MTV Overdrive is a free Broadband Video Channel brought to you by MTV.com offering content such as:
• MY VMAs: My VMAs features a wide range of exclusive Video Music Awards content. Follow Diddy the week leading up to the big event, catch intimate performances, see all of the latest bling, from cars to yachts, and all of the events that transpire on the red carpet. After the event ends, we’ll post the entire show online. You’ll be able to mix and match all of the content to create your own personal VMA experience.
• MUSIC: The Music channel features a wide variety of programming to suit anyone’s taste, including exclusive programming like • MTV.com LIVE and First Ladies. Plus, check out special programming, MTV shows and a library of the hottest Pop, Rock, Hip-Hop, R&B and Indie music videos.
• MOVIES: Interviews with your favorite stars, behind the scenes footage, hot news on the best movies, it’s all on MTV Overdrive.
• ON TV: Catch up on Laguna Beach, Real World, MADE, Wild Boyz, Punk’d, TRL, Meet The Barkers and more of your favorite MTV shows.
Mac users who visit MTV Overdrive are presented with the following:
In order to offer a broad selection of full-length music videos on-demand and free of charge, MTV Overdrive uses Windows Digital Rights Management (DRM) to protect videos from unauthorized re-distribution.
Unfortunately, Microsoft’s Windows Media Player Plug-in for Macintosh does not support Windows DRM. If DRM support becomes available for Macintosh, MTV will develop a version of MTV Overdrive that works on a Mac.
MTV Overdrive’s feedback form is located at the bottom of this page: http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/about/faq.jhtml
MacDailyNews Take: Companies and the advertisers that support them would do well to realize that Mac users greatly appreciate feature-parity support, have a much larger installed base than the oft-misused quarterly market share “3-5%” figure, and that studies show studies that Mac users tend to be better educated and make more money than Windows PC users and therefore have more disposable income to spend.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
16-percent of computer users are unaffected by viruses, malware because they use Apple Macs – June 15, 2005
Survey shows Apple Macs owned by nearly 10 percent of US small and medium-sized businesses – February 17, 2005
More people use Apple Macs than you think; 8-12 percent of homes use Macs – March 31, 2004
10 percent of computer users use a Mac; 3 percent is Mac’s approximate quarterly market share – February 10, 2004
Syracuse Post-Standard: 3 percent is a false stat; Mac holds ’10 to 12 percent of the market for PCs – August 27, 2003
The videos on MTV Overdrive are encoded using the Microsoft Windows Media 9 codec to ensure the maximum possible video quality.
Never heard of h.264, have you.. MTV??
MTV should be called UnRTV (UnReality Television). But I guess in a Cable Universe where A & E has no Arts or Entertainment, Discovery has no discovery, The Travel Channel has no travel, ‘News’ channels have little real news and The History Channel has no history– a ‘music channel with no music is par for the course. MTV Networks is nothing but a street pimp for the RIAA member companies.
Now let’s be fair. They’re also excluding every browser except IE. So it’s not so much EXCLUDING Macs as it is exclusively SUPPORTING the soup-to-nuts Microsoft experience. PC + Windows + IE + WMV. But “No special software is required.”
From the FAQ:
Why can’t I use MTV Overdrive in my Firefox / Mozilla browser?
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MTV Overdrive takes advantage of special features only available in the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser (Version 5.5 or higher). These features are not currently supported by Firefox / Mozilla, but MTV is working to develop a version of MTV Overdrive that will work with Firefox / Mozilla browsers.
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MDN: you may consider being less liberal with the “Mac users are better educated and make more money” article. It could _easily_ be seen as eletism.
Certainly MTV would benefit from having that demographic reaching its advertisers, however, also know the reasons why that study found what it did. It isn’t that using a Mac causes people to be better educated and wealtier, it is that education causes wealth and wealth provides access to permium items, of which we know Apple Macs to be. As the price of Macs gets lower and lower, that study’s findings will no longer apply. Witness the $50 iBook fiasco.
MDN: they
It’s not the codec (there’s a [terrible] Windows Media Player for Mac) – it’s the DRM, which is not supported by the OSX player.
Anyone tried it in Virtual PC?
–Rob
I hate to say it, but MTV sucks and has sucked since it went to a commercialized broadcasting format. The only good things to come out of MTV has been Beavis & Butthead and probably Jackass. Everything else just SUCKS!
>MDN wrote: and that studies show studies that Mac users tend to be better educated and make more money than Windows PC users and therefore have more disposable income to spend.
Ahhh… I almost get it. It’s the studies of the studies that make Mac users smarter.
>MDN wrote: and that studies show studies that Mac users tend to be better educated and make more money than Windows PC users and therefore have more disposable income to spend.
Ahhh… I almost get it. It’s the studies of the studies that make Mac users smarter.
>MDN wrote: and that studies show studies that Mac users tend to be better educated and make more money than Windows PC users and therefore have more disposable income to spend.
Ahhh… I almost get it. It’s the studies of the studies that make Mac users smarter.
mtv.com is like yahoo.com… most of the crap doesn’t work on a mac.
MTV has sucked for 15 years at least now, so who give a rats
MW ‘clearly’ as in, clearly the people at MTV have no clue.
Gee, Apple can have a DRM in iTunes which works on Macs and PCs while Micro$hit can’t make a DRM which works with WMP on both Macs and PCs…. surprise, surprise, surprise…..
MW trouble – as in “Trouble is Microshaft doesn’t give a $hit about other platforms”
No big loss to me there. I remember when MTV was really cool, worthwhile. Now it’s a scruffy lot running around, jerking like they are having some kind of fit, yellin’, cussin’ and hollerin’! (The girls look good though!)
You fellas can complain to MTV and get them to change if you want, but from what I’ve seen of the content of late it’s not fit for sane folks to watch anyway.
So say we all!
MTV has no content I care to watch anymore, so I really don’t care if I could watch it on my Mac or not. Simply put, I won’t.
MTV? Where have I heard of that before? Oh yeah, it was a really cool channel back in the 80’s, but it stopped playing music videos many years ago and became an avenue to tell people what was cool and hip. Uh, are they still around?…