some iTunes questions

I only recently (last week) signed on to the iTUnes store for the first time, and while I am an experienced Mac user and computer geek, I don't know much about the details of the store so here are some basic questions.

I *really* want to buy some music and TV shows etc. (I'm not just saying that, I really think that content should be paid for and not free), but alas I am in Canada. There are like, 5 "iTunes Plus" songs in the whole store, and even those are difficult to find.

Q. How often is the content going to be updated? If I wait a month or two, is it likely that there will then be 10 "iTunes Plus" songs, or still just the original 5? (yeah I am exaggerating but not by much) I mean EMI is supposed to be DRM free, but in fact 90% of the EMI titles are seemingly *not* provided as iTunes Plus titles in the Canadian Store.

Q. Is there no way to just search for the iTunes Plus titles? If there is I can't see it.

Secondly, I have the nano video iPod, so I would like to watch TV shows, but (this time without exaggerating at all), literally ... there are only 16 different TV shows on offer, and 12 of them are actually US shows. This leaves Hockey (bleh!), some Stand-Up comedy (yawn), and Robson Arms, Little Mosque, Rick Mercer, and Corner Gas. For some dumb reason, only the most recent season of each of these shows is offered. So even if I wanted to check out Robson Arms (the only one that interests me), there is no point because I would be joining the series halfway through.

Q. How long am I likely to have to wait before they add the first seasons of these shows? How long did it take in the States? Do they ever offer older stuff that came out before they added the show? How often do new shows pop up? There are offerings from CBC for instance, but most of the best shows on CBC like Intelligence, are not even there.

I have heard that if you burn a playlist in iTunes to a CD and then re-import the CD, you can strip the DRM. Even though I don't break the law, I think I would be fine with this method morally speaking as I have already paid for the content anyway. But I can't find the answer to...

Q. Does doing this conversion reduce the (already low) quality of the original DRM'ed track?

I feel like I'm standing at the door of a shop with money in my fist, but they don't seem to want to let me in or sell me anything.