Say you want to watch True Blood, Season 1
I dig Amit’s analysis. This seems to happen more frequently than one would expect. We’ll have to chalk it up to “convenience” fees.
The season’s broken up across 5 DVDs, 2-3 episodes each (12 episodes total).
In the current state of online video, your legal options* are…
- iTunes: $2.99 to BUY an episode = $35.88, or buy the season for $35
- Blockbuster: $5.48 to RENT a disc = $27.40
- Amazon: $37 to BUY the DVD set. Free shipping. Interestingly, Amazon offers to let you trade it back in when you’re done for a $14.25 Amazon credit, return shipping free. If you’re up for the hassle, that’s effectively $22.75
Observations:The fastest option is iTunes. About 5 minutes to download an episode. Downside: Each episode is massive (over a half GIG!) so I’m going to delete the file and this is basically renting for the cost of buying. Plus, I can only play it on an Apple device.
It costs almost as much to rent from Blockbuster as it does to buy the series. And it’s mind-boggling, but true, that the least expensive option is to have a warehouse ship you over a pound of physical discs in a brown box, and then for you to send that box of discs back after watching them. Bits don’t weigh a thing, but they’re still quite expensive compared to atoms.
* I’m not including Netlfix because getting a membership to watch one series is not a reasonable or repeatable option.
