last100 » NBC

YouTube adds select TV shows from CBS; takes aim at Hulu for long-form video content

Daniel Langendorf — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 04:52:05 +0000

We wouldn’t call YouTube a sleeping giant necessarily, but when it comes to long-form video the world’s dominant video-sharing site certainly seems to be cat-napping.

Other sites such as Hulu, the joint venture between Fox and NBC, have been getting much of the long-form video attention and name recognition, whereas YouTube remains known for short-form content that lasts 10 minutes or less.

Google, YouTube’s parent, is seeking to change this as it has added select full-length content from CBS in an attempt to take on Hulu and attract other network content to YouTube. [YouTube blog]

Available full-length shows include 20- to 48-minute episodes from CBS’s past and present lineup, including “Star Trek,” “MacGyver,” and “Beverly Hills 90210.” The season premiers of “Dexter” and “Californication” and current episodes of “Young and Restless” will also be shown on YouTube.

To improve the viewing experience, YouTube has introduced a new player for long-form video — known as Theater View — which plays video in a less pixelated 16:9 format. It’s no where near as nice as watching a full video on Hulu, but it may suffice for most viewers.

“When you go to full screen you can actually kick back and watch it,” Shiva Rajaraman, senior product manager, told AdAge.

To support the effort, Google is also experimenting with advertising [see NewTeeVee]. The content will be supported with pre-, mid-, and post-roll ads. YouTube will get a revenue cut, but neither CBS nor YouTube would discuss the terms of the agreement or revenue sharing.

If long-form video gains traction on YouTube, the balance of power — already in YouTube’s favor — will shift even more toward the Google property.

YouTube served up 5 billion videos in July, representing more than 44 percent of online videos viewed in the U.S. The next closest competitor was Hulu, with a share of 3.9 percent.

The YouTube giant has 330 million users, according to comScore, while Hulu has just 3.3 million. Even so, Hulu’s relative success with long-form video content has caught the attention of the cat-napping Google.

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iTunes, financial woes, and Tina Fey/Sarah Palin give NBC super-successful week

Daniel Langendorf — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 05:01:17 +0000

If anybody has any lingering doubts about iTunes’ value to NBC, and NBC’s value to iTunes, doubt no more.

Since returning to iTunes Sept. 9 after nearly a year’s separation, NBC racked up more than one million downloads for NBC Universal shows, according to the Hollywood Reporter and Apple.

The spike most likely is a result of a free-offering agreement between NBC and Apple as part of the network’s return to iTunes. NBC pledged to offer one free standard or high-definition download for its top series for two weeks.

It’s worth noting, however, that these numbers were achieved without NBC’s popular programs, which have yet to premiere. It’s expected that NBC Universal will account for about 40 percent of iTunes video sales, the level it was at when the network left late last year over a pricing disagreement.

The Reporter also noted that NBC benefited in two other ways this week — the U.S. financial crisis and Tina Fey’s parody of vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin on “Saturday Night Live.”

CNBC.com exceeded one million unique visitors for the first time after Monday’s stock market meltdown. The Website tallied 14.6 million page views that day, a 26 percent increase over the site’s previous best.

Fey’s dead-on depiction of Palin racked up 5.7 million views on NBC.com and Hulu as of Wednesday, according to NBC data. It is the network’s most popular video of all-time — and if you’ve seen it, you know why.

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NBC continues experiment by putting TV shows online before their network premiers

Daniel Langendorf — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 04:17:31 +0000

If you just can’t wait to see what the new “Knight Rider” or “Chuck” TV shows are all about, you’re in luck. For the third consecutive year, NBC is making new series available online a week before their network premiers.

You can also find “Kath & Kim,” “Crusoe,” “My Own Worst Enemy,” “Life,” Lipstick Jungle,” and “30 Rock” everywhere you look — NBC’s Website, iTunes, Amazon’s Unbox, Microsoft Xbox and Zune, Hulu, and through TV providers such as Comcast, Cox, Charter, Dish, and Verizon FIOS.

Did NBC leave anybody out?

“We want to make (programs) available in as many ways as we can so we can get fans,” NBC’s marketing boss John Miller told USA Today. “If you don’t embrace people’s behavior, you can be lost by it.”

NBC’s early-release strategy is at odds with most other networks.

