Yeah it'll take some time to convert if you already have the show. But if you don't have the show and are downloading it for the first time, and it is seeded in FLAC, not SHN, it saves you a lot of time. Why not save the hundreds, or thousands of people who will grab the reseed the trouble of converting for playback on their portables or home servers or future disc players? Someone might say that they convert to .mp3 for playback on their portable anyway. Well that takes a lot of time too! If I had a 10 GB, or 20 GB or 30 GB player I'd rather save the time converting FLAC > .mp3 and just put the shows on my player as FLAC, and rotate out shows after I've listened to them a few times. I'm rambling, but if you have a show in lossless on your iPod, you can transfer it to your friend's comp if you are visiting, then they have a lossless copy of the show!