“Walt Disney Co. said Monday that it would stream several hit ABC shows such as ‘Lost’ and ‘Alias’ for free over the Internet in the next two months, as the company tries to jump-start a new revenue stream for its content,” David B. Wilkerson reports for MarketWatch. “Disney said that episodes of ‘Desperate Housewives,’ ‘Lost,’ ‘Commander In Chief’ and the entire current season of ‘Alias’ will be available at its ABC.com Web site for free during May and June, as part of what it called an ‘experiment.'”
“This is the first time a broadcast network has made such programming available for free,” Wilkerson reports. “The shows will be streamed in a 16-by-9 widescreen format in Flash 8, which Disney says offers the ‘best video quality.’ The streams will be compatible with both the PC and Mac platforms. The programs, which will be available the morning after they air on ABC stations, can be rewound, fast-forwarded and paused, but will include commercials that cannot be skipped… With this latest plan, ABC also seems to be sidestepping cable operators, who are making a big bet on video-on-demand as an important part of their arsenal against satellite and phone companies. The network already makes certain programs available on Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes Internet download service, where they can be downloaded to the iPod digital-media player.”
Full article here.
Advertisements:
• Apple’s brand new iPod Hi-Fi speaker system. Home stereo. Reinvented. Available now for $349 with free shipping.
• Apple’s new Mac mini. Intel Core, up to 4 times faster. Starting at just $599. Free shipping.
• MacBook Pro. The first Mac notebook built upon Intel Core Duo with iLife ’06, Front Row and built-in iSight. Starting at $1999. Free shipping.
• iMac. Twice as amazing — Intel Core Duo, iLife ’06, Front Row media experience, Apple Remote, built-in iSight. Starting at $1299. Free shipping.
• iPod Radio Remote. Listen to FM radio on your iPod and control everything with a convenient wired remote. Just $49.
• iPod. 15,000 songs. 25,000 photos. 150 hours of video. The new iPod. 30GB and 60GB models start at just $299. Free shipping.
• Connect iPod to your television set with the iPod AV Cable. Just $19.
Related article:
Disney to stream ‘Desperate Housewives’ and ‘Lost’ for free with embedded ads – April 10, 2006
To: What?
Yes, they are moving away from the iTMS model. Networks want eyeballs – lots of them- so they can generate more ad revenue.
Google is giving away everything – they make 99% of their revenue from advertising. Consumers get to have all they offer for free.
iTMS is very limited way to distribute things mainly because one has to pay for it. Right now us consumers pay too much for everything: cable tv, internet fee, phone fees, etc. etc.
iTMS is for those that just love to spend their money and then wonder where did it all go.
The iTMS will be around, but it is a tiny niche thing (hmmmm….that seems to be the mantra at Apple.)
dennis – I agree. Whew! These widgetsheads that don´t want to watch a 30 second commercial so they spend an hour erasing the commercials, just to realize in their manipulating the video they watched the show with the commercials.
So where do we go to watch this stuff.
so far theres a lot of talk but no url…
Apple is at risk here. They desperately need to upgrade FairPlay to allow for non-skipping DRM (think evil DVD commercials). Ya, we’re going to *hate* it, but Apple can’t risk having Flash become a standard to the degree that demand for Flash compatible hardware grows.
Come on Apple, nip this in the bud. Allow for free (ad forced) video content via iTMS.
ABC.com is where you go to watch.
As stated in the second sentence.
Not really to bright are you “where they at”?
velveeeta…
1. it isn’t “a 30 second commercial” it’s 22 minutes of cheese per hour, or roughly 44 “30 second commercials”
2. those who actually do what you describe have nothing to do w/ the mass market
I don’t care what they use as long as it’s compatible on Macs as well as Windows. We should all be thanking Disney for NOT using Windows Media because then it would not work on the Mac due to the DRM they would surely employ along with it. That is what other lame services are doing. This is good to show other services that they can stream in a cross-platform compatible format. We now have a reference to refer the other media streamers to. This is good. I would prefer QuickTime as well, but at least Mac users were not excluded this time. This is a good step.
If the iTMS would have been working great; i.e. Disney selling lots and lots and lots of shows via Apple´s iTunes they would not even think of doing this.
But they aren´t. They tried Steve´s iTunes way (“We will do it so as not to piss him off while the Pixar negotiations are under way”), but it is too small a number to effect anything. Pay to download video is a model is not a viable business model for producers of video material; whereas download for free (and paid by commercials) has better potential of getting critical mass.
Imagine if when TV started out that one had to pay to watch each show.
TV would have never made it.
fromage-based calculus: so you gonna´ be one of those snapz guys spending your evenings scrubbing videos clean of commercials or will you be spending $2 on every tv show via iTunes?
Either solution is too much for me.
this is extremely bad. right click on almost any flash file, waddya see ?
well, well, flash can control any video camera or mic you have attached. now of course this feature is disabled by default, but, its too close for comfort. its possible no advertisers would do anything crafty, but then again, malware, adware, spam IS advertisers doing something crafty !!!