Half-formed thought [© Philip Tabor]: If I’m anything to go by as an example, then I would think that a lot of people who download episodes of their favourite TV shows using p2p networks then go on to buy DVD or VHS box-sets of those same shows when they are released a year-or-so later.
Often, due to demand from fanbases, these box-sets have place-holder pages on Amazon where it’s possible to pre-order them.
Why not legitimise p2p downloads though this pre-order method? Buy the box-set upfront, a bit of Amazon web-services magic dust, have the bits now, get the atoms later.
Does this seem fair? A good idea? How would this work?
Petafloptimism 
Agreed.
There’s one big problem with your scheme, though: in the US, most of these popular programmes are ‘syndicated’ to other channels for repeats: Buffy’s season six is being shown, two episodes per morning, on one channel right now. (’24’ is sort of exceptional here, though it did get repeated on Fox’s FX channel. Same with ‘Alias’.) This means that Americans have a much longer lead time for DVD box-sets of Buffy, Angel, Friends etc, because the networks want people watching the syndicated versions rather than commercial-free and privately held copies. For the most popular programmes, this means two or three years between first showing and release. For instance, Buffy Season 5 (2000-1) won’t be released in Region 1 until December, and Season 6 (2001-2) comes out in July 2004. Both are available in the UK, as is Season 7, albeit on VHS only.
The result tends to be that when the DVD sets finally appear, the episodes have been repeated so often, and in such a jiggled-up order, that people don’t feel as compelled to buy them because their viewing memory is no longer sequential and coherent, but a right old mishmash.
That’s the irony: Brits tend to have to wait longer to see the first-runs on TV, but often see them without commercials (Buffy, X-Files) and also have the first chance to buy box sets. Which means Brits will scour P2P for episodes, and definitely rush out for the box sets while the programmes are still in syndication, because British broadcasters still retain the habit of showing series in sequence without interspersed and anachronous ‘reruns’, and viewers treat series as single, coherent entities.
Another half-formed thought, which is precisely the reverse of yours: why not use TiVo to sell boxed sets? If the TiVo notes that you have a ‘Season Pass’ to a particular show, get it to offer you a discount and perhaps an early shipping date on the DVD set and charge it through your TiVo/DirectTV bill.
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