Booted out of Apple’s iTunes Store for excessive greed, NBC has evidently decided to attempt to “punish” Mac and iPod users by moving their TV shows to Amazon’s “Unbox” outift.
MacDailyNews Note: NBC wanted more than double the wholesale price from Apple which would have resulted in TV shows that cost US$4.99 an episode! TV shows from ABC, CBS, FOX, The CW, and more than 50 cable networks, sell new episodes of their TV shows via Apple’s iTunes Store for $1.99 per episode. Inexplicably, NBC is selling their shows via Unbox for $1.99 per episode. Apple and NBC continue to negotiate according to reports.
The Amazon Unbox video player is incompatible with Apple Macs, working only on PCs running the Windows XP operating system. Amazon Unbox video content is iPod-incompatible, working only with also-ran “Plays for Sure” devices (they still make those things?). Amazon also “rents” content: The license for Rental Digital Content is limited in its term and duration to thirty (30) days from your payment of the rental fee or twenty-four (24) hours from the time you start viewing the Rental Digital Content, whichever is sooner. Amazon may automatically delete Rental Digital Content that is beyond its limited license term from your “Plays For Sure” Authorized Device, and, by “renting,” you consent to such automatic deletion. You may not copy or move Rental Digital Content from its originally stored location on your “Plays For Sure” Authorized Device.
Since its debut, Amazon Unbox has earned some, uh, interesting reviews:
• Fortune: Amazon Unbox movie service ‘unfun,’ a horror show, two thumbs down – September 19, 2006
• Amazon Unbox generates resounding yawns; analyst: ‘too little too early’ – September 11, 2006
• CNET Alpha Blog: absolutely do not try Amazon Unbox – September 09, 2006
• Analyst: ‘Amazon Unbox – Well that didn’t work at all’ – September 09, 2006
• Analysts: Amazon’s ‘Unbox’ to be ‘Unsuccessful’ vs. Apple – September 08, 2006
Sounds like Windows XP sufferers, owners of also-ran media players, and lovers of obscure, walking-dead formats will just love Unbox (if they haven’t yet tried iTunes, that is).
Evidently Mac and iPod users who still want NBC content will have to find “other” ways to access it.
I view TV shows on iTunes as a way to catch up on a missed episode. But, most networks offer them for free online after they air. Not the greatest quality. This works for me because I have DirecTV and it goes out when the wind blows.
As for owning a season;
iTunes way: 26 episodes * $1.99/ep = $51.74 (no extras)
NBC way: 26 episodes * $4.99/ep = $129.74 (no extras)
my way: wait until the DVD set comes out for $35.00 = $1.34/ep (plus extras & hard copy)
Apple seems to be the only company that wants to protect the consumer and not gouge them.
When are they getting pulled from iTunes?
I just checked and they are still there..
Previous seasons are still there, it’s the new season (started Sept 1) that got axed.
Come December, everything NBC has Goes BYE BYE!!
“Hey NBC! Don’t let the door hit you on ass on the way out!”
*fires up Bit torrent client*
NBC has refuted these claims and says they are not being pulled from iTunes.
From Appleinsider:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/09/01/nbc_refutes_apples_price_claims_pledges_itunes_shows.html
WHY is it that all other online music services are not COMPATIBLE with Apple?
Be it the browser – Safari, the iPod (though once the MP3 is on the drive it can)… or even Quicktime.
What HAPPEN to fair play… choices…
Is Apple the only company DUO booting, DUO iPoding, DUO browsering… thx APPLE for BOOTCAMP… I can still buy NBC episodes… then TURN off WINDOZEs and HOPEFULLY all MAC folk will see the shows… those who buy a WINDOWS OS anywho…
Is Apple the only company LOOKING again at CONSUMER wants and needs? AND treating us respectfully?
My opinion – YES — and APPLE is an example to all companies.
bye NBC
bye Columbia Music
I remain a devoted Apple dude.
inc.
The Incompatible Amazon Unbox.
That sounds like Wonder Woman’s spiteful former lover.
Beware of the Lasso of Truth, NBC.
Theft is theft no matter what the reason. Using BitTorrent because you don’t like the price of a piece of software is absolutely no different than shoplifting the DVD from a store instead.
If a given automobile is too expensive for either your income or your sense of perceived value, is it justified to steal it instead?
In this case, I see no difference between NBC and all of the pro-BT types.
“…WHY is it that all other online music services are not COMPATIBLE with Apple?”
Because Apple won’t license fairplay to any other company and Apple refuses to accept Windows DRM on the iPod..
Anyway you look at it, it is Apple’s decision.
mw: “show”
As in, the move to Amazon unbox will show Apple who is boss. I can see Steve Jobs feeling the sting right now. No seriously, that twing when you laugh for too long can get painful!!
Is it just me or are the windoze trolls inviting thier NBC buddies to the site today?
