Digital downloads better than redbook audio?

After recently getting into vinyl, I've been skeptical that standard redbook audio will ever approach the quality of analog playback, simply due to its lacking resolution (16-bit 44.1 KHz). Sure, you can spend $8k on a high end CD player that will sound "even more analog," but it seems like all those expensive players are just polishing a turd even further simply because a new high rez standard was never fully adopted by the public. I do agree that SACD does begin to approach the sound quality of vinyl (but still not quite there). I think when it all comes down to it, digital music playback in general is still in its very primitive stages. DSD/SACD was a huge step in the right direction, but we're still not there yet. SACD will never catch on because the general public is moving more towards digital downloads and moving away from actually purchasing discs in a record store.

So that brings me to my point. If we can't force SACD/DVD-A onto the public in the form of discs, why not begin increasing the quality of digital downloads BEYOND that of redbook audio? Everyone nowadays has a fast broadband connection, and the size of storage on portable music devices like the iPod is increasing as well. Sites are beginning to offer music in lossless codecs, and even full blown raw WAV files. So why not begin to offer even higher quality downloads, i.e. 20-bit 96 KHz lossless? I guess the real question is whether or not people would even notice the difference in quality on their systems. Of course these files could not be burned to a CD audio disc in their native high rez format, but if we got lucky, people would notice a different and the demand would increase for these, later resulting a better world for us audiophiles.