Legal fansubs, why bother?

So here's the deal, I'm a pretty big anime fan, so I keep up on a lot of anime news and happenings. And the "next big thing" in the anime world seems to be "legal fansubs" (for lack of a better term). Basically an anime company produces a work in Japan then "simulcasts" (or at least very shortly after it's broadcast) it on a video streaming site (Youtube, Veoh, Crunchyroll, etc.) with english subtitles. The idea behind this (or at least the only logical conclusion) is this is to try to combat fansub groups (fans who record anime TV broadcasts add their own subtitles and put them up for anyone to download).

To me fansubs have always been something I've had very little interest in. I buy dvd's, because a)I like owning a physical copy b)it's generally good video quality, and professional subtitles, and c)I like to support the people who made the show. That's not to say I've never watched fansubs (I've seen Initial D stage 3 off of video google, and stage 4 off of Youtube), my only reasoning being it's never gotten released in North America and I had no other way to see it. Of course I could have bought the Japanese release (~$60 each for 13-14 dvd's that make up the series), but a) I'm not rich and b) I don't understand Japanese so it would have been a total waste.

My complaints about these new "legal fansubs" is that for one streaming video quality sucks. This is something brought up quite often by "pro-fansub" people, since most of the new fansubs are recorded in HD and are released as h.264 files there is obviously a huge difference in the quality your getting. One could argue that if your getting it for free you shouldn't complain about the quality, and honestly I support that, but you'll be hard pressed to find that additude among new anime watchers (or at least those that download fansubs). Obviously the companies are trying to get at least some revenue from average fansub watchers that probably isn't going to buy the official DVD release anyway. Thought really I'd rather just see them save the time and money they're using for broadcasting legal fansubs and use it to bust the large groups (the ones getting to most DL's) of the titles they own.

I guess my biggest concern is I don't want to see the avalibility of dvd and bluray releases decrease, just so a company can try to get some income from people who are very unlikely to buy the official product anyway. Or worse yet, companies releasing "web only" anime titles, and skipping the DVD release all together (I can see this happening mainly with niche titles).

Besides if they really want to do it effectively it will have to be better than a fansub in all aspects. It will have to be; a) as good or better video b) as good or better subtitle/translation quality and c) come out at the same time (but most likely before) the earliest of the fansubs. So in essence they have to release free HD quality, professionally subbed anime simutaniously with the Japanese broadcast. Without doing it exactly that way there's no way fansub watchers are going to convert to "paying" customers (through ad revenue, or something similar).