CBS

After offering “Jericho” last year, CBS is putting nothing online this season. Oddly, it’s screening pilots of “Worst Week” and “Gary Unlimited” on American Airlines flights since Sept. 1. It’s also screening “Worst Week” and “The Ex List” at 10 universities.

ABC

“Samantha Who?” “Pushing Daisies,” and “Ugly Betty” will go online this week, but only in approximately six minute clips. That’s hardly worth the effort and teasing to watch.

Fox

The network offers no advanced premiers this year after serving up “K-Ville” and “Back to You” last season. “Fringe” (potentially my favorite new show) and “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” were streamed at the same time they aired on TV, but only to on-campus computer users.

Bill Bradford, senior vice president at Fox, told USA Today, “I don’t think anybody’s reached the sweet spot yet in terms of Internet viewing of television.”

The CW held back the pilot of the much-hyped return of “90210″ until its debut. It streamed two shows last year on Yahoo, only to see them fail.

As USA Today notes, the strategy of streaming TV shows before their premiers is risky business, although there is no definitive answer whether it helps or hurts a show’s chance for success. It can build positive word of mouth (what NBC hopes for) or it can spread the news that a show is a dog (what The CW experienced last year).

Either way, kudos to NBC for experimenting again. Raspberries to ABC, CBS, Fox, and The CW for wimping out.

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YouTube gets dedicated Olympic channel, but it won’t be available in the U.S.

Daniel Langendorf — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 05:09:57 +0000

The 2008 Olympic Games will be broadcast online to more than 70 countries on a dedicated YouTube channel, but the United States is not included.

NBC holds the video-on-demand rights in the U.S., but these have not been sold on an exclusive basis in other countries, including Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Vietnam, Iraq, and India (see the complete International Olympic Committee list here).

The IOC will stream about three hours a day of exclusive content — mostly summaries and highlights — from Olympic Broadcasting Services. YouTube will sell ads, but only to Olympic sponsors. The channel will be available on Wednesday.

YouTube will use geo-blocking to prevent access to the channel in countries where the video-on-demand rights have been sold, like in the U.S. Geo-blocking is based on a user’s IP address.

The geo-blocking in the U.S. shouldn’t be that big of a deal, unless you’re one who wants to see everything broadcast night and day or you’re surfing videos at YouTube and want to catch up on the Olympic action without leaving the site.

NBC will show more than 2,000 hours of live content at NBCOlympics.com. That’s more than enough content to keep any Olympic fan happy — and in need of sleep.

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Roundup: The most digital of all Olympic games is well underway

Daniel Langendorf — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 05:12:31 +0000

The 2008 Olympics are due to start in Beijing in seven days, five hours, and change, but the reporting and blogging surrounding the most digital of all Olympics is well underway.

Read on to learn more about youth and the digital Olympics and the possibility the Internet will break when billions of people worldwide access the Web to stream video and static content.

In just the past few days there have been announcements regarding schedules, video players, compatibility issues, even behind-the-scene looks at what it will take to produce 2,000 hours of live content for television consumption and 5,000 hours of streaming content for the Web.

If you start now, you just might finish in time for the start of the games on 08-08-08.

Using digital to appeal to youth

Reuters detailed the impact of the digital revolution on the 2008 Olympics, drawing the conclusion that streaming events and highlights over the Internet will attract younger viewers, who are not expected to watch the events live. The average age of people watching the 2004 Games in Athens was more than 40 years old, a statistic that’s not expected to change for the Beijing Games.

The Internet is falling!

Anytime there is a big event happening somewhere in the world, the Internet is expected to crash. A survey from Blue Coat Systems, an appliances and software company that helps organizations secure Web communications across a distributed enterprise, says that 95 percent of the CIOs sampled are worried their networks may fail when the Olympics start, even if it’s only two people watching the games at the same time in the office [via Silicon Alley Insider].

Sounds a bit Chicken Little-ish to us. We think the Internet’s infrastructure has improved enough to support more than two simultaneous users. If not, the whole idea of IPTV, digital entertainment content delivery, and cloud computing is in real trouble.

Worth waiting for?

NBC let us know how long the delay will be between events appearing on television and then online. Popular events like swimming, gymnastics, and track and field will be broadcast live in prime time on the East Coast, then delayed online until after they’ve been seen on TV in the Pacific time zone [via NewTeeVee].

