“Want to buy a video or game for your iPod from the iTunes Store? Apple’s the only distributor, but if you visit its popular online shop these days, one of the first things you’ll see is the equivalent of picket lines: numerous complaints from users regarding software compatibility and Store business practices, stacking up as negative ratings for various downloadable items. On other downloads, you’ll see ad hoc debate societies, with comments on the new iTunes offerings attracting more user attention than the downloads themselves,” Jeremy Horwitz writes for iLounge.
Horwitz writes, “Amongst the video gripes: numerous comments in the Store’s South Park Season 10 section angrily note that after paying in advance for the latest season of the popular Comedy Central cartoon, users then discovered that the Store had split the episodes into ‘Season 10A’ and ‘Season 10B,’ forcing subscribers to pay more to receive the second half of the season… Video quality also continues to be an issue for some users, despite recent Apple promises of near-DVD quality iTunes Store downloads.”
Horwitz asks, “Have you had issues with game, TV show, or movie downloads from the iTunes Store? Or found them to be fantastic?”
Full article here.
Downloaded 3 seasons worth of “The Office” and no complaints.
Well, the South Park split does appear to be a classic bait-and-switch.
Would never pay for such lousy quality! HDTVrips are available for free, give us a high quality alternative to torrents and people might consider it.
Hard to have an issue with stuff that is not available for download in your particular country!!
Downloaded many LOST episodes, and no problems. They look great on the iPod, but maybe this guy is pissed about watching them on his computer screen.
I bought the entire season 1 of Firefly (of Serenity movie fame.) Great show. I was surprised how watchable the video is at full screen on my 24″ Cinema Display.
I wished there was a season discount, but I guess that is only for current seasons.
I find that it is very diffucult to find a place to post, talk with, disscuss issues with the iTunes services! It is a little Microsoft like that you can’t find a coustomer service button in iTunes itself. Apple has the duscussion boards but that is not really a place to get help from Apple, just other users. Apple really need to take alook at the coustomer service of the iTunes store. I love apple but we do need to speek truth to power….
Scott
Downloaded my first iTunes items last week — first 3 season 3 episodes of Battlestar Galactica.
Image quality is dreadful for computer screen. Maybe on an iPod it wouldn’t matter, but I’ve no interest in the teeny screeny. Even on my 13″ macbook screen, it’s horribly chunky.
“Time for some thrilling heroics!”
I downloaded the free trailer to “the nine” and it looked beautiful on my Mac, even at double size.
Of course quality is bad, these are TV episodes, made for the lousy resolution of TV Screens! A 13″ MacBook display has twice the resolution of a big screen TV…
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Who decides how or whether to split a season? The distributor (Apple)? or the content provider (Studio ABC)?
I will never buy DRM protected media from Apple again after having had them tell me I could not play it because I was “not authoirised”, even though I owned the media in question.. Fuck you Apple.
I downloaded all 5 episodes of Heroes this past weekend. They look great on my 24 inch iMac screen. No problems, no glitches!
Have bought all the seasons of Lost including the current, and CSI last season and this current season and both look just as nice on my Powerbook 15″ as they do playing off of my dual core Mini/Intel to DVI on the back of my 32″ LCD tv using FrontRow. Maybe its the encoding of certain seasons but so far comparable to DVD quality, and WAY better than standard tv even over digital cable. Of course its not HD, but I would not expect HD quality in a 400-500meg file either for a tv show… I have grabbed some of the free episodes as well like last seaon endings and premires this season for like Bones… All in all the games, movies and TV seasons all have been fine.
“I’m pointing right at it.”
I love apple but we do need to speek truth to power…
Um, you’re talking about complaints about buying media through a web portal not overcoming the censorship and repression of a discriminatory regime. Apple has no power over you except that which you accede to them.
Actualy DRM with goverment backing gives them quite a bit of power over me!!!!
