A new report by Forrester Research declares that the paid video download market is going to come to a grinding halt in 2008, despite growing rapidly into 2007. Why? Forrester analyst James McQuivey thinks we're going to withhold our credit card numbers and migrate to free contentbesides, according to McQuivey, despite Apple's best efforts to make it easy for all, it's only us "media addicts" who've jumped in.

The shaky manifesto wavers a bit into believability, however, when he says that the current geek-heaviness owes to "the average consumer still being confused about different video formats and DRM rights, getting downloaded video onto the TV, and premium content being slow to arrive to the digital market." On that much, he's right.

But is that enough to reason to think paid downloads are doomed to imminent oblivion in the wake of say, Joost? Or a subscription service attached to your 360 or Apple TV? As Ars points out, people occasionally do like to own the content they watch. You know, sometimes. And the market's still in its relative infancy, with potentially lots of room to grow into the proper niches to fit users' tastes.

Have guys paid for a video download? From who?  Matt Buchanan

Forrester: Paid video downloads, Apple TV a "dead end" [Ars Technica]
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