Boffo year for sports online

By the way, the Olympics are expected to be the highlight of the year for sports online after the success of the March Madness NCAA men’s basketball tournament, the U.S. Open playoff, Major League Baseball’s streaming efforts, and the recently-completed Wimbledon tennis tournament.

To Silverlight or Not to Silverlight, that’s the question

Many news sites and pundits have been saying for weeks that to watch streaming video from NBCOlympics.com viewers would have to download and install Microsoft’s Silverlight player, Redmond’s much ballyhooed competitor to Adobe’s Flash player.

That’s not the case says BusinessofVideo.com. Viewers who choose not to install Silverlight still will be able to get stand-alone video streams if they have Windows Media player. This is good news for folks at work who don’t have admin rights to their desktop machines and can’t upgrade to the Silverlight player.

Using Silverlight, however, will give viewers the optimal streaming experience as they will have enhanced video options and can switch between multiple live streams, among other perks.

NBC extends downloads to Vista Media Center

If you care to watch Olympic downloads through the Windows Vista Media Center, NBC is enabling its Olympics on the Go service to allow it to happen. NBC will provide downloads from sports such as beach volleyball, swimming, and gymnastics. Video quality is near-HD.

Olympics on the Go isn’t going anywhere on the Mac

TechCrunchIT points out that Olympics on the Go is sponsored by PC-maker Lenovo and powered by TVTonic. When you try to install Microsoft’s Silverlight on a Mac you get a compatibility error notice. Users who dual boot an Intel-based Mac with Parallels or Boot Camp can work around this issue; everybody else is SOL.

TechCrunch also details NBC’s launch of on-demand Olympic coverage in high definition.

Behind the scenes

If you’re wondering what it takes to bring the Olympics to your PC, check out Ina Fried’s detailed post on News.com. It’s a Herculean effort. Or should that be Zeus-ian? You can see photos of the high definition TV operation here.

Fried also posted 2008 Olympics: The digital games, a comprehensive view of what it will take to broadcast 2,000 hours of live content and 3,000 hours of video-on-demand via NBCOlympics.com. As she notes, “This much content will be available over the Internet is a testament to just how much progress has been made in everything from video streaming to online advertising in just the past two years, as well as a change in the attitude among consumers, who now slurp up 3.5 billion videos a month from YouTube.”

Olympic tech products

And what would the Olympics be without the tens of thousands of products and souvenirs to buy, many of which are made right there in China?

This week we saw the introduction of an Olympic-themed Webcam that’s shaped like the five-ring Olympic symbol. It features a cheap 1.3 megapixel camera in the center ring with a USB 1.1 connection. Each ring has a glowing LED to up the cheese factor [via Gizmodo].

The outrageous bling award goes to an Olympics-themed iPhone that is studded along the edges with 88 diamonds. It will sell for $8,224. No word if it’s the iPhone 3G [via Ubergizmo].

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YouTube gets dedicated Olympic channel, but it won’t be available in the U.S.

NFL will stream select live games over Web for first time

Daniel Langendorf — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 02:35:22 +0000

Good news for football fans. The NFL is loosing up, but just a bit.

The National Football Leauge — notoriously protective of its game action — will stream 17 prime-time, regular-season games this year on NFL.com and NBCSports.com, SportsBusiness Journal reported today. It will be the first time that live action NFL games will be broadly streamed in the U.S.

The streaming begins Sept. 4 in a Thursday game between the Washington Redskins and the New York Giants, with the online video consisting of NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” broadcast feed. Announcers Al Michaels and John Madden will make the call. Viewers will be able to choose from four live camera angles and review updated stats in real time.

It is expected that NBC’s ads will be stripped out of the stream and replaced with new online ads sold by the NFL and NBC,who will share in the new revenue.

The announcement was not openly cheered by the NFL’s other television partners, who, combined, provide $3.7 billion a year in broadcast rights revenue — making the NFL America’s most valuable television property.

Over-the-air networks Fox and CBS and the cable network ESPN also broadcast several games a week, but NBC airs only one on Sunday nights (totaling 17). Because NBC broadcasts only one game, NFL executives told SportsBusiness Journal that it was the best fit for a single-year experiment.

NFL Network CEO Steve Borstein said the streaming of NFL games by NBC is an experiment as the league tries to figure out view habits and any cannibalization effects.

