Would You Pay $3 to Watch a TV Episode From iTunes?

Hi everybody!

Earlier this week, HBO and iTunes announced that episodes of HBO shows would debut for download for $2.99. iTunes already had many TV shows available for download at the price of $1.99 per episode. Is it really worth it though?

Personally, there is no way I would spend my money on a download for a TV episode on to my iPod. For 1 thing, even $1.99 is way to expensive. For instance, if you want to watch an entire season of a show, and it is the average 20 episode per sean, then you are spending about $40 for the whole season. Now, if you buy the whole season on DVD, you can expect to pay anywhere from $30-$60 for a full season of the show (depending if it is on sale or not). That’s not a very big price difference for something you are going to watch on a fairly tiny screen.

The problems don’t end there for my argument against these digital downloads though. There are 2 more major problems that I can’t get past.

DRM

That’s right, the dreaded digital rights management. Unless you have some pirating software which will remove the DRM for you, then you are extremely limited to how you use these shows you download. You won’t be able to share it with a friend like you could a DVD or even transfer it easily to watch on your bigscreen TV.Plus, you can forget about burning it to a disc that you can play in your movie player. The DRM is very effective at making sure that only you can watch it, unless you let your friend borrow your iPod that is.

Re-Playability

When I pay money to watch something that is on TV for free, I want to be able to watch it whenever I want to, however many times I want to watch it. While it’s true that you can do this with the iTunes downloads, how many episodes can you keep on your iPod at a time? Certainly, not an entire season. Most likely, the episodes you’ve already watched will need to be deleted in order to get new episodes. So why pay for an episode that I won’t be able to do whatever I please with like I can with a DVD? My answer is simple. I won’t pay for it. If I pay for a TV show, it will be for a DVD that I have full control of. Otherwise, I’ll simply wait until they play the re-runs.

What are your thought on paying for TV show downloads from iTunes?