My local Video Hire Place rents TV shows for $6.95 a season per week, but often has deals where they can be rented for as low as $5 a week. For TV shows of eight to ten episodes a season, this is quite convenient.

To compare:

• To purchase all four seasons of Tudors at JB HiFi would cost $80.
• iTunes Australia charges $3.49 per episode or $29.99 for a whole season, so $119.96 to watch all four.
• iTunes USA charges $2.99 per episode or $28.99 for a whole season.
• Australians were never allowed to rent TV on iTunes, but this doesn't matter because iTunes cancelled TV rentals for everyone recently. When it was available you could rent for as little as $0.99 per episode. So just less than $38 (10 episodes per season, except Season 3 which only had 8).
• If you look hard enough you can get all four seasons of The Tudors on ebay for around $40 second hand.
• And of course you could download approximately 20 to 40Gb of data for "free" online, which would be half of my monthly limit which costs me around $80 a month, so $40.

How can anyone compete with the convenience of the local video store?!

Oh yeah... except when the DVD is so scratched it won't play (which is probably a quarter of the time).

The Tea Party, recently reformed, have used Pledge Music to fan-source the funding to record a live album on their Australian tour. I've signed up for the digital release.

Usually I'd stubbornly purchase the CD because as far as I'm concerned music isn't music unless it is printed on plastic, but for this I'm more interested in supporting the process than I am about buying the music.

I also plan, when I finally get around to sitting in front of my actual desktop computer, to purchase a couple of other for-the-fan-from-the-band products.

Firstly, I intend to buy the new re-release of Smashing Pumpkins' "Pisces Iscariot" directly from the band from their website. Sure, this means it needs to be sent to me via snail mail from them, but part of the purchase includes a (lossless) digital version of the cassette tape included with this boxset. A (sick, horrible, demented) part of me is vaguely excited about pulling down all my cassette transfer gear and playing that cassette, but another (sensible, time poor) part of me just wants the music.

Secondly, after recently reading the excellent (if massively back-slapping) combined So What!/Metal Hammer magazine celebrating Metallica's four gig 30th anniversary shows at the Fillmore last year, I intend (again, when I get to my desktop) to buy the four shows from their fantastic Live Metallica website, where all of their gigs eventually go to be purchases, again losslessly. I am glad I am not so much of a fan of Metallica that I feel the need to buy all of their shows (as I would be if Faith No More had a similar website).

Why do I need to get to my desktop? Because that is where my backup system (which makes sure I don't lose anything digital I've purchased) is all configured. If I buy, and download, something on my phone or laptop, I could easily lose that. If I download on my laptop, a couple of mouse clicks makes sure that, short of some really bad luck, I'll have copies of those purchases, just in case the website-of-purchase won't allow for replacement downloads [which is usually the case].

All of which wouldn't necessarily be the case if I just popped on down the store and bought some plastic...