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NBC to Offer Free Video Download Service
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Sep 20, 2007 07:00 AM
from the must-see-internet-tv dept.
from the must-see-internet-tv dept.
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."
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Wait for comcast! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
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You may be right, but consider this: ISP's complain iPlayer uses too much bandwith. [iptv-watch.co.uk] I expect this to be a growing point of contention between media companies and ISPs as more and more video content moves online.
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Re:Wait for comcast! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
not free (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Nice to see... (Score:4, Funny)
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As long as your video is a red screen continuously blinking, playing it will display it on the LED.
Yeah, whatever... (Score:5, Insightful)
...
Commercials will be embedded in the programs and viewers will not be able to skip through them.
Re:Yeah, whatever... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I don't really care if they make money or not. I don't watch anything NBC has to offer anyway. My point was solely that they shouldn't claim to be acknowledging that the viewers should watch the way the want to watch, and then put restrictions on how those viewers can watch. It's hypocritical.
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Re:Yeah, whatever... (Score:5, Informative)
- Quick access. What I want, when I want it.
- No adverts. Adverts are the reason I stopped watching broadcast television.
- No DRM. Part of the convenience means allowing it to be played on portable devices. Unless your DRM supports Mac, iPod and Nokia devices, (and will support all future devices I might buy) it makes the content less valuable to me.
- No region restrictions.
I would love to pay a (reasonable) flat rate, in advance, for seasons of TV shows I want to watch, and have them automatically downloaded every week, but this seems not to be something the studios want to sell me. Until then, I'll stick to renting DVDs, typically some years after the shows have been created.Parent
Re:Yeah, whatever... (Score:5, Informative)
Broadcast TV has a lot more competitors now than it used to. The internet is a good source of entertainment, as are rented DVDs (through the post, no hassle, no adverts). Computer games, including consoles, are starting to become a lot more mainstream too, and TV viewership figures have been dropping a corresponding amount for some years. A big reason there are more adverts in TV shows these days is that the income per viewer has remained roughly constant, but the number of viewers has dropped. This increase in adverts then drives more people away, perpetuating the spiral. It's not enough for a new service to be as good as TV, because TV is already starting to lose out. It has to be better.
Parent
Re:Yeah, whatever... (Score:5, Insightful)
*Except in "Pat and the Armed Post Office Robbery" where Pat foils a terrorist plot to rob the Post Office and use the proceeds to blow up the viaduct, or in "Pat goes Postal" which should be self explanatory...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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Let's see... "viewers want to be in control of how, when and where they consume their favorite entertainment," yet they keep you from skipping commercials (which I presume means you can't fast-forward at all, though that may be a reach) or watching them all in a bundle. Someone tagged this as "windowsonly." If true, that leaves out watching it on a Mac, Linux box, iPod, Archos media player, etc. If the window of availability is from the time of broadcast to fourteen days out (available for seven, expires
Re:Yeah, whatever... (Score:4, Interesting)
I.e. "Install software on your computer to do something you shouldn't need to."
I.e. "Install more software on your computer to do something you shouldn't need to, and spend at least as long as the show is futzing around with editing it."
Frankly, I'd rather just not watch the show than to go through all of this trouble. Other people will probably be downloading it illegally to avoid the trouble and still watch the show. I like my solution better, though, because 1) I get to do other more interesting things, and 2) I don't help perpetuate the popularity of shows that are made by companies that want to control when, where, and how I watch stuff that I'm willing to pay for.
Parent
Commercials (Score:3, Insightful)
From free to pay...eventually? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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You aren't their target market. I'm not sure what their target market is because it should have been the masses of people Apple already had attracted to the market they nearly created (BT downloaders don't count for this heh).
They only want to provide this crap t
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Commercials will be embedded in the programs and viewers will not be able to skip through them...
Thus, no one running a real OS will be able to watch this crap. Problem solved.
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Oh well, guess I'll keep paying my blood money to the cable company and downloading the improved versions from the usual places. (Improved meaning I can get it whenever I want, with no DRM, no commercials, and in a format that I like.)
pirates win (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Besides, stopping people from skipping through the video doesn't really correlate with "viewers want to be in control of how, when and where they consume their favorite entertainment"
--Ketil
Re:pirates win (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Commercials you can't skip? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I suspect it'll only apply to US and maybe europe (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
iTunes causes music piracy? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I think what's he's saying (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Six years too late (Score:2)
As it is this is all coming about because of a tiff between studios and Apple, which will culminate in differing DRM models as more media sources decide to go online, greater likelihood of a "pay-to-play" internet (at least in the US), and the certainty that commercials will be inserted into the shows *real*soon*.
Thank god USENET remains an option, as does Miro.
Just great... (Score:2, Funny)
Here we go...
1) download
2) crack (?)
3) strip advertising/convert format
4) watch
5) share (optional)
6) delete when DVDs are released
7) repeat steps 1-5 with DVDs
8) when pay service starts change 1 to "pay & download".
Meh. As long as my PVR keeps working I'll stick with 1,3,4 & maybe 6.
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If everyone else can get it for free as well, why would you feel the need to 'share' it out?
Naturally, everyone has to do their own thing! (Score:2, Insightful)
Used Amazon Unbox (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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I found that quite ironic. NBC fell upwards when Apple shut them out of iTunes. Amazon's Unbox offers better quality and more convenience for me. Being able to download shows directly to my TiVo and watch them in DVD quality had me immediately hooked on Amazon's Unbox. Plus I'm able to shop Unbox from either my TiVo or from any web browser.
Apple would never partner with TiVo because Apple suffers from NIH syndrome.
How does it work? (Score:2)
"Degrade"? (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Gee, too bad no one has tried this before... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Fragmenting the market is a poor strategy (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
And so it begins: (Score:4, Interesting)
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).
Now playing: battle of the loose verticals (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
What a coincidence! (Score:4, Funny)
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Anyway, I watch TV on my TV, not my PC. If I can't move it to my TV easily, no thanks.
Re:AntiTrust yet again.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:AntiTrust yet again.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
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Please. The number of macbooks that are NOT running OS X is not going to be statistically significant.
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Re:I'm really happy to hear this (Score:5, Funny)
Of course! Time spent watching TV is billable time. I think we've found the ???? step before PROFIT!
Parent