Interscription

So after reading this article on lifehacker.com, it got me thinking.  As anyone who knows me is aware, I’m a subscription entertainment junkie.  I currently have a Rhapsody subscription for my music, a Gamefly subscription for games (an awesome service, use this link to try it out, and send me some love!), and I’ve been demoing Netflix for it’s watch now product, which I’ll probably review at some point.  I also subscribe to every premium cable channel under the sun for their generally high level shows.

The theory of the article is that subscriptions are generally not the value that they seem to be as most of us actually consume far less than we think.  The argument doesn’t quite resonate very much for me on most things.   Let’s go through a couple of the subscriptions in my life:

Rhapsody

I primarily use my Rhapsody account to load my player up with custom channels to give me fresh music and artist discovery.  In fact, the Rhapsody set up replaced my long-time Sirius subscription.  I easily listen to 10-15 songs a day on my commute, and they’re almost always new.  At .99 a pop from itunes or a competing service, we’re talking a bill of somewhere in the $150 - $200 range monthly, instead of the $9.99 I currently pay.  For me that’s a good value, but I’m also a new music junkie, so not everyone would get that value.

Gamefly

For games, I also know that’s not true for me. $15.95 a month let’s me have any one game at a time in my home.  I’ve generally been going through one or two games a month.  My alternatives would be to rent the game at blockbuster for $7.00 for 1 week, or buy each game I wanted to play.  Essentially, based on my usage (and desire to hang onto a game until I beat it or am bored, rather than 1 week), I would be spending between $60.00 and $120.00 a month on video games.  $15.95 is a pretty good deal.

Netflix

While not a “premium” service by any stretch of the imagination is a pretty robust service.  It’s a service that I’m not sure I really need, but it’s $9.00 a month, placing it on the lower end of rental costs, and I can ask them to send me a DVD whenever I like.  A single DVD rental alone at Blockbuster would be about $5.00, so assuming I only rented one DVD a month, that would make the cost/value of the watch instantly (the equivalent of having a 6,000 title deep and growing DVD collection) $4.00 a month.  I consider it a good value, but won’t really recommend it until they come up with an officially sanctioned way of getting it to stream to my Xbox.  As it is, it works, but it’s a headache, and involves some technical trickery, at least with my set up to get it streaming through Media Center.

Premium TV (HBO, Showtime)

I currently subscribe to more than just those two because I have a package deal, which periodically needs to be renewed with a humbling call to Comcast’s retention folks to keep from getting charged the regular rates.  Assuming that doesn’t last forever, and I had to pay for premiums, I would only consider paying for these two.  Both have excellent shows, and a compelling track record of bringing in new content.

For example, Showtime’s lineup includes: Brotherhood, Californication, Dexter, Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, Queer As Folk, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, The L Word, The Tudors, This American Life, Tracey Ullman’s State Of The Union, Weeds.  While HBO’s current slate of series’ includes: Entourage Big Love Real Time with Bill Maher Curb Your Enthusiasm Flight of the Conchords Tell Me You Love Me In Treatment Extras (In putting this together from HBO’s site, and removing everything that is no longer on the air, HBO really doesn’t have any titanic smashes right now).

Assuming for argument that I could not live without any of these shows, that’s 18 shows I’d have to come up with bread for if I didn’t subscribe.  Assuming at any one time four shows are airing a week.  If I payed 1.99 an episode on Itunes, Movielink, or elsewhere, I’d be coming up with $8.00 a week, or 32.00 a month.  I would lose the ability to watch it the moment it aired, and with Comcast anyway, I would lose access to all of the additional movies, and OnDemand content these two networks offer.  According to Comcast’s site, the standard monthly charge for HBO and Showtime would be $19.95 each, or $40.00 a month.  So, going ala carte here, would save me $8.00 a month.

The upside is that I’d actually save more than that, since there are months that go by with no shows, or only one or two shows on.  For example, right now, as the Tudors season has ended,  nothing is on.  Weeds and “Secret Life” premiere on Monday, so we’d have 2 shows from showtime ($16.00 a month), and that’s assuming that I like “secret life,” which is brand new.

As far as I can tell, it’s basically a wash.  The other kink in the a la carte method is the dearth of HD downloads (or the increased cost for downloding content in higher resolution).  As it is, I don’t really pay more to dvr or watch these shows in HD.  At the end of the day, I’m not paying full retail for these channels either.  If I was, I would probably take a harder look at going a la carte.  It would also be a great idea if you’re not that into the shows on these networks, and think you could get away with only one or two a month.

We live in a time where the way we consume our media is rapidly changing, and there are some innovative companies striving to offer up their content in fresh ways.  Issues of net neutrality and traffic shaping are going to become even more prevalent as we move more and more into IP based digital distribution of our media, especially when the companies providing our bandwidth are the same companies offering competing services.  Whether an all you can eat subscription, or a pay-as-you go plan works better for you, will depend 100% on how where and when you want to enjoy your media.

So how do you get your home entertainment? Or do you just sit at your dining room table doing crosswords all night?