NBC To Offer On-Demand Movies Via P2P

RX8 writes "NBC Universal has signed a deal with Wurld Media to make some of their movies available for download via a secure P2P network in 2006. There hasn't been a price released yet, but the movies include what you would get on their existing video-on-demand and pay services plus around 100 older movie titles. Once the material is downloaded, users can only view it for up to 24 hours before it expires."

Comments

Surprise - Too Little, Too Late

[Jeff Mahoney]

Once again, a big media company comes out with an idea so they can claim to have a legitimate path for viewers to take advantage of -- but yet still totally miss what they are actually looking for.

Until these companies actually meet the demands of the people who are looking to download TV/Movies, unauthorized p2p networks will continue to own the market.

Re:Surprise - Too Little, Too Late

[MoralHazard]

You think that the only killer feature of P2P networks is free content? My friend, you miss something, I think.

True P2P networks offer tremendous bandwidth efficiency for the distributors of content, which is especially important when you're delivering large content (like, say movies and other media). Think of how quickly Bittorrent downloads of Linux distros took off--it made it so much easier for gazillions of people to get a brand-new release at the same time. No more waiting a week for the Debian FTP servers to be pingable again.

Plus, the distributor saves money on bandwidth charges, since many of the users will get the content from each other instead of the central servers. Whether this in turn increases the costs of the users remains to be seen, but it probably won't affect their connectivity bills much more than using open P2P networks to get stuff on their own.

fair is fair

[Scrameustache]

Once the material is downloaded, users can only view it for up to 24 hours before it expires.

And they can only spend my money for 24h before the payment expires, ok?

Re:Note to MPAA and RIAA

[Matt Ownby]

Actually, I believe the MPAA/RIAA and you _agree_ to terms.

I agree with your point, though... having downloadable content expire is quite lame.

I can go to McDonalds and rent a new DVD for $1 for a 24-hour time period. Why would I want to download a movie (which would undoubtedly be lower quality than a DVD) for more than $1 (which is what I assume they'd charge) ? I mean, what is the advantage here? Are they new movies that are out in theaters? Because if you can just get them on DVD, where is the value?

Re:To all the naysayers:

[OS24Ever]

And look how Blockbuster is turning out, along with their 'late fees'

One would think with the amount of TV shows being sold on DVD that they'd think there would be a happy digital medium to this. It's OK to sell DVDs, but if it plays on a computer it must explode and go away. I don't get it, the content on my computer isn't going to be as good as a DVD unless I want to download 10GB of stuff, which I don't.

Dear NBC,

[ewhac]

I am willing to pay exactly $0.00 for this "service" you're planning on offering. Copy protection is a form of product defect, and I do not purchase products I know to be defective. You may wish to confer with Sony on this issue.

On the other hand, if you are willing to offer movies and programs in an unencumbered format (DiVX, MPEG, QuickTime, Ogg Theora, whatever) with no usage restrictions, and no special download clients required, then I'd be very willing to consider as much as $3.00 per show/program downloaded. I'd especially be interested in the old NBC Mystery Movies from the 1970's, including McCloud, Columbo, and McMillan and Wife.

Please correct your offerings accordingly.

Schwab

So I pay AND provide their distribution network?

[dr7greenthumb]

It's good to know that I get their product for 24 hours but they get my bandwidth for 30 days. I don't mind using my bandwidth to share with my peers using P2P when it's an open torrent but if they want me to pay for the show and continue distributing it for them for 30 days, they are crazy. If we're stuck with the expiration rule, the clock should at least start when the user stops sharing it. Either that or subsidize my broadband.

Re:Note to MPAA and RIAA

[NanoGator]

"Entertainment is to be done at my leisure. I choose the terms, not you."

I wish they'd just cram a few commercials into movies and release them out in the wild. There are some movies out there that I just won't spend the $4 to rent them, but I'd tolerate the commercials.

Paying for P2P Content?

[CheddarHead]

P2P is well suited for distributing free material, but I don't really see it as suitable for distributing paid content. It seems like the whole business model is broken.

With free material everyone understands that by contributing disk space, bandwidth, and electrical power (to run their computer when they're not using it) they are helping share the burden of distributing the material. Why would I want to do this if I have to pay for the material anyway? Some might argue that I'm helping to keep the price down, but in reality I'd just be padding NBC's profit margin.

Additionally, I normally turn my computer off when I'm not using it (save's power, less vulnerable etc). Now if I was participating in a free P2P community I might leave it on as my contribution to the community but I'm not going to burn extra power to support someone else's paid download. I'm sure others would act in a similar fashion, so the number of available nodes to help with your download are likely to be very limited. Seems like this would result in very slow downloads.

Also, I can only watch the movie for 24 hours, but will it stay on my harddrive taking up disk space? Seems like it has to in order for this to be a P2P service. If everyone just deletes their expired movies, than anyone purchasing the movie would have to download it from central NBC servers. It doesn't sound like a very workable P2P setup.

Finally there's the issue of the 24 viewing window. As others have stated, that's just not enough. I don't want to own the movie forever, but I'm not going to spend hours downloading a movie I paid for and then feel pressured to watch it before it expires. With current on demand services I get the movie immeadiately so it's easier to plan for my time. If I download a movie tonight to watch tomorrow, who knows what might come up. I'd be pretty pissed if I paid for and spent hours downloading a movie and then couldn't watch because it expired. They would need to make the limit at least a couple days, if not a week.