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Apple Adds New TV Shows To iTunes
Phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Apple has added eleven new and classic television shows from NBC, the Sci-Fi network, and USA. The new shows include Alfred Hitchcock, Battlestar Galactica, Monk, Surface, Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno, Dragnet, Law & Order, The Office and most importantly: Knight Rider!" From the article: "Steve Jobs took the opportunity to toot Apple's horn, stating that since the inception of video downloads on the iTMS, they'd sold nearly three million individual items. In addition to the sales figures, the PR from Apple stated that their current offering of video stands at approximately 300 episodes. All in all this looks like a slam dunk for Apple as they're rounding up their distribution deals and diversifying their suppliers. If the rumored deals with FOX and CBS are true then Apple will have a dominating lead in this market, much like their current domination in the digital music distribution arena."
Are those shows downloadable in decent quality, or only in poststamp ipod format?
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
... when they lock up some kind of deal with rhino to distribute mystery science theater 3000.
yeah... now *that* would be a dream come true? need a quick manos fix? go to itms... and watch on your ipod.
*thinks about productivity*
perhaps that isn't such a great idea.
but yeah... wonder if mister jobs is a misty?
sad robot making broken music
Which brings up an interesting problem: If this were available in the UK, how would the television license come into play? Would it be rolled up into the cost if you wanted to buy an episode of the UK Office? Since you don't need a tele to play it, just a computer or ipod.
Everybody is talking about possible future Apple products - the iphone, icamera etc. I think there is a more logical and much more interesting product apple could make - an Apple TV.
Think about it - Sony and Microsoft are currently battling it out with gaming machines assuming that it's going to become the "media hub" for the home. What if they're completely wrong?
Apple have got many of the pieces of the puzzle already - Frontrow, itunes, a rock solid OS to base things on.
I can imagine my old mum and dad buying an Apple TV, but they would never in a million years buy an XBox or playstation.
Thinking again about this... probably not. The BBC are planning to roll their own online distribution system, and probably wouldn't want to get tied in to a single system like iTunes.
I wish they'd get on with it, though. I want to watch Hartnell-era Doctor Who eps online, dammit!
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Please, for the love of all things funny, PLEASE God save Arrested Development using this iTMS deal.
I'd pay $100 for a season of Arrested Development. I'm 30 years old, and this is the funniest show I've ever seen on TV.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Apple leads the way again. Quality and simplicity, giving people what they really want. Microsoft will get into this market and mess it up with complexity and buggery. Others will join the fray, and some will be taken and some will be left, while the press and pundits will forsee Apple's demise again and again.
I thought it was the old show ...
But no.
Season 1: $25.87
Season 2: $1.99/episode
*drools*
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Sorry, but I have to rebutt this.
h.264 will be the format of choice with the next-gen video cards with hardware support for h.264.
FairPlay does sort of suck, since you can't do anything with it, but at least it works, and doesn't get the movie/music people are bent out of shape.
Mac + Windows represents virtually all the _consumer_ market. Plus, iTunes can run on Linux via CrossOverOffice and others, so this point is not all that strong. The market just isn't there for solid native Linux support.
You can play these videos are FAR many more devices than the 5G iPod, like EVERY PC and Mac with iTunes. Yes, the videos right now are built for the iPod, but if you think the iPod is the only intended device, you've missed the point - the iPod is just a test.
Why do you need to burn a DVD when you can hook up your PC/Mac to your TV/HDTV, or even better yet, watch them on your nice high res monitor? Most people don't have HDTVs, so their computer monitors are as high res as they go. And you can burn the files to a data DVD to take wherever, or network share, or whatever. The DVD isn't tomorrow's technology - it's barely even today's. These videos represent a physical media-free environment, so again, whether this is a good thing or not, I think you're missing the point.
HDTV downloads would take FOREVER. Of course, if reports from Front Row-equipped iMacs streaming in HD trailer without stuttering or loading times is true, Apple is two steps ahead of us on this already.
Point is - this isn't meant to be a be all that ends all offering. This is a test, this is only a test. Why the heck else would they pick such a crazy variety of shows to test many potential demographics?
I'm curious as to what technology underlies the iTunes Music Store. Are they using Apple hardware on the hardware side? WebObjects on the software side? If it's an "all-Apple" solution that's a major success story that they ought to be leveraging to sell their server products.
-JT
If you have a TV licence for your house, then it covers all TVs within that house, as well as any and all TVs that can be powered solely from their own internal power source i.e. batteries at any other location. The iPod would qualify for that, so as long as you had a TV license at home (which you almost certainly would) then you'd be OK. If you didn't, then they might have to re-think things. That being said, it would only affect BBC programmes, as the license fee is only there to support the BBC as other channels are supported by commercials, so it would be entirely up to the BBC whether they even made their programmes available via iTunes.
Here's a Google-HTML-ised-PDF from the BBC website about some of the above.
