Fucking hell. That nicely sums up my reaction to AllThingsD’s article stating that Apple’s canned TV rentals. Being British, a mystical place called ‘overseas’ that whoever does Apple’s media deals isn’t entirely sure actually exists and therefore largely ignores, I had to use a sneaky US account to access TV rentals on the Apple TV. And here’s what happened:

• 48 episodes of Lie to Me rented ($47.52)
• 48 episodes of Castle rented ($47.52)
• A bunch of miscellaneous rentals of Grey’s Anatomy and random other shows (about $100)

Without Apple TV rentals, we (Mrs G and I) would have probably never discovered and watched Lie to Me. Grey’s Anatomy… we were acquiring that by ‘other means’ before the 99-cent rentals rendered that pointless. And Castle? Well, we love Castle, but not enough to spend loads of cash on it. We’d have waited for the inevitable DVD firesale in the UK or US and picked it up for bugger all—and certainly than for less of the price of the iTunes rentals.

Apple’s laughable spin is that “customers have shown they overwhelmingly prefer buying TV shows”, but that’s bullshit. While reaction to my complaints about Apple binning TV rentals on Twitter shows this is certainly the case for some people, it isn’t for others; more likely, the studios holding back their content was to blame, leaving the rental selection in a pitiful state, especially towards the end. And at the same time the likes of Warner Bros. were arguing 99-cent rentals devalued their content, they were of course allowing Netflix users to download as much as they liked for eight bucks per month. Classy.

So, where does this leave anyone who loves TV? Well, you now have the following choices:

• Pay for hugely expensive cable or satellite, which gives you tons of crap and a few shows you actually care about.
• Pay over the odds for shows on iTunes: £2.49 ($4) per HD episode, in the UK.
• Grab waste-of-resources Blu-rays or DVDs when they show up or, if you’re savvy, hang on for the sales, and then try to figure out how to fit your ever-growing collection in your home.
• Visit the naughty web and say “screw you” to the studios.

Me, I’ll probably head for the third of those options now, but I’m sorely tempted by the fourth. The thing is, I actually want to pay for good shows and support those who make them, but the studios aren’t making it easy. I’m not paying twice as much for a series of House on iTunes as it costs on DVD, but I’m also not exactly thrilled by the prospect of buying more discs-in-card-boxes that waste resources and take up space. I also don’t really care to download content that I then ‘own’ and that takes up hard drive space when I only watch the vast majority of shows once. (Note to US readers yelling “But what about iCloud?”, Brits will only get app and book sync initially—we’re left out of the media-streaming excitement.)

So, yeah, thanks, Apple and thanks, greedy studios. Maybe one day the studios will wake up and realise that 99p or so would be a sensible price-point for a TV show, but I won’t hold my breath. (Even many games companies don’t seem to understand that popular products sell way more copies when they’re cheap, otherwise Pac-Man would always be 69p, rather than rather more ambitiously priced.) Also, take this surrender by Apple as a possible shot across the bows regarding digital movie rentals. As I said a couple of weeks back, they’re now being removed from iTunes with alarming speed, to drive up purchases that are often costlier than grabbing a DVD. It wouldn’t shock me if Apple quietly decides to trash that aspect of the iTunes Store, while being strong-armed by the studios, under the excuse that people want to ‘own’ their movies.