Given that the TV episodes will be available from NBC to Amazon at the SAME (old) price of $1.99, one really must wonder what NBC is trying to get out of this, other than piss Apple off. Apple’s margin on the actual content was already tiny, so I doubt Amazon could possibly be offering anything above that.
I believe what is at issue here is that the content owners want more control over the distribution of their content. That is what they are used to.
Apple are changing the rules and some companies don’t like it. Apple want to keep it simple because they know that approach has worked well. The content holders want flexible pricing etc to get as much revenue as possible.
The problem is that it is all too easy to pirate stuff nowadays and people will refuse to pay exorbitant prices if they feel it is unjustified. The content holders will need to change their outlook if they want to build a solid business based on digital distribution. Apple’s solution appears to be working and time will tell if this succeeds in the end.
All I’m going to do is just record the HD versions of the NBC shows I want to archive on my DishHD DVR, and copy them to an external hard drive via USB 2.0. No didfferent than the old days of using a VCR, except I get HD. I probably would have purchased them via iTunes once they were available in HD, but NBC can kiss my ass now! Cheers.
I’m not called ripper for no reason…
“…WHY is it that all other online music services are not COMPATIBLE with Apple?”
Because Apple won’t license fairplay to any other company and Apple refuses to accept Windows DRM on the iPod..
Anyway you look at it, it is Apple’s decision.
Whoh! Wait a second.
The Record Labels demanded DRM to protect it’s content. Apple complied with Fairplay which based upon a superior, open, (and free) AAC codec. Instead of costly MP3 and controling Microsoft formats.
Apple can’t license Fairplay and ensure they live up to the contract with the Labels that state if Fairplay is compromised the Labels can pull their music from iTMS.
Fairplay must be updated occassionally when breaches in it’s DRM security are found, as the security depends upon a hardware and a software working together.
Changing another vendors hardware products is rather difficult to do. In fact a hardware competitor could produce a product that bypasses the Fairplay DRM, thus ensuring the Labels pull their content from iTMS.
So the only real solution to the problem is DRM free formats, namely AAC (without Fairplay) and MP3.
Steve Jobs really wants the Labels to avoid DRM completely because then any store can sell music to play on the iPod. So far only EMI has done so.
Since the iPod can play a bunch of formats, only one being a DRM format, it’s a quite open hardware product.
NBC’s big mistake was trying to do this alone – if the “big 3” all decided to do this greed thing, Apple might have had to rethink their position.
I think NBC will be back after they look at Apple’s new toys today, and realize they’ve shot themselves in the foot. Give ’em a month to let this blow over, then quietly, meekly be reintroduced to iTunes, especially after they look at their earnings from Amazon, and realize they probably got more in a day with Apple than they did in a month with Unbox. Seriously, have you ever heard of anybody actually using Unbox?
@jay
You forget that NBC provides these shows free to every show in America — via the TV. You can’t steal something that someone is giving away. The Supreme Court has already ruled that if someone broadcasts something to your home, you have the right to do whatever you wish with it for your personal use.
There is no difference, essentially, between downloading a show via BitTorrent, and pulling it from your TiVo via the TiVo Transfer program sold with Roxio’s Toast. Either way, you have the program on your computer. NBC is selling the convenience of an easily downloadable format. Or, in the case of Unboxed, an highly inconvenient format.
Petey said: “I would have thought that NBC would have known the business basics of ‘sell your product at an acceptable customer price and sell loads and not sell your product at a high price and sell hardly any’.”
While that does make sense, the content providers have been playing a different game. NBC and the networks used to control consumer access to their content. This is central to their ability to generate money through advertising.
They are freaked out by DVRs (they were freaked out about VCRs, too) and outlets for their content that they cannot control.
Like the music industry before them, NBC has decided that draconian DRM and high prices are the best way for them to profit from their content. Instead of viewing the DRM as something that befuddles the average consumer, but is easily defeated by true pirates, they view it as the mechanism by which they can charge exorbidant prices for restricted use. After all, why charge $1.99 for unlimited viewing on several computers when you can charge $4.99 for 24 hours of viewing (as long as it occurs withing 30 days) on one device? Doesn’t Apple get the math?!?!?
I believe this will be an abysmal failure, just like every other attempt to charge more for less. Is mass pirating bad? Yes. However, the black market option has and will always exist. Apple and other companies have decided that charging a decent price with few restrictions (in some cases, no restrictions) is the more satisfactory solution.
THE old (last season) last years stuff…
NBC episodes REMAIN on iTunes until December.
NO new SEASON episodes will be added.
NO old stuff will remain after December.
________
The NET has fair more interesting things GET off TV.
Media companies both record labels and the movie and tv companies have all shown how GREEDY they are and how they don’t give a damn about us the consumer. They keep calling us thief’s and then they try and take advantage of us by raising there prices 3 times over. I give Apple and Steve Jobs high praise for standing up to them and just saying NO!!! Because as you can see nobody else is including our lousy government and our senators and congress people will.
