WoW! That’s bad. I thought we were hard-done-to in the UK. We usually have to wait a few months before the start of the series.
The strange thing is though, that the US and Canada begin repeating the show half way through the season and as a result the UK has sometimes been known to see some of the shows before the US (We don’t repeat through the middle of the season (except Sky who are idiots).
If it’s any concellation, the internet seems to be changing things. FOr instance, it will (almost definately) be possible for you to download episodes encoded in MPEG format from the buffy newsgroups only hours after Firefly has been aired in the US. If you have Cable, you should be laughing!