2$ per episode... I don't know. I would rather pay less than the sum and get a whole season at a time, or at least get them in 720p and 5.1 for that price. I love iTunes for Podcasts because all you do is add your favourite podcast and the program takes care of everything else, like checking if a new episode is there and download it and mark it as new etc. etc.
I would love it if the future would be the same for TV content. Maybe the first episode of a season could be free to catch your interest and then you could either pay to get all future episodes in the current season or just buy them individually. Or maybe not pay for them at all, they could be free but with advertising included in them.
Then iTunes could just become an alternative to watching TV and AppleTV could take off because then it would finally make sense to own one. But first and foremost iTunes would need to be able to offer every show currently running on TV, but the studios don't seem to want that.
What would be better was if iTunes could offer movie rentals instead of purchases. Paying 10$ to get a sub dvd quality version of a movie with stereo sound is pretty unattractive. But paying 2$ to watch a movie that you don't want to see in the movies or don't want to own would be perfect.
At least 2$ movie rentals would keep me from just downloading them off of the net. If they were in HD and with DD or DTS surround sound wouldn't hurt either of course. And Finally if you could just rent them directly through
TV without involving your computer then once again
TV would make sense and I could see it becoming a success. But again it would require that a huge catalogue of titles would have to be available for rent.
Something like what one would see at a local blockbuster only in your home and operated by that beautiful slick device under your TV. I don't know why Apple does not yet offer movie rentals, or a very large movie catalogue yet, but I suspect that once again the studios could be to blame.
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It only hurts themselves when they don't get behind a beautifully elegant and most importantly already existing and fully functioning system that millions of people are already very familiar with. I know that most of the studios have grown scared of the success of iTunes for music and have started to back off and everyone seem to be starting to offer their own personal alternative, but in the end I doubt that that will pan out. Collecting it all in one place is the answer, not everyone running away scared and start doing their own little version of the same thing.