Amazon Unbox is such a friendly and easy to use service. As an example, here’s how to find out the system requirements:
1. go to http://www.unbox.com
2. click on the teeny-tiny “learn more” link just above the top sellers list
3. click on the “learn more” link under the Download icon
4. find the “system requirements” link in the 2nd paragraph discussing how to download
5. In the “What are the system requirements” paragraph, ignore all that text, it doesn’t tell you what the system requirements are. You have to click on the “Amazon Unbox system requirements page” link.
6. Glory Be! It’s system requirements.
7. Note, Macs not supported. Vista, not supported. iPod not supported.
8. Close browser window.
It is always interesting to read between the lines and try and fathom the thinking behind it, and from that, the quality of the people making the decisions.
1) It looks like NBC thought the time was right to flex some muscle against Apple shortly after Universal pulled the (music) plug. Sort of let’s-strike-while-the-iron-is-hot. They tried to be the leaders of a “rebellion”, hoping other TV networks would follow.
Bad idea. Poor quality decision-making
2) After getting booted off iTunes, NBC put out a petty little statement ominously talking about “pirated” content on iPods. Sounded like some kind of a vague warning and iPod bad-mouthing exercise rolled into one.
Petulant. Hardly befitting a major, so-called respectable corporation.
1) NBC’s revenue will be down because they are pulling out of iTunes. They won’t recover a fraction from Unbox. Shareholders will be choked.
2) iTunes made shows like the Office popular. Coming in #3 of the big three TV networks, NBC will fall off further. Heroes/ER do ok. The Bionic Woman may do ok this fall but other than that, NBC will do the deep slide.
3) Because NBC dug in so hard, (and don’t forget Universal under the same umbrella) it makes it harder for them to go back on their decision and save face. Not a good situation unfortunately.
4) The iPod Touch gets announced today. This, along with the iPhone, and the iPod Nano getting the iPod Video screen and able to show video, will dramatically accelerate TV/Movie digital downloads. Couple it with HD iTunes downloads and the take off in sales of AppleTV because of this, and it will put significant pressure for NBC to come back into the fold. I’d expect NBC to sign up for a short term contract.
5) If NBC shuts Apple down and then charges Amazon a much cheaper price – well, anti-competition laws could come into play and NBC could end up paying a huge price. Basically, Apple would sell a much higher volume of shows for NBC. NBC will be basically forced to allow Apple to buy the shows for the same price they are selling them to Amazon.
6) For those people that slam iTunes for ease of use and shift over to Unbox, it will give perspective on how good Apple’s software is.
NBC wanted Apple to do a DRM just like Microsoft’s junk, so you can’t play it on anything but the device that it was assigned to. And Apple stud up to them.
It’s funny how whenever something is popular, big business jumps all over it to make money. Walkman, DVD, VCR, Windows…
Except when it comes to Apple. They seem to want to fight the thing that is popular rather than embrace it.
The iTunes store has about a 70% share of all digital content sold. The iTunes store is third behind Walmart and Best Buy in sales of media. Apple has sold over 100 million iPods. Knowing all that it make a lot of since for NBC to move to amazon.com…which sales a whole bunch of books. Maybe they can give you a free download when you buy the latest Harry Potter book!
http://www.riche.tv
@coolfactor and shiftOpt k
Look folks, this is not rocket science or necromancy. NBC/Universal and Apple are in a dispute about revenue sharing. Listen to NBC’s response to Apple’s price claim “We think that Apple makes enough money from their hardware.” NBC/Universal wanted Apple either to reduce their percentage of the TV revenues (indeed, make the TV shows as much of a loss leader as the music downloads) or to pay them a percentage of the hardware sales. This has been a negotiation point for the media companies for the last two years (remember what Microsoft agreed to with the Zune). The claim that NBC/Universal wanted to double the retail price of the shows is Apple’s PR spin that tries to hide the profit sharing question
Why should we root for Apple? Because we believe that they deserve a greater percentage in profit from their excellent hardware/software product and their unwillingness to constrain how we use our devices than the media companies deserve for their mediocre TV shows and their desire to keep us from owning and freelly using copies of those shows.
If this doesn’t work out well for NBC I’d sure hate to be the bozo at NBC that thought it up.
@karrde97 says, “Except when it comes to Apple. They seem to want to fight the thing that is popular rather than embrace it.”
Yes I’ve noticed this, what’s it all about? I’ve always believed that a lot of it is just MS ponying-up the dough to get its “partners” to preach nothing but MS, and MS “preaching” amounts to nothing less than fear and intimidation – I know because I’ve been in meetings with MS reps doing their level best to scare, bribe and lie their way into company cash supplies, and to get themselves so firmly entrenched into those companies that it seems a near impossiblity to ever use anything but MS.
But yeah, other than that, what’s that all about?