Scott
I bet you complained to Apple, didn’t you, John? I mean, you wouldn’t just submit your complaint here on MDN, would you?
Besides, did Apple really misspell “authorized”?
“Of course quality is bad, these are TV episodes, made for the lousy resolution of TV Screens! A 13” MacBook display has twice the resolution of a big screen TV…
Actually, most standard definition and high definition TV content is recorded in a widescreen film format, with pan and crop versions created for broadcast as needed, although some old variety and news programs were recorded using standard defibition video cameras.
This means that much original TV content is the same resolution as theatrical movie releases, and of very high quality. Even old TV series can (and are) being converted to high definition. Recently, I came across an old episode of the Night Rider TV series converted to high def on the Universal HD channel and it looked spectacular.
So, the download movie and TV series content Apple currently is offering really are down-sampled files made just for the new widescreen iPod that is coming soon…
Apple REALLY does need a customer service page for ITS. I too have had questions and problems (no major complaints), and searched and searched for a place to communicate with someone at Apple. It doesn’t exist, or is so well hidden that it might as well be.
I download from the iTunes Music store a lot, music and video. No hassles. I’ve also contacted customer support with authorization problems when I sold a computer. I received an email solution one day after I emailed them with the issue, and it was on a weekend.
Customer service is fine, product is what I expect, no hassles so far.
Every online transaction will have it’s issues, and thus cry babies, and with the internet, these people for better or worse, have a loud voice.
The main issue with iTunes is image quality. For an occational download of an Office episode I missed, fine.
But for movies, or a full season of a show or sports event – nope.
Once Apple hits 720p, the compaints will go away, as 720p is 95% of all HDTV content resolution with HDTV packages, and most find it to be stunning. Once more bandwidth and processor abilities are worked out, 1080p will blow this away.
Bottom line: Apple gets to HD (720p) at MWSF, and it will start screaming out movie and content sales, and blowing out iTV devices.
Anyone wanting to watch South Park deserves to be ripped off. It’s a show made by losers, for losers. Disgusting!
I downloaded a movie. While it wasn’t quite DVD quality, it was plenty good enough to watch on my computer. On a TV it might be nice to get better quality, but that’s what you get by saving the few bucks to download it instead of buying the actual DVD. Some people won’t be happy until we get DRM free, 1080p DVD’s and then they mail us a copy on a blu-ray, HD-DVD, and DVD disc’s, all for free + postage.
Here’s one link to contact iTunes customer support… there are a number of these feedback email options at the bottom of many of the itunes support pages.
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/authorization/
And if you don’t like what you buy, simple, don’t buy it again. You know going in what you are paying for, quality wise. The south park issue is different, but don’t complain about the quality of video. Just simply don’t buy it from the iTunes store again or until they upgrade it. Go by the physical DVD’s. And then use HandBrake to put it on your ipod and computer.
“…Apple REALLY does need a customer service page for ITS. I too have had questions and problems (no major complaints), and searched and searched for a place to communicate with someone at Apple. It doesn’t exist, or is so well hidden that it might as well be….”
Under the iTunes menu, see the menu command:
“Provide iTunes Feedback”
You must have missed it…
“feedback email options” should read
support email options
Geo.. I think he was asking for somewhere to request support, not feedback.
Probably this all has something to do with:
yep – you guessed it, Windows & Micro$oft.
If you are using your iTunes Videos on a WinTel box with god (or allah) knows what for a video card or even no card, but emulated by the cpu, then you are going to get complaints from those people expecting Apple to fix their previous indiscretions of buying a crappy piece of equipment for the lowest cost possible , because at the time, they thought, “I just need a PC to do word processing and check my email at yahoo”… Then 6 months later they are burning 50% of their processor time on SETI@home and they don’t even know it while trying to watch iTunes videos with some sort of semblance of quality screen motion, while the internal fan begins screaming louder & louder & louder until their Knees start sizzling(laptop users) and they can’t even hear the dialogue anymore. I mean Sheesh! If you had a Mac to begin with, there would be no problem here….
