As an avid follower of several TV series, I have been trying to - where I can - purchase my downloads from iTunes. I am becoming increasingly annoyed at seeing the episodes I have pre-paid for (I bought season passes) appear for “free” on bittorrent 24hrs before I can legally download them.
This is intolerable and legal downloads stand fcuk all chance of ever becoming popular whilst the very people most eager to watch them are forced to wait an extra day if they want to “do the right thing” and pay for them rather than simply downloading them via bittorrent. I know I know, “its not Apple’s fault” yada yada yada, but that doesn’t detract from that fact that the core market for TV downloads - the people actually willing to pay for them - are being penalised and prejudiced for wanting to do so rather than “stealing” the content off the web.
The entertainment industry is beyond stupid. Its beyond all help.
Don’t you have cable TV or satellite TV where you live? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just get a DVR hookup and record the shows to watch on TV? You’d have a higher bill most likely, but you wouldn’t have to wait.
Are you talking about UK shows or American shows?
BitTorrent and premium newsservers are the only way to go to get world content unless you have some satellite dish network that offers a tier for every country in the world as premium content.
Legally, not one network provider can provide every show you’d ever want to see from the 50’s to the present of any sort of genre and language you could think of than BT or premium newsserver. Illegal content downloads are here to stay. Especially for fansubbed Asian content.
I pay a fairly huge monthly amount for my TimeWarner cable service with legal DVR, HD and premium movie content. But illegal BT and newsservers (I am paying for the newsservers, too) fill in the rest of the missing content. Sorry, but that’s how it goes.
BT is so convenient it isnt even funny. I used to have a program that i could just select all the shows i wanted, and as soon as the new one came out each week it would download the torrent file and open it in my client to start it, and i would not even have to be at my computer. Not to mention i could easily put it on any device and i could get most shows in HD. I wish the networks had an all you could download for 10$ a month or something even if there were some ads, its just way to expensive to follow a bunch of shows and pay $2 a week for each of them.
Odo, I’m not arguing for or against illegal downloads and bittorrent, or whether I could watch the show on cable or satellite if I wanted to. My point was that its the people willing to pay for their downloaded content who are being forced to wait an extra day to watch their shows, while people willing to “steal” it off bittorrent can watch it an hour after its broadcast.
If I am willing to pay $2 per episode, I should be able to watch it at the same damn time its broadcast on TV, not forced to wait 24 hours. Where’s the incentive to “buy-and-wait” when you can just “steal-and-watch-now?”
Dumb dumb dumb. The very customers showing willing to pay for their content are the ones being told “thanks for paying up-front for the next 22 episodes, now you can wait until everyone else has watched it the night before, you moron.”
The entertainment industry is beyond stupid. Its beyond all help.
Absolutely pathetic.
The industry still doesn’t get it do they?! Didn’t they learn anything from the iTunes Music distribution coup? If they don’t get their collective heads out from eachothers asses and look at what the customer wants… they will continue to see piracy in all its myriad forms bleeding revenue from their coffers. When they realise that people are actually willing to pay to d/l content if it means that it’s convenient (ie user-centric system) and can have value-added (legally d’ld content available before terrestrial airing!! imagine that… or extra content features in the d/l versions)...
They just don’t get it. My guess is that most of them are stil worrying about the next versions of superhacker-proof DVD encryption.
It’s far from impossible for content owners. Just deliver good quality reliably, conveniently and affordably, and people will pay. Stop at any highway/motorway service area, and see people pay $2 for a small bottle of water they could have had from the supermarket for 25c if they had thought ahead, or free if they refilled their own bottle.
It just has to be reliable, convenient and affordable. Affordable does not necessarily mean cheap. Perhaps the iTunes store could help.
No the entertainment industry does not get it and probably never will as greed clouds any vision they might have. Selling through narrow and expensive portals like theatres, airlines, hotels, box retailers, and cable put too many avaricious middlemen between creator and customer to make their product really profitable. Just get it online with a simple pricing scheme and the world would come to their door. How long before they can see what is before their eyes? SJ is fighting some severe headwinds dealing with the morons in Hollywood who wear the suits. They really would be laughable if it was not so sad. Truly creative individuals in the entertainment industry do the suffering.
But they are taking so much off the table (like the recording industry) that it should not be too long before someone with talent and vision and money gets the product directly to consumer (via iTunes). Fingers crossed.
there’s no pay video service offering EU shows in north america or US stuff in the EU…
BT is the only way to get them with 2-6h time delay…
on top: there’s tons of REAL HD quality shows… all are available in 16:9 SDTV ripped from HDTV if the show is available in HDTV, otherwise in it’s 4:3 or 16:9 SDTV rip…
there’s no real worldwide offering for HDTV 720p or 1080i TV shows!!!
people want quality, @ least the ones i know that do download and seed BT TV shows!!!
if the broadcasters would be smart they put their shows on BT @ the same time or earlier including the commercials! then they know exactly how many people watched them and they get paid by the advertisers for each download, on top they don’t have to pay for bandwidth, which right now costs them a ton of money…
i would use BT to my advantage instead of fighting it which is a fight already lost…
i don’t mind watching good commercials every 15-20min… just be creative and don’t fight a movement which can’t be fought!
[quote author=“WillyPitt”]BT is so convenient it isnt even funny. I used to have a program that i could just select all the shows i wanted, and as soon as the new one came out each week it would download the torrent file and open it in my client to start it, and i would not even have to be at my computer. Not to mention i could easily put it on any device and i could get most shows in HD. I wish the networks had an all you could download for 10$ a month or something even if there were some ads, its just way to expensive to follow a bunch of shows and pay $2 a week for each of them.
