I heard there is a cd-rom with the database on it that I can program my scanner from.
How do I get this? Do I still have to re0subscribe every 6 months?
You can buy the DB on CD from scannermaster.com. You don't have to "resubscribe" per se, but if you want to get the updates that occurred to the database since you bought the CD, you would need to buy the next release of the CD.