Posts tagged ‘Battlestar Galactica’

Often I’ve justified my rather dubious TV downloading practices with the excuse: if I had a way to get it legally the week it arrived, then of course I’d use it.

Now, the iTunes store in Australia is selling Battlestar Galactica episodes as they’re shown in the USA, and I find myself having to put my money where my mouth is. Unfortunately, whereas iTunes music has recently and wonderfully become DRM-free, video content is still bound up by various restrictions. The most annoying of these is that I can’t watch it on my television without buying an Apple TV. As I’m already the owner of an Xbox 360 and a Playstation 3, I’m reluctant to purchase yet another device.

Meanwhile, the iTunes solution is highly tempting as it’s in iiNet’s Freezone. And it comes down hassle free, and knows its episode name, and I don’t have to worry about seeding to people. But on the downside, there’s something vaguely irritating about paying for content which I know I’ll be buying on DVD or Blu-Ray later. If only buying a season of TV gave you a reduced price on buying such things later. At $3 dollars an episode, a 22-episode season becomes $66, which is often more than you’d pay for a nice, unrestricted, playable-anywhere set of DVDs.

Even once you get past the DRM and cost, there’s a few annoyances to iTunes television. For a start, there’s no way I can see to get notified when a new episode turns up. Apple have an RSS generator, but for some reason you can’t make a “Just Added TV” feed. The best I can find is the page in the iTunes store which shows you the most recent TV shows. But since you can’t bookmark the iTunes store, this isn’t super helpful either. And the update schedule seems poor. ‘The Oath’ arrived in the store on 30 January, and eight days later, the following episode has yet to arrive. This may sound like whinging, but one thing that your regular TV does usually manage to do is get a new episode for you every week.

Ultimately I’m not sold on iTunes TV. It’s super-easy, but restrictive and kind of expensive. Hopefully, at some point we’ll get some competition in the Australian marketplace, and things will take a turn for the better.