The upside is this is going to expose a new audience to opera, and will keep it alive for years to come.
Sunday
NY Times had two articles about Met in HD. The writer, obviously a New Yorker of means, decried Met in HD as detrimental to "real opera" because it doesn't have the "audience/cast interaction," etc., and will distort what viewers think about opera. What a bunch of elitist crap! Probably not more than 30-40,000 people total would be able to see Metropolitan Opera live, provided they had the money and lived in the NY Metro area.
That said, I, like you, prefer live. But Met in HD is the absolute best entertainment value around.
