Danfun128 said:

I would be disturbed if it was a digital-only release, especially if it's a new transfer, for two reasons.

1. If it can be downloaded at all, it would most likely have drm on it.

2. Regardless if it has drm or not, it would most likely be highly compressed, as I doubt the general public cares much about video quality and are more concerned with what they might view as a "waste of space", especially if the download is in HD or 4k.

At least if it were the old Lowry transfer there would be no point in downloading them, since you can get it through superior sources ('04 HDTV rips and '11 Blu-ray)

Well, regarding #1 the response is always "not for long".

I think if something were digital only, it would only be that way for a limited amount of time (promotion with Netflix, whatever). They would be making their money back on the new transfer with BluRay sales at some point.

If indeed they are going to release the UOT this year, that would probably be held off until a physical medium release. On the other hand, doing the UOT digitally first as a beta test would allow them to get (too much) feedback about it before committing to a release that we will inevitably find things wrong with. But of course it's silly to assume they'll care about stuff like that.