Rent, Buy or Pay TV – What is best?
When I was growing up the concept of having pay TV was somewhat alien to me. It was expensive and therefore in my adolescent brain only the “rich” people had it. I did not believe I was missing out on much as free to air tv had an array of popular television shows and Saturday night movies for the family to watch. If needed we would pay a trip to the local video store and pick up the latest release VHS to watch on the weekend. Fast forward 10 years and it seems many households have some version of cable to TV so that kids have something to be entertained by, fathers can watch the many international games of sport and mums can have their constant doses of soapies.
Switch to another scenario and some people have built up huge collections of DVDs that more often then not sit on the shelf collecting dust after having been watched a couple of times. And whilst the video stores have all been converted to large collections of DVDs, their popularity has decreased evident by the fact that you no longer need to get there early in the day to get the new release movies. So take these three categories and think about which one is cheaper.
Lets look at the video shop scenario first. I will use the costs of my local video store however most are around the same prices. A new release DVD which is an overnighter costs $7. Then there are bundling options. You can get three 3day DVDs for $12 and seven weeklies for around $15. This is a pretty good deal especially if your kids are on holidays and you need to entertain them. It also means you can watch new movies for a quarter of the cost of buying it yourself. However, last week I went to go hire some series of my beloved childhood show Buffy and found that to hire a whole series it would cost me $24.
Now at the end of that 3 day hire I had relieved some nostalgic memories of slayer kicking ass but now to hire all seven series it would set me back $168. In contemplating this I found myself at my local JB Hi Fi where lo and behold in the sale bins are buy two get one free of Buffy series. In this scenario I could have all seasons to keep for $120. This is where the heightened popularity of buying DVDs has come into play.
JB seemed to spur the trend in most places now where there are often different specials and you can pick up movies for less then $10 each. Granted they are not the latest releases but they often provide you with cheap entertainment which you get to own. However if you are like me and most of my friends you will have got caught up in the “its so cheap why wouldn’t I just buy it” trap and are now left with a huge collection of DVDs which when you add up the costs equates to alot of my pay during uni wasted. I soon realised the stupidity of my ways when I had little money to live but had a shelf with hundreds of DVDs neatly lined up.
So to re coup some of my money I sold my collection on ebay and ended up with alot of the costs recovered. I found this was a great way to find the DVDs i loved (and view them multiple times till it was imprinted in my memory), watch TV series I was not able to watch because I did not have foxtel but then gain back most of my money.
So what about Foxtel? There are many options available today which can start from $40 a month. Likewise you can pick and choose from different packages which can cater to the types of shows you want to watch. But with new technologies like IQ, HD and the new and upcoming Teevo it can set you back a fair heap if you actually want to have access to good shows and movies. So is it worth it? Personally i think it is all relative to your situation and the amount you watch TV. For instance in my partners household there are four adults, 3 of which who work full time.
Foxtel is used say one hour a night and a large chunk of that is filled with flipping through channels to actually find something decent to watch or giving in and watching the same episode which was played an hour before. In this scenario I would say it is a waste of money. The movies on offer are pretty bad unless you want to pay an extra $5 to select something from box office. However I can say if you have a family with younger kids or your family time entails watching TV it could be a useful option. Still free to air TV, whilst it can lack some quality viewing has become a lot better in terms of getting the latest shows (it just may be a bit later then what you get on pay tv).
It is good to keep in mind that Australia has now launched the new free view television service on digital TVs. This will provide viewers with more channels to view from including a 24 hour sports channel. Based on this scenario one would assume that it is not really worth paying the extra for cable when there is more variety of FREE television viewing.
So again it is all relative to your TV usage and also your amount of expendiable income. You need to ask yourself is it really worth spending minimum $500 per year on pay TV (in most cases only to have the same kind of problems with finding good shows-and no ads is no longer a selling point). Personally in my situation I would scrap the pay TV, rent the occasional new release and if I really enjoy a certain movie or show, buy it on sale for the cheap and then sell them when I was sick of them.
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