iTunes Store Alternative?

[Renegade]

Can anyone recommend an alternative to the iTunes store for TV shows? (And movies, but TV #1.)

[Carol Haynes]

Have you tried Amazon?

[40hz]

+1 Amazon

or possibly NetFlix if you don't insist on 'owning' your own copies.

[Deozaan]

What about those watch online sites? Such as Crackle or Hulu?

[Lashiec]

I'm really tempted to say the forbidden word, but, first things first, are you still living in Korea? What do you prefer, digital or physical copies?

[Renegade]

Can you download from Amazon? I thought you could only order DVDs there. (Which is pretty useless as region codes make things break.) I'll need to look into that.

Crackle and Hulu don't work here in Australia. Only in the US. Sigh... (I really hate all this market segmentation nonsense.) And they don't have any way to buy and download (that I could see). I like having local copies so that I'm not held hostage by bandwidth or network problems.

I'd prefer digital copies so that I can just burn them to DVD if I want, or watch them on different computers. DRM basically makes it useless if I want to use a different computer. (Lord knows that the pirated DVDs you get on the streets in a lot of places work a lot more reliably than 'legitimate' DVDs. Sad really. Which brings us to the forbidden word...)

As for the forbidden word, piracy, to be honest, it's actually easier than dealing with all the baggage of market segmentation, DRM and all that silliness, but I'd really rather not go there. It's not reliable and it's still a PITA. I really have no moral qualms about downloading things that I've already purchased (as they are invariably broken in some way that prevents me from watching them), but I'm really looking for things that I don't own already (things I've not watched mostly).

Also, I don't want to subscribe to and pay at a pirate video site because it's just asking for trouble. Lord only knows where your credit card number will end up. (Again, one of the many reasons that I love PayPal for buying online. PayPal is just the best way to insulate against getting ripped off.) Unlimited games, software and videos? Ummm... Nope. Even with PayPal, I'd not risk any trouble with my PayPal account at one of them. My PayPal account is far too valuable to me.

[Lashiec]

Amazon has Video On Demand, but it's only available in the USA, as well as Netflix. There are rumors the latter ones are planning to expand outside the USA, but who knows to where and when. Living in Australia, it occurs to me that you could use Bigpond, but maybe that would require an ISP change.

And really, subscribing to a pirate video site? I was just thinking in BitTorrent.

[Renegade]

Amazon has Video On Demand, but it's only available in the USA, as well as Netflix. There are rumors the latter ones are planning to expand outside the USA, but who knows to where and when. Living in Australia, it occurs to me that you could use Bigpond, but maybe that would require an ISP change.

And really, subscribing to a pirate video site? I was just thinking in BitTorrent.

-Lashiec (June 04, 2010, 08:51 PM)

A friend of mine subscribes to a pirate music site, and swears by it. He's a bit braver than I am I suppose. But I don't really see the difference between it and pirated BitTorrents. Piracy is piracy.

I'll check out BigPond. I'm on TPG and won't consider switching as the TPG service is adequate and I can't see other services realistically being worth double the cost. But BigPond shouldn't require switching. That seems strange. The only ISPs that have that kind of arrangement have all pirated content, that I know of anyways.

[Carol Haynes]

Sorry I thought you wanted film music - not the films themselves. Amazon sells MP3 downloads.

FWIW why not simply buy the DVDs - 9 times out of 10 they are cheaper than iTunes and you get a much better product. You can always rip them for mobile players if you want to.