Worth it?
I think so.
It is worth it to not have to deal with the Rock Band 1 disc or interface ever again. The “paid” is just the sacrifice for the fact that you can lend a disc to someone, and they get rb1 for free. Someone who may not have picked up Rock Band 2 otherwise.
Consumers pay the price for that kind of “piracy,” but $5 isn’t too hard to swallow for that service. It is nice that they offered it at all. The closest that has come before was Singstar’s disc swapping ability, and that’s a distant second to this new functionality.
At $1 i wouldn’t have even blinked.
But is that just a symptom of being conditioned in this era of DLC? This generation of gaming was supposed to be the HD generation, but I don’t think that’s really the push this generation. Sure, the odd game has small text, but the games themselves still look as good on a small standard def as they do on HD. Not only that, but because of the increase in textures, most gameplay is still fairly similar to last generation. There hasn’t really been a Shadow of the Colossus yet, and it’s been 4 years. Dead Rising can only be touted so much.
The point is: HD isn’t the main drive of this generation. It’s DLC.