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NBC to Offer Free Video Download Service
Damocles the Elder writes "Apparently NBC realized that people on the internet do watch TV, because after breaking up with Apple over iTunes pricing schemes, they're setting up their own free service." From the article "NBC first contracted with Amazon to offer its programs for sale to downloading devices like MP3 players. Now it is establishing its own downloading service, which NBC executives say they expect to become a viable competitor to iTunes.
"With the creation of this new service, we are acknowledging that now, more than ever, viewers want to be in control of how, when and where they consume their favorite entertainment," said Vivi Zigler, the executive vice president of NBC Digital Entertainment. "Not only does this feature give them more control, but it also gives them a higher quality video experience."
Cue Comcast and other ISPs complaining that NBC is taking advantage of the bandwidth they provide and should be forced to pay in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
...that MP3 players can now play videos
...
Commercials will be embedded in the programs and viewers will not be able to skip through them.
From TFA:
Commercials will be embedded in the programs and viewers will not be able to skip through them...
Further into the article:
But NBC intends to transform the service into a model similar to iTunes by the middle of 2008 -- that is, consumers will pay NBC directly to download episodes of the shows. "We did this to eliminate the middleman," said Jeff Gaspin, the president of NBC's digital division.
That's fine and dandy, but will the paid version of the episode come complete with ads or is this just an interim solution until the paid model is in place, because I sure as hell wouldn't want to pay for episodes if they contained unskippable ads.
make all media pirate proof 100%, make no money. the slightest crack in the system and you make no money.
simply release your media in a format everyone can enjoy for free in a quality higher then the pirates are putting out, slip in some well targeted adverts, hey presto you just won over a market you had no chance of ever having previously and your making money from it.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
From the article:
You can't skip through the commercials? Can't transfer them to a disk or other computer? Any bets on how long this will last?
But maybe this will help...
Right, because online payment systems are magical. Only the top wizards understand the spells that make them work. That's why nobody except Apple has secure software to allow payment by credit cards: Steve Jobs is the toppest of the top wizards.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
I've tried downloading/watching heroes from NBC before.
Because i was accessing it from a non-american IP address, they locked me out, citing no advertisers for my region (New Zealand)
Talking of which, they previous/already offered the ability to watch previous episodes of heroes before, what exactly has changed?
Isn't this just a rehash of what they already have, just with plans to turn it into an iTunes competitor later next year?
To avoid criticism; Say nothing, Do nothing, Be nothing.
FTA:
Holy smokes: the most succesful legal online music distribution service on the Internet is actually a haven for piracy? Up is down, war is peace. Next up: the beef market has been terribly devastated by the popularity of McDonald's restaurants.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Ultimately this is a good thing; it forces NBC to be better than Apple or they fail. It then forces Apple to be better than NBC. Which forces everybody else to be better. Because everybody is competing with free. You've got to be good to compete with free.
Now the trouble is, companies hate competing, so ideally, Congress will ignore the whining of these big companies as they ask for laws to shield them from competition. It should also look aggressively at these companies if they try to work together to avoid competing with each other.
This should be interesting to watch.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I'm more suspicious of your "facts". NBC is owned by GE (market cap 427 billion vs MSFT's 268 billion). Maybe you're thinking of MSNBC (a stupid idea), which Microsoft is no longer interested in.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I am an Apple fan boy. With that out of the way, it is simply obvious to me and millions of others that iTunes is a well-refined product. With years of polish it has become one of the best media management packages around. So what are NBC going to end up releasing? My bet is some clunky, flash-in-the-pan web site with Windows-only formats and all the broken crap that comes with then. I am not denying problems with the Apple offering (DRM among them), but this move has the unfortunate effect of fragmenting a service that, for the consumer, is best unified.
I think what he's trying to imply is that iTunes (not iTMS) allows people to rip their own CD's unencumbered by DRM. In fact, it doesn't even have an option to force DRM on songs. I was curious about this too, until I realized that MS Windows Media Player has an option to "Copy Protect Music" and presumably has the ability to force people to "copy protect music" if Micrsoft deems it important. Imagine if iTunes never became the dominant music software; I'm guessing this option would already be turned on.
This is probably some sort of PR spin over the fact that NBC is most likely going to use Windows Media Player to base their options, and this is a feature that a marketing person would tout as important. And at first glance, I think Joe Average will see this as important too, since it will cut down on those dirty hackers and pirates from stealing music.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I've used Amazons Unbox on my Tivo HD and downloaded the NBC pilots for Bionic Woman and Journeyman. Neither had commercials, so ran in about 42-45 minutes. Both were in SD format, which I should have expected given the amount of bandwidth required for HD, but I could set up a download from amazon.com at work, go home and then watch a show.
Neither of these were shows I might have watched otherwise (or told the Tivo to record), but I may watch a few episodes of both now and give them a chance. Thanks NBC! Now bring back Studio 60 and all will be well with the world.
instead of "buying shows on iTunes and getting ripped off" you will be buying commercials from NBC and getting screwed.
instead of buying an episode from iTunes and watching it (maybe even with out commercials) as much as you like, you will get 7 days to watch the commercial content. You can't even fast forward these things.
truely a TV executives wet dream.
this is just like the stupid lillypond thing. WMA, DRM, crap.
but I'm sure that this will stop piracy. yar.
