New Itunes Offerings - TV Shows

[noel]

I used to hate Apple, but now I'm becoming a fanboi. I'm currently downloading Season 2 of the Office... BECAUSE I CAN!

As of today, they have all kinds of new TV show offerings. New stuff, vintage stuff. It's great!

[Voronwë]

I used to hate Apple, but now I'm becoming a fanboi. I'm currently downloading Season 2 of the Office... BECAUSE I CAN!

As of today, they have all kinds of new TV show offerings. New stuff, vintage stuff. It's great!

was in a really interesting panel session on Monday where we were talking about "branded environments" and the topic came before the panel about what brands they really respected.

the seond one mentioned was Apple's iPod branding, which set the panel off on a monstrous tangent about how brilliant their marketing is - and what a mass-appeal product they have created.

We talked about the idea of shows on the iPod and whether or not it will canibalize the linear television product's audience (ie: normal TV). The ad sales exec on the panel doesn't think so. Basically, as long as their is a revenue stream to it, it is a good thing in his mind, and will "gross up".

Regardless, it is simply fucking brilliant, and in a few years there will not be audio independent of video. If you have music on your phone or iPod, or whatever, there will be video with it.

By the way Noel...this is the coolest fucking part of it all. There is an apple knowledgbase article about transferring stuff from YOUR DVR TO YOUR VIDEO IPOD.

there is a software product you have to buy (if you have a media center PC/Mac), and you can fucking use your remote control to move something from your DVR to your fucking ipod.

Apple doesn't do everything right, but nobody makes stuff that is 'cooler'.

period.

a video ipod would be about the coolest thing ever if i commuted to work via train or whatever.

--

i swore i read that on Apple's site somewhere but i can't find it. here is a 3rd party site about transferring from Tivo to iPod. fucking awesome

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000583063891/

[noel]

I totally agree.

It's a funny thing, I was talking to a friend last night about how the record companies want Apple to charge more for songs or something. They should be thanking god that Apple (and other companies, but mostly apple) has created such a tech-savvy, well-oiled distribution channel for their products.

Gone are the days of the old Napster and having shitloads of illegal music. Apple has basically kicked the music business (and now hopefully TV) into the 21st century.

[Nick]

Well I would reckon a fair lot of IPOD users are still downloading their music for free by other means.

I'm getting a wee Nano next week, should be cool May upgrade in about 6 months if I can be bothered.

[Winnow]

You can still find pretty much anything you want on the newsgroups in less than 10 seconds if you take the time to learn how. It's like your own personal 100 terabyte jukebox.

[Voronwë]

I totally agree.

It's a funny thing, I was talking to a friend last night about how the record companies want Apple to charge more for songs or something. They should be thanking god that Apple (and other companies, but mostly apple) has created such a tech-savvy, well-oiled distribution channel for their products.

Gone are the days of the old Napster and having shitloads of illegal music. Apple has basically kicked the music business (and now hopefully TV) into the 21st century.

Basically in the words of the same ad sales exec i was referencing above, "Steve jobs saved the music industry single handedly".

which goes back to a point i made on a seperate thread about how smart U2 has been to so tightly couple their marketing with Apple's. Both sides benefit tremendously from the relationship. SYNERGY!!!

[Winnow]

Basically in the words of the same ad sales exec i was referencing above, "Steve jobs saved the music industry single handedly".

If Steve Jobs is involved, we can look for Bill Gates to steal this from him soon!

[Zaelath]

I used to hate Apple, but now I'm becoming a fanboi. I'm currently downloading Season 2 of the Office... BECAUSE I CAN!

As of today, they have all kinds of new TV show offerings. New stuff, vintage stuff. It's great!

I'm curious, what's the format? Is there DRM on it?

[noel]

The format is MPEG-4, and the size for a 25minuteish clip is right around 120MB. As with all other purchased Itunes stuff, you have to have a valid Itunes account and be logged in to play it, so I'd assume it's DRMed.

Winnow, I know how to use the newsgroups (you told me the best applications after all), but when I actually enjoy something, I feel good about paying for it, and I think the prices are very reasonable, so I really don't mind.

[Zaelath]

The format is MPEG-4, and the size for a 25minuteish clip is right around 120MB. As with all other purchased Itunes stuff, you have to have a valid Itunes account and be logged in to play it, so I'd assume it's DRMed.

Winnow, I know how to use the newsgroups (you told me the best applications after all), but when I actually enjoy something, I feel good about paying for it, and I think the prices are very reasonable, so I really don't mind.

I don't mind paying either, what I don't like is then being crippled for doing the right thing =(

<rant>
eg, if I buy a DVD I can take it to my folks place and they can watch it as well, sure I can't format shift it to a VCR tape because of that macrovision shit (well, I could, but lets not get into my 15 year old VCR that still works and pre-dates macrovision).

My parents, not being as techno-whipped as our generation, do have cable, a DVD player, television, but no computers in the lounge, so I'd like to burn said purchase onto a DVD so I can play it on the TV, etc, etc.

Fuck DRM, fuck it in the ass. I won't buy anything that uses it (other than DVDs, because gay as it is, it doesn't really affect "normal use"). The righteous consumer is fucking themselves over by consenting to this garbage, and it's just getting worse and worse; Sony have been found to have yet another brilliant DRM scheme in the wild that compromises computers (not XCP http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/07 ... _security/).

Based on the way these shitheads do business watch out your local library doesn't get sued for illegal distribution of copyright materials in the near future.
</rant>

[noel]

It should also be noted that the quality is nowhere near DVD quality. It's basically good enough where you don't care that you're dropping $2 on a TV show, but nothing great. It looks best on small screens.

I looked at the info on one of the files. It's listed as a 'Protected MPEG-4 video file' and it says it's using something called 'FairPlay Version: 2'.

It does appear that you can burn the files to a DVD, but I'm currently out of blanks so unable to try it out for you. Sorry.