That’s funny. An all you could download buffet for $10. Sorry, but that won’t fly. They’re in it for the money, not for your viewing satisfaction. It sound good, but highly unlikely.
There are too many royalty or residual issues at stake. They really ought to have some expiration date of shows so they can go into public domain. Somebody’s probably still getting money from I Love Lucy and everyone that performed on the show is long dead.
As for Tommo’s question, I don’t know why there is a delay to make it to iTunes. Maybe it has something to do with global time zones or something. That doesn’t matter much to me because sometimes I wait weeks to watch movies or TV series I record on my DVR. I need some spare time to sit and watch. Anyway I couldn’t be bothered with iTunes. I’d sooner get a friend to record it and make me a copy. I’m a Gray’s Anatomy fan and I’d rather wait till the season ends then sit down and watch my recordings all in a row in for a couple of days.
[quote author=“Tommo_UK”]Odo, I’m not arguing for or against illegal downloads and bittorrent, or whether I could watch the show on cable or satellite if I wanted to. My point was that its the people willing to pay for their downloaded content who are being forced to wait an extra day to watch their shows, while people willing to “steal” it off bittorrent can watch it an hour after its broadcast.
If I am willing to pay $2 per episode, I should be able to watch it at the same damn time its broadcast on TV, not forced to wait 24 hours. Where’s the incentive to “buy-and-wait” when you can just “steal-and-watch-now?”
Dumb dumb dumb. The very customers showing willing to pay for their content are the ones being told “thanks for paying up-front for the next 22 episodes, now you can wait until everyone else has watched it the night before, you moron.”
I suppose I didn’t fully understand your question. You’d be better off posing your question to iTMS for an answer. I can edit commercials out of my programs in a few minutes, so that isn’t the problem. Maybe some global time zone problem is the cause. Maybe some people wouldn’t be happy if you got the program on iTunes before they got it on TV. Let’s face it, BT freaks do what they do for love, not money. With no restrictions or overhead. Or needing to please anyone but themselves.
But are you really that upset personally that you have to wait 24 hours or is it because you just can’t figure why you should have to wait? Does the average person really care about that sort of thing? I’m busy and I can’t always see a program at the broadcast time, anyway.
So is the incentive there for most people to pay iTunes to watch shows shortly after they are aired on TV? I guess if they don’t know how to use BT or newsservers. As someone else said, don’t get your head too wrapped around this problem. You’re only going to get a headache. Just use the resources that you have to get what you want, when you want it.
Excuse me, can you please tell me who to give my money to?
Dirty Sexy Money and Private Practice are not offered on iTunes even though other ABC shows are. All the NBC shows are no longer offered on iTunes. The current season of Weeds is not available, but past seasons are (and I expect the same for Dexter).
I want to watch these shows on the train. Or the plane. Or in my hotel room. Or on my AppleTV with my wife on the rare occasion that I’m at home, the kids are asleep, and we’re not exhausted.
So while we did buy The Office (when it was available), and Rescue Me, and Hell’s Kitchen, and Studio 60, and Grey’s Anatomy, and Ugly Betty, and who knows what else (yes we spend a lot of money on iTunes), there are all these shows that WE WANT TO BUY… THAT WE WANT TO GIVE SOMEONE MONEY FOR… and, well, we can’t.
From Credit Suisse
Look who lost the most of the prize demographic
BROADCAST NETWORK VIEWERSHIP declined 7% year over year for premiere week, just below the 8% decline we saw in the previous season, according to the latest Nielsen results based on live and same-day viewing for the week of Sept. 24. The decline was slightly more pronounced in the adult 18-49 demographic that advertisers focus on at 9% for the week (versus 12% in the previous season).
While all networks saw a decline, [Walt Disney unit] ABC outperformed with a household rating of 7.9 (versus 8.0 in 2006) and total viewers of 11.9 million (versus 12.3 million in 2006). However, the network still lost over 11% of adult 18-49 viewers year over year. The household rating and the number of total viewers declined about 10% for the other big four broadcast networks, CBS, [General Electric unit] NBC, and [News Corp. unit] Fox.
NBC saw the biggest decline in its household rating (down 13% year over year) and total viewers (down 10% year over year), but held the adult 18-49 viewers relatively well with 5.1 million viewers, just below that of ABC.
[quote author=“Constable Odo”]As for Tommo’s question, I don’t know why there is a delay to make it to iTunes.
Because the networks want people to watch the broadcast first if possible.
In this day and age, it is theoretically possible to change television into a mostly (excluding live events) on-demand technology. There are questions though, such as how much are people willing to pay for such a service, and will the networks still go through cable and satellite companies, or will they do it themselves?
[quote author=“mrhooks”][quote author=“Constable Odo”]As for Tommo’s question, I don’t know why there is a delay to make it to iTunes.Because the networks want people to watch the broadcast first if possible.
But the ad revenues from the broadcast for one viewing are negligible compared to the revenue for the same viewing from iTunes. iTunes is simply a thousandfold more efficient way of collecting viewer revenue. If the entire audience switched to iTunes the revenues would be staggering. The broadcasters just can’t help using their old horse and cart, even though there’s a new taxi at the door. The horse and cart is on the books at a high price, and they want to keep pretending it’s justified.
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