A Valid Reason To Use iTunes

I watched the Prison Break season premier live on regular commercial filled TV the other day.  Over the last couple months, I watched the first two seasons on DVD since I got a very late start on the show.

We have a baby due on October 19th, so I know there is a good chance that I will miss an episode of Prison Break in the next few weeks.  I don’t have Tivo and I refuse to miss the birth of our daughter because I’m too busy watching TV.

So, I decided to see what my options were for catching up on missed episodes.  Fox offers a free version from their site, but as far as I can tell it is going to have commercials which is fine.  I tried to watch the first episode but it looked like it wanted to install some kind of software for the player and when I tried to click on the link using Firefox, it wouldn’t let me click.  Plus the thought of DRM and commercials just makes me cringe.

I fired up iTunes and noticed they were giving away the first episode as kind of a free trial.  I started downloading.  The download took about an hour but I was busy doing other stuff.  The picture quality even on full screen was at least as good as my analog cable.  And there were no commercials.  Not bad.

If the videos came DRM free, it would be a viable option for me for the whole season at $1.99 an episode.  Since I already have the first two seasons on DVD, I would like a permanent copy of season 3.  DRM can never be a permanent copy because what do we do when Apple decides to go bankrupt or something else causes them to no longer support iTunes.

Still, if I end up missing an episode or two along the way, a download of an individual episode that I can watch commercial free whenever I want during the week is a nice back up plan.

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