Last week we talked about Episode 3 of House MD being available legally before the P2P networks got hold of it.

In February this year, Channel 10 realising that they were running 6 months behind the rest of the world, changed the sequencing of the House episodes so that they were only two weeks behind the released version. Which of course meant that from S5E3 users jumped to S5E12 losing continuity and not understanding how some of the characters and their relationships developed.

P2P users of course were tracking the show episode by episode and so were not disadvantaged by Hollywood’s penchant for releasing international release sometimes nine months behind local markets.

So it’s Hollywood’s fault that our House episodes were all over the place this year?

Not exactly. It has a lot to do with ratings season in Australia as well. For a few weeks every year the TV stations battle it out for who’s the best.

And who is the best?

Irrelevant. User numbers tell us that TV is no longer the main entertainment choice in most households.

But during those short weeks Australians are treated to a myriad of choice of the best of the best overseas programming titles.

What happens the rest of the year?

Well, we revert to forty year old reruns of the Public Domain “I love Lucy” series and such ilk.

So what do people do then ?

Well they do what they have been doing in ever increasing numbers for the last four years, they download what they are interested in.

So what are they downloading now?

Today? It’s probably the new Stargate series…. Stargate Universe.

Stargate Universe - Season 1

Video Codec: X264 | Resolution: 1280x720 | Audio: AC3

Status: Still Running

Top of Form

Yep – it’s only been there for a couple of hours, if you hurry you can grab it before its timeslot in the UK tonight.

Australian readers, I apologise. The file is 2.19 GB or one fifth of your monthly download limit.

For those of you that think that this is unfair – be very careful of who you vote for next-time.  I would suggest that Liberals are not the party that are most conducive for you online entertainment experience freedom of choice.