Scaricare TV

If you have read my earlier posts, you know that the television in Italy leaves much to be desired. At first we watched with a morbid curiosity but a year into our adventure here, the novelty has worn off. 

When we gave up watching the two RAI stations which run dubbed reruns of "Murder She Wrote" during the day and cheesy game shows at night, we put the three English channels into rotation: CNN international, CNBC and BBC international. The programing on each is essentially repeating the same news show every hour. Once we had seen the show enough that we were able to quote the anchor, we would change to the next station. The rest of the 100 or so stations available on our satellite are in German, including the one channel which gets sports coverage. We watched the Olympics entirely in German, an experience we credit with our ability to say "Divingboard" and "Track and Field" in German. 

For a while after the Olympics ended, I was getting some excitement from watching the live currency exchange rates scroll across the bottom of the BBC. This made for a fun game of our own type of "currency trading." When the euro got down to around $1.21 or so I would run to the ATM as fast as I could. Unfortunately in reviewing my bank statements I realized that the bank averages the rate for the day. So much for that form of entertainment - time to try something else.

We returned home this summer with the goal of purchasing a new computer with which to download TV shows. I could hardly contain myself as I found NBCs website offering full episodes of The Office, a show whose loss I have mourned daily since our move to Italy. I should have known it was too good to be true - as soon as I clicked "download" a message popped up telling me that the video could not be downloaded "from your area". Apparently there is some rule that prevents you from downloading American television unless you actually live in America, where Tivo and OnDemand are ubiquitous (at least as ubiquitous as computers and high speed internet connections). 

After our disappointment with network websites, we were enthused to discover the entertainment buffet on offer at iTunes (even though NBC shows weren't available). The choices are not as vast as Netflix, but for those who follow the ebb and flow of the dollar for fun, iTunes is a goldmine. We picked a movie to rent and clicked. We watched wide-eyed as it showed up in our downloading queue with tiny subscript beneath the progress bar: "2 hours to download." 2 hours...I began calculating how many more rounds of CNN's news broadcast we would have to watch as we waited. Unfortunately, many, many rounds of the same news; I noticed the time had begun slowly creeping upwards. It didn't stop until it reached 24 hours. We suddenly realized that we had failed to factor in the limited bandwidth in Italy which makes the internet connection match the pace of the government offices here. 

Although planning our TV viewing 24 hours in advance has put a slight damper on things, we are excited every day to see the new offering on iTunes. Yesterday I noticed The Office was now available! With the downloads going 24 hours a day and the computer left on all night, we might be able to get season 4 downloaded before season 5 is over!