Back when Napster was king, and the only legal online music stores either had an eclectic selection (emusic) or hopelessly restrictive DRM, I was convinced that if someone could just come up with a comprehensive, easy, and non-cumbersome way to buy music that it would be a hit. Then Apple came a long and did it, and legal online music finally took off.
Over the past couple of years the online piracy battle has turned to movies and TV episodes. I’d been thinking again along the same lines I was thinking about music 5 years ago that if someone could just come up with a way to get current TV episodes available for sale at a modest price, that legal online TV episodes would take off. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but it turns out that Apple has done it again.
Apple has now made current TV episodes available in iTunes Music Store. The selection is a bit dismal, but it’s a good start. Current hits Lost and Desperate Housewives are two of the series on offer. The other three series are ones I’d never heard of: Night Stalker, The Suite Life and That’s So Raven. OK, so it’s a bit slim pickings for now, but hopefully it’ll get better. Individual episodes are priced at $1.99, though they have the same price for both hour long and half hour shows which is a bit weird.
Now for the downside: Unlike their audio offerings, currently Apple does not allow you to burn video episodes to DVD. This is unfortunate as watching video on a computer often isn’t as nice as watching on a TV. I’m hoping for them to lift this restriction in the future. I haven’t actually downloaded a video yet, so I’m not sure about the video quality either.
Some suggestions for Apple:
1) Lift the burning restriction!
2) Offer a “season pass” subscription where one can subscribe to the entire current season and have new episodes downloaded as soon as they are released.
3) Beef up the catalog. Here’s some suggestions I think would really get noticed: 24 and Battlestar Galactica. Personally I’d also like to see the Law & Order series, and West Wing.
4) Along the lines of the free songs promotion, make deals with new series to feature a free episode per week.
#1 thing? And yeah, I know it’s the record companies and not Apple but still.
LET ME BUY WHAT I WANT FROM WHAT COUNTRY I WANT. PERIOD.
　
Vast majority of the music *I* want to buy I cannot. Why? Because my credit card shows that I live in Illinois. The music I want is only on the Japanese iStore, but I cannot purchase from them, because I don’t live in Japan, as proved by my credit card BILLING ADDRESS.
So, pardon my French, but fuck it. If we’re going to have globalization, it should be globalization for the buyers as well as the sellers.
I steal all kinds of Japanese music all the time. I would be happy to pay 400 yen a song, but they won’t let me.
(http://livejournal.com/users/akibare)
Yeah, there’s that too. Fortunately they haven’t ever given me a problem for using a US credit card but downloading to Taiwan.
(http://livejournal.com/users/jlick)
Pay channels like HBO — ok, only HBO cuz who cares about others? — should jump on this and work with Apple to sell their TV episodes. They figure to be the ones to actually lose money over all those TV downloads, although i heard much whines from the networks themselves. yeah, yeah…
Having typed all that, it occurred to me that most TV shows these days, even short-lived ones, get crammed into DVD releases anyway so I don’t see much motivation for the producers to provide downloads. Unlike music, people tend to watch all (most?) episodes on a disc. What they oughta do is offer those old shows that ain’t on DVDs, although they really oughta be on DVDs… bleh
(http://livejournal.com/users/scrungew00t)
It’s true that most current series comes on DVD now, but it’s usually not for several months after the season ends. That’s fine for some series, but for others it’s nice to watch them as they come out instead of waiting.
(http://livejournal.com/users/jlick)