I was facing a minor dilemma a few months back. The new season of Doctor Who was just around the corner, but our TV package didn’t include BBC America. Then I realized that iTunes would sell a season pass to the show… so I assumed my problems were solved.
And they pretty much were.
The iTunes season pass works about as well as it can. Up until this week, I would get an email the day after the show aired saying a new episode was available to download. I’d follow a link in the email which would download the show in iTunes, and then I’d watch my painfully slow bandwidth-capped AT&T DSL take its sweet time to download the gig and a half file.
As I said, things were going fine until this past Sunday when the email notifying me of a new show never came. I checked iTunes manually and sure enough, the show wasn’t there yet. I sat back and waited for the most part, but did post a joking tweet about it. I was heartened when the official Doctor Who… uh… page? site? person? on Facebook posted about it. (Possible spoilers, I guess.)
I’m not tooting my own horn here, but it was only two days late. Not very much. And yet, judging by the comments posted there, you’d think Apple and BBC America worked together to keep a free candy factory located in every major city in the US secret, away from prying eyes. The sentiment was really negative of course: people threatening to use Amazon for the service next season, people claiming they’d download it illegally, and so on. Lots of grumbling and teeth-gnashing which, admittedly, the internet is really good at!
That all said, outside of here on the Ping, I’m wondering if I should just stay away from comments altogether now. These in particular were a little slice of nastiness; it’s really too bad that not having a TV show available for two days made them so uncomfortable.
Oh well. Off to see how Rory dies this week.
Posted in Consumer Commentary, Everyday Life