I am pumped because Battlestar Galactica finally returns to television this Friday! Fans have been waiting for more than an entire year for new episodes, thanks to the SciFi channel’s dubious programming choices. So I am more than ready to start the first half of the show’s final season.

But those of you who have been keeping up with my posts may recall that I no longer have cable television. Since Galactica doesn’t air on any of the over-the-air broadcast channels, how will I manage to pick it up?

Normally I would buy the series episodes through my Apple TV. But NBC and Apple had a falling out and NBC pulled all of its shows, including its SciFi channel frontrunner, from Apple’s iTunes. Thankfully, however, they made the final season available through Amazon’s Unbox service. So I’ve subscribed to the fourth season at $1.89 per episode.

Battlestar Galactica via Amazon’s Video on Demand

Since I have a Tivo HD DVR registered with the service, the episodes should be automagically downloaded to my Tivo once they become available, and I won’t have to try and download them to a computer and then convert them for display on my living room television. I haven’t used Unbox much, so I’ll let you know how it goes. It certainly should be better than my other option of recording it off the school’s cable line onto a crummy VHS tape. Let’s face it, 250 lines of resolution is NOT acceptable anymore. And I won’t be tempted to illegally download the episodes from a torrent site, since I’d much prefer to play by the rules and hope that some of the money supports additional quality television.