Network TV Downloadable Via iTunes

IconBasedIdea writes "Dallas Mavericks owner and opinionated media entrepreneur Mark Cuban blogs about Walt Disney cheese Robert Iger, and his recent deal with iTunes to allow TV episodes to become available for purchase and download. Granted, it was only a matter of time, but someone had to go first, and it is apparently ABC. Could this help niche shows stay alive longer? Will it kill traditional TV ads, long on the downswing of effectiveness? Will we end up eventually paying (or stealing) all of our future programming?"

Re:128x128

[Anonymous Coward]

The resolution of the files are 320x240, which is the resolution of the new video iPod's screen. When enlarged to 640x480, the resolution looks similar to a VHS recording of the show.

Re:ipod for video

[Eslyjah]

Just because you download it from iTMS doesn't mean you have to watch it on your iPod.

Re:One step at a time

[dsgitl]

What I'm upset about is that the music videos on iTMS used to be free to view, and now there is only a 20 second preview available. I don't like monkeying around with Launch and certainly not MTV or the radio. Nuts to iTunes.

Too bad the quality sucks!

[huxrules]

I think that this is really just a stopgap measure for Apple. Its just not all the way there. Unlike the first ipods- which were great except the small hd space. I see the main problem in the downloads because they are at 320x240. Might look fine on a ipod, but sucks on a computer. AND we still (and possibly never) can easily rip our own videos into itunes. This is really the key- but near impossible. If Jobs convinced MPAA to allow itunes users to rip their DVD's we would still have to reencode them into 320x240 h.264. And on my mac mini this would take probably a day per DVD. A super chore with all the DVD's I own. Probably could take up to a year just to import them. Right now it is obvious, this is just a work in progress for Apple- lets just hope its not another newton.

Re:Details?

[gellenburg]

The video is h.264, 320x240, approximately 500Kb/s, audio is 128kbps AAC stereo.

Both are protected with Fair Play 2.

Re:Portable TV never worked and never will

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad they did the video iPod so ghetto regarding to TV resolution and battery time (2-3 hours). That just sucks if you compare to the competition like the archos gmini. It has full DVD res and 5 hour playback time. Not to mention the builtin camcorder on the latest model.

Re:128x128

[noewun]

1) CSI is NOT shot on 35. It's shot on tape or digital and then extensively color-graded in post.

2) 95% of TV shows don't have cinemaphotographers. They have a good DP, if they're lucky, but the schedule and monetary constraints of TV production don't allow for real cinematography. You don't have two hours to set up a shot in TV land, and then another hour to reset. You have, if you're lucky, half an hour for set up and five minutes to reset. For a really complicated outdoor shot, like on Law & Order or West Wing you might get an hour to set up. You don't have time to view dailies each day. You watch the feed off the monitors and pick the best shot you can get that day.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:For crying out loud

[Have Blue]

They've already greatly expanded their collection. Within minutes of launch, the store had only the current season of Lost and only the first episode of season 1. Now they have the entirety of season 1 and the new episode that aired this Wednesday is also posted.

Re:Portable TV never worked and never will

[CrackedButter]

I downloaded one of the Pixar shorts and on my 12" iBook, i thought the picture quality was shit and it wasn't even full screen. I'd rather download pirated content simply because the quality is better, i'm not touching anything from itunes (video content) until they at least double the resolution. Oh and allow CD burning, fire the dipshit who allowed that.

Re:Car talk

[metamatic]

Why not just get your Car Talk fix by just downloading it for free?

http://www.cartalk.com/Radio/Show/online.html [cartalk.com]

Re:Key Milestone

[Sancho]

Monthly for basic cable around here is $30. To watch an entire season of a television show, you're going to need about 8 months. That's $240 (here) for roughly 10 prime-time shows (assuming 2 shows per night, 5 nights a week--not unreasonable).

A la carte on iTunes, those 10 shows would $2 per episode, roughly 22 episodes. 10x2x22 is $440 for the convenience of watching it any time (doable with a PVR on normal TV) and commercial free (doable with a PVR if you expend a little effort).

Of course, the sweet spot is about 5 shows at $220. You're now paying less than that 8 months of cable. You're getting it commercial free, and you're getting it more-or-less on-demand. Of course, a few months after the end of the season, you could get the DVDs of the show (probably) at a slightly lower cost with a considerable boost in quality.

If you only want to watch a couple of shows and have no variety, can't get an OTA signal, and have no desire to own DVDs of the show, this is probably a good idea. But that's a lot of ifs you have to chain through before you're basically just wasting money.

Re:Paying -vs- Stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

Satellite isn't like cable. If you want to receive satellite TV on multiple TV's, you need multiple receivers.

I used to sell sat boxes for a retail chain while in college. The average buyer wanted at least 2, sometimes 3 boxes, especially if there was a deal or special going on. (free installation with 2+ receivers, etc)

Factor in things like the local sports bar with 9 or 10 recievers to cover all of their tv's, and you could easily have 8 million boxes sold for only 3 million subscribers.

Re:Archos == Tivo

[nine-times]

I'm not saying you can't prefer Archos. I was merely trying to give a vague indication of the reason why the iPod might succeed where pocket-sized TVs failed. I think the same thing I said also applies to why Archos devices might succeed where mini TVs failed.

You're right, though, that Archos devices are cool and have some advantages over the new ipods. Their screens are also bigger and higher res. As far as I can think of, the advantage that the iPod has over Archos devices is the iTMS, meaning that you don't have to record the TV shows (meaning you don't need the device plugged into your cable ahead of time) and you don't even need to receive a TV signal from anywhere. You just need a computer with an internet connection in order to download the show, and you can download it any time you want starting the day after it airs. If they get a lot more shows, the store could be pretty nice.

Of course, this advantage would be destroyed if someone opened another TV show store that supported Archos devices, or if Apple licensed the Fairplay DRM to Archos. Either one of those possibilities sounds good to me. Of course, there's always other illegal means to get recent shows, but I'm just thinking about what's legal and non-sketchy.

Re:Details?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you're wrong. A bit rate of 512 kbps is sufficient for D1-sized H.264 content; it's more than enough for half-D1 media. See here [theshapeofdays.com], in particular the samples that were encoded at various bit rates at full broadcast resolution. The 512 kbps samples are acceptable, and in one case practically perfect. You don't see the typical video encoding artifacts until you get down to 128 kbps, if you can believe that.

Re:Archos == Tivo

[nine-times]

The video ipod is classic Apple: as much as possible a one-way street from Content Owners through Apple to Consumers, with the ipod remaining as tethered as possible to a Mac/iTunes for operation. Making it harder than it should be for ipod owners to create and share their own content.

As someone else mentioned, iPods can also play mp3s or unprotected AACs, so there's no need to buy your stuff from iTunes if you don't want. Likewise, the chip included in the device is an mpeg4 decoder. Apple's protected music: AAC::Apple's protected video:mpeg4. You can put unprotected mpeg4s on your ipod and play them. There's no requirement to use iTMS-purchased media if you have another source that will provide you mpeg4s (optimally H.264 at up to 768 Kbps at 320 x 240, which is the best quality you're getting on the new iPod)

Re:Car talk

[Kozz]

I've got a perl script which helps me do exactly that, with these commands:

mplayer -noframedrop -dumpfile <stream URL> -dumpstream <dot-rm file>
mplayer <dot-rm file> -ao pcm -aofile <dot-wav file> -vc dummy -vo null
lame -m m <dot-wav file> <dot-mp3 file>