merch, that's all that's in my price range.

If you were to offer a $15 blu-ray, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Maybe make a series out of them. Monthly releases or something at $15. I'd buy each one.

The band KMFDM has been releasing 7" vinyl singles that are numbered and are 250 total. I've bought one every month. Sort of a fun collectors thing. However, they're $12. Doesn't seem like much, but when we look at how much I'll have payed the band by the end of the 24 month span: $288. Take a bit out for cost to make the blu-rays or whatever, and you still end up with some money that helps toward development. And I'm just one person. I'm sure there are many who would be totally willing to support ES in that way. The donation system isn't ideal.

Honestly, when I look at the merch page, all I can think about is "wow... greed much?" I mean that with no offense, I simply state it to try and help. We hear about the financial hardships of this project, but it seems the steps being taken to remedy it are misguided at best. Especially considering that, and please correct me if I'm mistaken, we (the users) are the ones who help render those frames for the HD projects. It is a little disheartening as a user to then see it repackaged and sold to us at an exponentially outragious price. Maybe I'm missing something, but 26 minutes of HD blueray footage for $900 makes absolutely no sense to me. I can buy the planet earth blu-ray for $20, and I know they spent way more money on that project than the Sheep blueray cost to develop. I'd love to get a DIHIFI setup for my house, but at $20,000 that simply isn't possible. What would be possible, however, is an affordable HD video of sheep, put together artistically to flow nicely that I can plop into my projector or flat screen players for use in my lounge. I'd pay for that. The only reasoning behind the pricing and unwillingness to offer cheaper alternatives is that you're concerned it will detract business from your Dreams in HIFI project, which is where you, as an artist, really shine and profit (I assume). If you were to sell the same HD footage for much cheaper, what incentive would the art galleries, etc have to drop that much chedder on your flagship project? The answer, in my opinion, is that they'll still cough it up for the custom install by the mastermind artist behind the project anyway, and any reasonable and respectable art outlet with a taste to help showcase the cutting edge won't settle for the discount bargain bin item being offered to basic users, they'll still want their own custom install.

Again, I mean no disrespect. I think this project of yours is awesome and it just saddens me to see it stuck in this development limbo as development, etc, is restricted by lack of funding. I know this project can achieve so much. I want to help, but in a realistic way.

I don't see the harm in offering a completely P2P/bittorrent based HD client so the only server component is the tracker. You could even have mandatory donations to cover server costs.