Letters to the Editor
-
Two things:
First, there's the cost of production and distribution. Manufacturing DVDs and plastic cases for them, and driving them all over the continent in trucks, costs money - and is environmentally damaging too, for that matter. Distributing in a totally digital way is actually cheaper than distributing by DVD - which is another savings which should be factored into the total cost.
Secondly - to the people saying they wouldn't spend one red cent on TV: do you not realise (do you NOT REALISE?!) that if something like this catches on, you'll be able to get anything you want? Not just friends, but old shows which have gone off the air - back to the dawn of broadcasting - films, both domestic and foreign, professional and amateur - and whatever else you might fancy. The only way you can say it's the poor quality of the content which makes the idea worthless is if you totally reject all forms of the moving image. In which case, why are you even here?
This is just a step on the way to something bigger. Try not to think within the limits of "Heroes" and "Lost" repeats.
-
Gave up our TV for iTunes
We cancelled our cable over a year ago and use a 24" iMac as our TV/entertainment center - we DL all our shows from iTunes and fill in the blanks with YouTube and NetFlix. No commercials is worth the extra $$ we might pay monthly. I'll never go back to cable. Period.
TV is dead - long live iTV.
-
Get rid of cable TV
I don't have cable TV (though I do have my internet service via cable), and I download TV shows from iTunes. In NYC, Time Warner is over $100/ mo for premium channels. That means I'm paying for a bunch of stuff I don't want to and never will watch. I spend maybe $10 - $15/ month on iTunes (depending on the season) plus $16/ month on Netflix, and I get all the shows I want to watch. I have apple TV (which has it's own issues, admittedly), and I occasionally have TV night at my BF's place since he has full cable.
Networks and other content providers are stupid not be using alternate delivery methods for their content - either iTunes, or direct downloads from their sites with an e-commerce component - getting the money directly rather than giving it all to the cable companies. In an ideal world, apple would let apple TV support non-iTunes content - it would be more hardware instead of software - or let you surf other sites for content (similar to it's deal with YouTube - but I doubt that will happen.
-
Reasonable
If it's true that Jobs wanted all TV shows reduced to $1 then I can almost see how NBC thought that was unreasonable. Earlier, the record companies wanted to ramp up the prices on music by popular bands and I can understand why Jobs hated that idea. Some people have theorized that the TV networks want to do bundling (forcing you to buy a show or movie you don't really want along with the one you do {at a higher price, of course} providing the effect of subsidizing their junk shows. But if you put politics and consumer psychology aside, there's no reason why iTunes can't sell shows at varying prices (it already does for audiobooks).
So what if Jobs had gone to NBC and said "Okay, I understand that you need $2 for every 1-hour show of "Heroes" with it's expensive special effects budget, but why can't you sell a 30-minute episode of "The Office" for $1?"? It's probably too late for that now.
-
on-demand content... new delivery model
This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend a couple of weeks ago, as we were settling in at his (premium digital HD cable-equipped) house to watch the season premiere of a favourite premium-cable series.
I mentioned that I haven't had cable TV in several years, actually since it got WAY too expensive for my limited budget to handle. It was costing me well over $100/month, and, as many others have stated, I was paying for an awful lot of (awful) content that I had no intent whatsoever of using.
I've long been longing for the day when real, sho'nuff a-la-carte cable happens, when you can choose just which channels you want to get, and pay for them only, but as I was sitting there on the sofa, watching promos for other shows on the same channel as my "favourite premium-cable series," a lightbulb flickered on above my head, and I said, "Man, I don't wanna subscribe to the NETWORK, I just wanna subscribe to the SHOW. In fact, I'll betcha inna few years, that's the way it's gonna work. The network, cable paradigm is just about dead. You'll see, buddy."
Now I'm starting to think that I was on to something, instead of just ON something (we were watching "Weeds," alright?) This notion of buying each episode a-la-carte REALLY appeals... it's a big step closer to the concept of subscribing to the show that I described. In fact, it's an even better model than simple subscription, since you never have to buy an episode you don't want.
Of course, the networks are fighting this hammer and tongs. Just like VCR's, just like DVR's, just like cassette tapes, CD burners, iTunes, etc etc... Still, we're getting a little bit closer to the day when we'll really be free to choose what we want to watch.
Now, if Apple could only get Safari to stop crashing every twenty minutes... but that's a tale for another day.
-
Details, details
When iTunes first started selling video, TV shows were 320x240. Now they're 640x480, for "classic" 4:3 aspect ratio, which compares pretty well with DVD's 720x480. (BTW, unlike practically everything else, DVD pixels are not square.) For widescreen 16:9, they're 640x360, so anamorphic "enhanced for widescreen" DVDs (still 720x480) have the definite advantage there.
You don't have to watch videos on the iPod's small screen. You can watch them in iTunes on your computer. You can hook up an iPod to your TV. You can use AppleTV.
Amongst all the crap, there are some very good TV shows, better than most movies.
Finally, as a general rule, TV network execs are idiots.