Are you watching Lost or Battlestar on iTunes? Blogger Steve Gaythorpe discusses the highs and lows of looking for legitimate catch-up downloads:

Lost on iTunes

Hello, my name is Steven I am sci-fi/fantasy fan who doesn't own Sky. There are various reasons for this, but I won't bore you with them at the moment, maybe in the future. The only reasons, to my mind, for owning Sky are SCI FI Channel and new series of Battlestar Galactica and Lost.

But then I discovered the joys of iTunes. And this is what I wanted to tell you about, but then I recently came across one of the problems of iTunes...

Normally I am able to download a TV programme the day after it has been broadcast on Sky, which means for a small fee I can have both an HD and normal version of either Lost or BG on my laptop in 15 minutes. Great. So Monday, not Sunday, night becomes Lost night.

This week, at the end of a hard day I prepared to download the new episode of Lost, but it was not showing in the iTunes Store. I hit refresh a couple of times, closed iTunes, even switched my laptop on and off, anything to shake the programme loose and get it into the iTunes Store. Nothing. And worse I have nowhere to go for information, there is no schedule listing when downloads will be available and there is no-one to ask. So I waited. I checked the store every half hour. I watched Heroes, which was alright (the war against terror references were good, but BG did them better) but it has lost its rhythm, maybe I wasn't in the mood.

So come on iTunes, stick to the schedule; tell me when I can download my favourite shows. I don't want the Radio Times, I just want to know that at a certain time and on a certain date the show I am paying for will be available for me.

Yes it does turn out to be a lot more expensive than a box set, with none of the extras, but it is cheaper than a subscription to Sky, and I can choose what to watch and not get a load of other guff. £2.49 a week (or £4.98 if you get both BG and Lost) is not a lot of money. Plus you can't carry Sky around with you on a bus or train, like you can a laptop or iPod. I have watched Cylons destroy Caprica on a bus, seen Hurley be sweet on a train and with the clever application of cables I can watch my favourite downloaded shows on my TV.

The show eventually arrived on Tuesday, which was great because there was nothing else on.

This is the personal opinion of Steve Gaythorpe, one of our new volunteer bloggers, who'll begin contributing regularly from later in the month. Read more about Steve in the next issue of SFX, on sale Wednesday 11 March.

How are you catching up on your favourite programmes when you miss the UK broadcast? iTunes? iPlayer? Sky Plus or TiVo or some other PVR box? Let the world know…