This Penny Arcade piece is focused on the 360’s media download service and Tycho makes an excellent point here regarding the price of downloads versus a rental or a DVD purchase:
I’m with him in that I want the people who make the content I’m after to have some of my money. That’s more than reasonable. It’s practically fair.
I like the process (ritual?) of watching good television. I don’t ever see myself getting my ‘Lost’ or ‘Heroes’ fix from a laptop. I also rarely watch my stories as they’re being televised. Tivo has certainly changed that for me. Michelle and I don’t sit down to watch until 20 minutes or so into an hour-long timeslot.
But if I didn’t have my Tivo I’d gladly pay $2 for a single episode of a show so I don’t have to skip commercials or hope that the network hasn’t whipped up some dumb start/stop time to penalize time-shifters or activated some digital flag that limits the number of times I can view a show. I would be happy to cut the advertising middle man out of my viewing equation. That is a future I could certainly get behind (you can keep your jetpacks, thanks).
Do any of you watch a show exclusively via download?