Select ‘iTunes Service and Support’ under iTunes’ Help menu — that’ll take you to Apple’s support website, with loads of official support docs for iTunes and the iTunes Store. There are also links to the various user discussion forums for iTunes/Store. It’s not called the ‘Help’ menu for nothing!
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webmasters apprentice you dont know what you are talking about. Apple also uses the video cards built on the board that shares ram. this is a common way to cut costs on video cards, the mac book for example does this. Further, running on a pc or mac should not matter much, the video quality from the apple store does need to increase with demand. With audio its easy, but with video the band width needed gets harder to manage. I think apple could solve the problem by allowing a choice, and not charging a premium, just give a choice for the quality we want
And yes they should have a button that leads you to talk to someone about yoru purchases, and a phone number.
I have bought a lot of video from iTunes store, and only a relatively small amount have had errors. I have sent emails to apple, and they have always been good about giving me a credit for it. The thing that bothers me is that they sometimes take weeks in order to fix the video, and they don’t tell you when it is fixed. When you have a season pass to colbert or daily show, they will automatically send you a corrected video if a bad one was sent.
I think the best solution is that apple implement a policy of having correcting a bad video within a week, and sending everybody who bought the video the corrected version automatically. That way if you haven’t seen it yet, by the time you see it, it might already be corrected.
I also think that more people need to complain when they get a bad video, otherwise they are not going to do anything. I have seen a lot of new video that are not being cropped and have black borders, and no one is complaining (You read the reviews and no one is complaining in them, and they have not been pulled). Black borders have never been there before, and it might not be a big deal but think about it. Those black border take up encoding bandwith, so it will affect the over all quality of the video.
There also have to be SOME quality control. I purchased recently Season 2 of 24, and there were 3 videos with problems. If iTunes looked at the length of the video they should have know there was a problem and fixed it before they released it. I mean Ep. 1 was an 1:06 long (the show is in real time how can it be more that 1 hour?!?!). If you see the video you will notice that the tape was rewound and they encoded an extra 20 minutes. Same with Ep. 3, tape rewound, 6 extra minutes. And there was an episode that was missing 6 minutes (which were VERY important to the story line). If the person who encoded it would have looked at the average length of the episodes they could have fixed it before they release it. It had been selling for 1 month before I bought, yet it wasn’t until I complained (which makes me wonder if anybody complains) they they pulled 2 episodes. Episode 3 with the extra 6 minutes is still there and they have not posted the corrected videos for the other 2 and it’s been about 2 weeks.
I understand that there will be issues, but they need to be more aggressive in fixing them.
I’ve downloaded a few shows since they upped the res, and I have been very happy with the quality (watching on the computer screen). I actually find the compression less noticeable than the compression they use on my satellite TV.
MDN Magic Word: Need
As in in Dish Network and DirecTV need to up their compression quality
I have no complaints. When Apple posts “season passes”, they predict the number of episodes that are going to be produced. If that number changes, then they update the product on iTunes accordingly. I don’t see any bait and switch.
Recently, it worked out favourably. I purchased Battlestar Galactica season pass, and because the producers were lowering the number of episodes for the season, Apple credited my account with 5 free TV show downloads.
It all comes down to this: as a business model, media on demand is in it’s infancy, creating new issues that have to be worked out. To date, Apple has been pretty good at working out the kinks faster than most, and I’m willing to give them a little slack.
John, It’s a nifty little trick called authorizing the machine to play purchased content. You can authorize up to 5 machines for content bought on any given account…
Do your homework before spoutin’ off your mouth, dumba**
With no way to gauge what different people claim to be “horrible” or “great” video playback quality, this discussion seems like a pretty pointless exercise.
I’ve downloading a few tv episodes (no movies as yet – they seem overpriced to me), and the video quality seems fine to me. This is on both a 15” Powerbook and a G5 with a 23” Cinema HD display.
