Ask HN: What would you love to pay for if it was available?

I'd certainly pay for an iTuneslike service for impulse buying old magazines in a digital format. I love magazines but they're rarely justifiably keepable as they accumulate and create a terrible clutter. Unfortunately for the majority of us that throw out magazines after a short time, eventually old magazines become incredibly interesting. If I come across ancient Wired, Next Generation or Nintendo Power magazines at a flea market for example, I almost always buy them, not really to keep, as I usually donate them after reading, but just to really page through and revel in the nostalgia.

I'd love to be able to go on the web and instantly download some obscure issue of the magazines I liked when I was a teenager, or looking back farther, old ancient National Geographics or Esquires or Playboys or whatever. There are rare magazines as well, such as the Beastie Boys' self published Grand Royal, that only had a handful of issues.

streaming NHL games for me but same concept :).

I feel bad for all the brits at my work that are probably dying to see good soccer on the TV and can't find any. They'd probably love a streaming sports site as well.

that plus a few disposable parts and you're in business. It might take some time to convince the health dept, though.

This is motivated by the fact that I'm in Australia and our broadband sucks.

Netflix send a whole heap of DVDs through the mail, so they're trust you not to rip them and distribute copies. If there was a massive content distribution network with kiosks in shopping centres where I could put in a DVD-RW or usb storage device (or pay for a blank DVD) and pay for the latest movies and TV shows I'd make a good amount of use of it.

It's mostly about saving bandwidth, but also trying to provide an extremely fast and convinient alternative to piracy. If that existed, I'd probably use it. I already buy TV shows on DVD if someone I trust recommends them highly enough - a much better experience for me than watching them on TV, no adds, pause, rewind, etc...

We get some shows quite a bit later here, and a few of the good shows only come to pay tv. So the timing would be the key. As soon as the TV show is aired anywhere - bam - available from the kiosk. The premium for being ad free and not getting it on the studios timeline might more or less balance out with the savings in packaging and distribution.

Same with movies. Theaters wouldn't be happy, but we're rapidly approaching the days when people will go to the movies for the theater experience and otherwise just get hold of it online (one way or another).

As a bonus idea, if the kiosks kept records of what you'd bought then buying a whole series through the kiosk gets you a big discount on the DVDs if you want the physical media since you've already paid for the IP at the point.

I want cable TV service and this is how I want it:

- A la carte pricing: $1 per channel per month (I'd go $1.50 for HD channels and more for premium channels of course)

- I want an IP-based/wifi-enabled DVR that records shows in a non-proprietary video format. I can browse the files from any computer in my home or configure my router so I can access them from work. If it can browse web videos ala boxee, great. I don't care about it skipping commercial–heck, I don't even care if it appends pre-roll/ticker ads to the files.