Also, there has been talk - I think it's even been posted here on /. - of altering the TV licence to cover computers too, given that TV shows can be acquired (legitimately or not) through them, though I think it got smacked down at the time and I've not heard any more about it since.
Well at least the new episodes of Law & Order, which are filmed in HDTV, will be shown in brilliant 1280x720 resolution, right? Nope. 320x240.
Hell, we're using computers. They might as well offer it in 1080p for those of us with big enough monitors.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
I would, and I'm sure I'm not alone. If apple gets this working and I can download HD shows $4/show I'll cancel my HD cable subscription. With that costing me $80 / month I could download 20 HD shows a month, watch them whenever I want and be very happy.
The only thing I would be missing is sports. Someone gives me a la carte sports channels and I will be a very happy person.
This raises a question for me:
If I buy a Battlestar Galactica episode from iTunes and then go and download the same episode in HDTV resolution via BitTorrent, am I breaking the law?
Perhaps the "analog hole" applies to video as well.
If you're on a Mac, buy yourself the full version--as in the video-capture version--of Snapz Pro X. Open Quicktime and watch the show, while Snapz captures the video to MPEG. You'll be left with a very large file, but at least it should be DRM-less.
I have not tried this yet, so I'm not certain it will work, but it's worth a shot. Does anyone else who has a similar utility (Mac or Windows) want to try this and report as to its success/failure?
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
I was expecting the quality to suck, but the quality surprised me...! Connected my Powerbook to our board room projector (800x600).... the quality is much better than I anticipated. Granted its not DVD quality, but the image is much better than most TVs.
I don't know what apple is doing, but the 320x240 video looks better than TV quality. The images are crisp, colors are quite lush and yes, no blotchy spots from bad encoding.
Took almost 20 minutes to download a 40 min episode... and this on a shared T1. The files are between 110-120 MB each. I can see why they are not doing HD quality... 400-600 MB would take for ever to download... (not everyone has an OC-3 pipe at home....; stuck with Comcast at home....).
All in all a good compromise between speed and quality. Pleasantly surprised, is more like it!
Notice that there always is something you can download for free on the iTMS. Just not in the video section - yet. Remember that 1) This is a very new thing, with very, very limited content. Whatever content they can get their hands on is very valuable to them right now. 2) Downloading a video costs them more bandwidth than a song, so free episodes are going to cut into their (probably already thin) profit margins more than free songs. I'll be once bandwidth prices fall a bit and they have the range of content they have in music, they'll have a few freebies.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Amen!
A week after the original launch I wrote to Major League Soccer (MLS) and SUM (the US English language licensee distributor of the World Cup and MLS broadcaster) and asked them to look into providing games via iTMS next year for the league and WC. I realize SUM can't make the decision for the WC but it'd be nice if they could take the case to FIFA. I'd love to have a season pass to my favorite team and be able to have a copy of every game they play.
Finally getting Fox Soccer Channel and GolTV on Thursday. Can't wait to spend a weekend on the couch watching Premiership games... ah, heaven.
$1.99 for TV quality, $2.99 for DVD quality, and $3.99 for HD quality, perhaps?
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I would pay more for HD, but $2 for TV quality is too high a baseline. I'm thinking $1 for 480p (DVD) and $1.50 for 1080p at the very most. Here's why:
Production costs for Lost are under $3M per episode and it is considered the most expensive show on TV today.
Citation: http://starbulletin.com/2005/01/26/news/story2.ht
Lost has been averaging over 20M viewers per episode this season
Citation: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051117/
If we presume that for-pay tv downloading will become the dominate form of distribution, then at $1/episode that would translate into about a 700% return on investment - that kind of ROI is absolutely unheard of for a TV show - I mean it is so ridiculous that the entire management structure at ABC would die overnight from overdosing on the cocaine they bought with their bonuses if that should ever come to pass.
In fact, most shows, probably even including Lost today, lose money during their initial airing and only become profitable during syndication. It is those profitable shows that enable the funding for a lot of riskier and ultimately money-losing shows like Firefly, for example. Ultimately a ROI of 5-10% is probably close to what hollywood averages over all tv shows.
Thus even $1/episode is a heck of a lot for a popular show, although it might be appropriate for a show with a much smaller, niche market.
(and before any points out that I am ignoring infrastructure costs, they are in the noise at this level, particularly if a bandwdith-borrowing mechanism like bittorrent is employed).
I have a couple of videos for mine. Including one music video that I bought, just to have something to show people you can't show pr0n to.
The quality is really good. Crystal clear, good framrate, stays in synch, all that good stuff. The stuff from suicidegirls was filmed for it and thus looks really good. The video loooks good but it's an old song (500 miles). All that said I could see watching a sitcom on it but certainly not anything like BG. It's just too small. That and watching video sucks battery at a prodigious rate.
I bought mine cause the time had come and it's the one that was best for the amount of dosh I wanted to spend. That said I would not get one *for* the video but at this point it's a nice bonus.
Oh and for the menu system the screen just *rocks*.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.