-- Sig under construction...
iTunes shows cost $2. These shows contain unskipable adverts. Both contain DRM. Assuming they include 10 minutes of adverts in a one-hour video, and that you will only watch the show once, your time would have worth under $12/hour for them to be better value than the iTunes version. Where I live, that's barely minimum wage.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Assuming they include 10 minutes of adverts in a one-hour video, and that you will only watch the show once, your time would have worth under $12/hour for them to be better value than the iTunes version.
Of course! Time spent watching TV is billable time. I think we've found the ???? step before PROFIT!
According to TFA, the videos will "degrade" after seven days.
I'm assuming this means that your download of 30 Rock will slowly morph into an episode of Studio 60, and eventually, Saturday Night Live itself.
Suuure. A viable competitor - but without a quarter of the video content, no music, probably crap software, lousy integrated experience, and no iPod support. It's as if they just opened a new brick and mortar NBC store which sells laser disks.
Let me know how that goes for you.
Although I suspect this is more of an attempt by NBC to get people to pay to watch commercials, it's ultimately going to be bad for their business and the on-demand market in general. It's almost never a win to fragment a potential market, particularly for the consumer but who really cares about them anymore? With entertainment consolidated to a few major players, the consumer is an abstract concept with no form or value as an individual.
Ultimately this will prove to be a fruitless endeavor. You can't drive an internet market by conscription. The history of the internet is littered with the corpses of companies that thought the same thing. Imagine needing a set-top box to tune in an individual TV station. NBC and CBS use the same type box, but you need a different one for ABC and Fox. WB has their own. It seems silly in any other market context, but that's what Apple and NBC are trying to do.
Personally, I don't think the big media players are ever going to catch on. The farther down the road we go, the big media companies actually seem to be devolving. Fortunately that will open up markets for smarter players. Production companies with a leaner cost structure and the freedom of thought to consider product placement, co-branding and a host of other revenue streams rather than a strict commercial model.
I gave a keynote at a NAB convention a couple years ago about the likely impact of the internet on media distribution and the opportunities for new revenue channels. Got a lot of head nodding but when I talked to them afterwards it was pretty clear it wasn't sinking in. They were still trying to fit the internet into the revenue models they already knew.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Also notice that the service only free till "mid 2008". And It also has commercials. The videos dont come out till a week after airing and expire 7 days after you download them. Finally what can we expect for the "real" price in 2008. Well some details have emerged on the price NBC wanted apple to charge. You may recall the price they wanted apple to charge was said to be $4.99 but NBC denied this vehemently. Well it turns out what they wanted was to force apple to purchase bundles of shows. SO to get a popular show like Heros apple would have to buy one episode of heros and 2 episodes of some re-run. The equivalent price of those 3 shows was 4.99. But apple could only charge 2.99 for the Hero's. This would have left apple with a net loss for all the re-runs it could not off load to other customers for 99 cents.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
the Balkanisation of online video. Instead of being able to find everything in one place, I'm back to using Google to find individual shows. Also, NBC currently doesn't allow video on its site to be seen outside the US, I suspect the new service won't be any better in this regard.
At least we could count on Apple wanting to distribute these shows worldwide; I doubt NBC will want the trouble of allowing worldwide access (they'd rather sell the rights to the show to a national broadcaster instead).
Actually I did read the article and nowhere does it explicitly say that the costly one would have no commercials, they just said they were going to charge in '08. You quote where it says the commercials will be removed when they charge.
As proved by MS. Actually, Windows has improved leaps and bounds since Linux took off, so I guess your point stands.
As proved by MS. Actually, Windows has improved leaps and bounds since Linux^h^h^h^h^hMac OS took off^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^hstarted eating into their market share
There you go. Fixed that for you.
Seriously... Apple is poised to become a fierce competitor once again. Look at the shares of MacBook sales. Linux? I know this is Slashdot and I know we're all pulling for Linux but honstly, "The Year of Linux" is a looooooooooooooong way off.
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
In this corner you have: Disney/Pixar/ABC + Apple + Google
And in that corner you have: GE/Universal/NBC + Microsoft
The industry has learned from AOL/Time Warner. Why buy each other when you can get the same advantages from partnerships and board placements?
What are we thinking the odds are that the new NBC pay-for-download service will be based on Microsoft's DRM? Anyone?
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
What NBC and its advertisers fail to grasp is that if they made good commercials, and not boring preachy drivel, people would actually *want* to watch them -- and then they wouldn't need to charge money or add DRM. After all, look at how many people watch cool commercials for free when they get posted to YouTube and similar sites.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Yes, because anyone running Linux is going to be THRILLED with the single mouse button on a macbook. Works so awesome in X. Much better than other laptops that have 2 or 3...
Please. The number of macbooks that are NOT running OS X is not going to be statistically significant.