The season passes I bought on iTunes -- which was admittedly some years ago at this point -- actually added each episode the day after they aired on TV. It's my

The season passes I bought on iTunes -- which was admittedly some years ago at this point -- actually added each episode the day after they aired on TV. It's my impression that's still the case with most shows; the exceptions are shows on "premium cable" channels like HBO. The bit rates of the shows that I got were comparable to most of the files that I'd previously pirate^H^H^H^H^H^Hfound just lying on the street like they'd fallen off the back of trucks. The rest of your complaints are certainly true, though. As I mentioned in another reply, I think it's possible that if this a la carte model had taken off, there would have been successful pressure to go DRM-free just the way that there had been for music, although your mention of region-locking brings up that whole "international rights" folderol that's still with us even in the streaming world, so...