I am looking at a few TV shows online that I want to watch such as
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,
Burn Notice,
Dirty Sexy Money and season 2 of
Heroes and
Dexter. These are currently running or have just completed their run in the states but are only few episodes into their run here in Australia. One of my many deeply seeded problems is that once I’ve missed an episode, which I have on all the above, I won’t watch any more till I can fill in that hole. The current over arcing problem I have having which is the genesis of this long winded rant is that there are quite a number of episodes of these shows available as digital downloads on
Amazon and the
iTunes store for $1.99 USD.
One problem I have with buying the digital downloads is that once I buy something I am an anal retentive pack rat that must collect and horde all my treasures. With digital downloads I don’t have anything physical to clasp my frequently washed yet still grubby little hands onto. I need something to put on a shelf and display for all to see and admire.
“Yes! Look in wonder at my collection, admire my Lord of the Ring extended editions and bask in the glory of my
William Gibson documentary.”
I have sort of gotten over that issue with regard to buying unabridged audio books from
Audible.com. I have acknowledged the glory of being able to sort through the book covers in iTunes. I also know that if something happens to my computer I can download the lost files again from Audible with no hassle. Something happening like say just for an example just off the top of my head: I have them all on my work computer and the company suddenly goes under and I don’t get a chance to copy them all off my hard drive; I won’t be screwed. For that peace of mind I am somewhat willing to jump through the hoops they make me, a legitimate customer, go through when dealing with the
Digital Rights Management also known as DRM. I’m pretty sure iTunes doesn’t offer you the ability to re-download a file you may have lost and although I haven’t checked into Amazon’s policy in that regard I’m going to bet it’s similarly a one shot download deal. This is also one of the reasons I prefer to buy a music CD and rip it into iTunes rather than buy it from the iTunes store. Though, I hear that the
RIAA’s new hard line claims that is actually stealing, but lets not digress this rant into that ramble.
I don’t know if I can make the digital leap with television and movies yet. With audio books I know I have access to them in all the places where I want to hear them. I copy them to my iPod which I can listen to via headphones or through the car’s stereo system. Copying them from computer to computer is easy; in contrast with anything else iTunes / iPod related where it’s a pain in the ass. With a DVD I know I can just pop it into any player; be it an actual player in the living room attached to the TV, built into the computer, or even built into the latest console gaming system (thought lets not get me started again on region coding). I also get cool extras like commentaries and deleted scenes with the DVD collections.
The main point of all that can be boiled down to the increased chance of failure the phrase “in my computer room on a monitor” has when added to the question “Hey baby, wanna come back to my place and cuddle up in front of the latest Dexter episodes?”
Now the question I am asking myself is this: am looking at this all wrong? Should I just view the $1.99 like the fee for renting a movie or even seeing it in the theatre? Of those TV shows mentioned above, several of them are shows I know I’ll only watch once. If I was watching them as they aired during their regular season I wouldn’t even be thinking twice about them. So what if I spend two bucks to catch up with season two of Heroes. And lets say I do delete the files in a week, a month, or when I’m upgrading computers should I care? It’s only 2 bucks an episode to watch them NOW and I can still buy the damn DVD box set later when it comes out. Though looking at the prices for
Dexter’s first season on Amazon: 12 episodes that would be $24 dollars for all the downloaded episodes versus the discounted price of $28 dollars for the boxed DVD set. I do see there is an option for
$19 dollars to download the entire season, but this doesn’t really count for the stuff I am talking about since most of their seasons aren’t complete yet. Amazon doesn't appear to offer digital downloads of
shows whose DVD boxed sets aren't available yet or at least not for Burn Notice. iTune's "buy all episodes" button is the same price as buying all the episodes individually for the incomplete 7 episode season of Terminator but does have a discounted $19.95 "Buy Season" button for all 12 episodes of Burn Notice.
I should throw in a couple of other issue such as living in a third world internet country known as Australia where there is no such think as an unlimited internet plan. You either pay out the nose for going over your download limit or they knock your internet speed down to dial-up speed for the rest of the month. Let’s also not forget the issue of storage space. These files tend to eat up hard drive space pretty quickly and become more and more unwieldy to try and transfer from computer to computer where DVDs sit nicely on the shelf and look pretty.
So far I have bought and downloaded Dexter season 2, the start of Burn Notice season 2, Mad Men season 1 and the start of season 2, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and am in the process of downloading Rome seasons 1 and 2. I cheated though and already watched the 2nd season of Dexter. I have the second Dexter audio book, Dearly Devoted Dexter, as well. I get the impression that the TV show is only based on the first book though. Currently am re-listening to the first 3 books in Saga of the Seven Suns since I now have the all 7 audio books in the series. Actually I have a bunch of audio books I haven't listened to yet.
But back to TV shows; iTunes offered the first episode of Primeval for free, so I watched it last night. It was alright, but I don't think it was good enough to purchase the whole season. I do find it interesting that UK Sci-fi still has a unique identifiable "something" about it. Even if you magically stripped out the accents, locations and other stuff that would identify it as being make in the UK you could still tell. Not implying anything bad, just saying.
I am sure they will be plenty of actual work to do once I'm in São Paulo, but there are many hours on airplanes and I do anticipate nights collapsed in bed exhausted but not quite ready to sleep. So I am also considering getting all 5 seasons of The Wire. I watched most of the 1st season before moving to Australia, and have caught several 2nd season episodes since. I also heard podcasts where some of the writers I like talking about how good it is.