When viewed on the larger screen some text isn’t super crisp, but overall, I’d say the quality is fine.
I certainly wouldn’t describe it as “horrible” by any stretch of the imagination, but what do I know? For someone else it just might be.
Without a common frame of reference, it just so much noise.
Hey @john. We spell things diferently in the UK. The world is not comprised solely of the USA. Yes, I contacted Apple about it. They did not help. DRM is bad.
If your Video is Crap it is because your hardware is crap, and can’t handle what you downloaded. How lame are some of these people? They don’t have a true Mac with capable hardware and they complain!
Get a better VIDEO Card,…you know the thing that has a little something to do with your video playback….
IDIOTS.
MDN Word: “little” – As in “little” minds.
I too had a “you are not authorized” message on stuff I bought from iTunes. Thence I authorized the computer they were on and I watched/listened to them just fine.
The split of the South Park season could very well be the fault of the tv studio and not Apple.
I have downloaded many TV shows and have had no problems at all. I don’t have cable but really wanted to continue watching Battle Star Galactica – iTunes was a great way to do this. I download it to my iMac, onto my iPod automatically, and watch it on my 32″ TV. Last year at QVGA I thought the video quality was ok – not great but perfectly watchable. This year the video quality is VGA and is really good (as good as it gets on my regular – non-HDTV). For me though I would rather have a smaller file that takes less time to download and room on my hard drive than the small difference in video quality I see. So, when iTunes does go to a higher resolution (say 1080p) – which I am sure they will, will definately not purchase as many as I dont want to download and store those giant files.
You know it’s funny, people are making this into an issue of VGA vs. 720p, or some other higher quality encoding. But it has nothing to do with this, people are complaining about store policy (i.e. South Park season length) or about files being misencoding (i.e. end prematurely, garbled scenes, drop frames, etc…)
I bought the 50 Trance song album from iTunes. Tracks 2-6 were garbled; couldn’t play, fiels were not recognized, etc. I emailed iTunes via support. Described the problem and sent pictures of the file descriptions. They refunded the entire amount for the whole album. (All I really wanted was to be able to download the tracks again.)
Point: if you have a problem, go the hassle of emailing iTunes and tell them your problem. They will handle it quickly and usually make good on whatever the problem is.
Further…stop complaining.
Lost and Project Runway seasons are great to watch on full screen.
The latest episodes are 400 MB downloads with higher resolution.
It pushed my PB G4 1.5 to the limit to play without skipping though.
I downloaded Showtimes “Weeds” and my only complaint is-come on season two!
BTW, I “highly” recommend it.
iTunes 7.x still has problems – my iPod needs to be reset periodically to be recognized. I too had the problem of iTunes claiming some of my purchases were not authorized; I had to re-authorize the computer. (And what’s particularly weird is that it only gave an issue with *some* of the downloads, not them all). It’s the first version of iTunes I’ve had problems with (I’ve used them all since v1).
As for downloading video and movies, I’ve had no problems (apart from iTunes downloading some podcasts and then saying they won’t play on the iPod due to a video incompatibility. How losing is that !). I’ve watched ripped movies, downloaded movies, and multiple seasons of TV shows such as Monk, Alias, etc. with no problems.
The only thing I have noticed is that when I am on battery, the movies I downloaded in itumes 6 run fine, but itunes 7 movies need to have the power plugged in, otherwise they fitz, fart along, freeze then start, then freeze, but plugging in my power cord solved that problem, otherwise I have no problems downloadedin anything.
PS same thing about video ipod downloads too
I have the Season Pass for NFL GameDay — the one problem I have is that it takes incredibly long for the files to download, and many times the network connection times out before the download completes, so I have to restart from where it leaves off.
Haven’t had any problem with my iPod being recognized, or with authorization issues…things run pretty smoothly other than the download issue…