The NFL’s television rights are extremely convoluted and have been a hinderance for the NFL finding new distribution methods. Cable channels are not likely to stream live games because they fear the streams might dilute their audience, which cable TV operators paid handsomely.

Local affiliates, too, have vocalized their concerns over streaming games on the Internet, fearing diluted TV ratings will keep viewers away from local commercials. These commercials may not be included in the live streams.

In contrast, the three other major sports leagues in the U.S. — Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Hockey League (NHL) — have been streaming live games since 2001. MLB has made full-season out-of-market streaming packages available since 2003, with the NBA following with similar packages in 2006 and the NHL for the 2007-08 season. Each league is finding ways to work with traditional and cable networks, local affiliates, and advertisers as they push for new distribution.

Now it’s the NFL’s turn.

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What traditional/new media innovation will NBC’s “billion-dollar lab” lead to?

Daniel Langendorf — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 05:05:31 +0000

We realize talk about measuring audiences on television or the Web can get pretty dull. But there is something that intrigues us about NBC’s “billion-dollar lab” beyond the sheer size of the effort.

That “billion-dollar lab,” as NBC calls the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, will provide unprecedented insight into how people are using traditional media — television — and new media — the Internet.

NBC, the sole broadcaster, will mine 3,600 total hours of coverage from its network, along with NBC-owned properties Telemundo, USA, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, and Bravo. The company is also planning to make 2,200 hours of streaming video available on NBCOlympics.com. Consumers also will get video-on-demand to their computers and content through their mobile phones.

“The billion-dollar lab is an extraordinary research opportunity,” said Alan Wurtzel, NBC’s research chief.

“I have no idea how people are going to use the Internet on the Olympics,” Wurtzel said [via New York Times].

We all think we know: Internet TV, Cloud TV, IPTV, and so on, will continue to rise and traditional viewership will continue to fragment. A recent research finding from Pike & Fischer [via Ars Technica] notes that by 2012 a third of Americans will be watching video-on-demand content.

Live sports is also scoring well on the Web, including Major League Baseball’s MLB.tv, the NCAA’s March Madness men’s asketball tournament, the U.S. Open golf tournament, and just-concluded Wimbledon. No sporting event, not even the Super Bowl, will be watched by as large of a worldwide audience as the Olympics.

It’s perfect for such a large data mining project. So what will NBC do with all this information?

For one, NBC has its own agenda: to better inform advertisers, who spend millions of dollars on the three-week event. The mined data probably will become an important part of the ad negotiations for the next Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, and we wouldn’t be surprised if it impacts all future talks between the networks and advertisers.

For us, we want the networks to quit thinking of themselves as (traditional) networks but as (new) media companies that can give consumers what they want: all sorts of content, on various platforms, for consumption wherever they want, whenever they want.

Perhaps for the first time we can get a clear picture of what’s really going on out there between traditional and new media. And that makes us wonder: What innovation will all this mined information lead to?

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NBC Olympics on the Go will allow (some) fans to download events to watch on their computers

Daniel Langendorf — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 01:41:02 +0000

It seemed so promising: NBC, the sole U.S. broadcaster for the 2008 Summer Olympics Games in Beijing, will allow consumers to download any event to watch on their personal computers for free.

That’s any event.

On their personal computers.

For free.

Then reality sets in and you discover it’s too good to be true. “NBC Olympics on the Go” will only be available for the Microsoft Vista operating system and then in just two flavors — Home Premium and Ultimate. This means millions of XP users, not to mention Mac and Linux folks, will be left on the sideline, so to speak.

These Olympic Games are going to be the most ambitious single media project in history, with NBC saturating the airwaves and Internet cloud with 3,600 hours of coverage from Aug. 8-24.

Three thousand, six hundred hours. Over 17 days.

That includes 1,400 hours on NBC and family stations USA Network, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, and Telemundo, as well as high-def coverage on USA HD and Universal HD. Somewhere in the mix is live streaming on NBCOlympics.com.

That means NBC will be covering 28 sports, 302 events, and will be broadcasting seemingly 24/7. With the 12 to 15 hour time delay, most of the events — scheduled for morning starts in China — will be broadcast on prime time in the U.S.

And after spending hundreds of millions (billions?) of dollars, the network’s tech guys can’t find a way for “NBC Olympics on the Go” to reach more than Vista Home Premium and Ultimate users? Oddly, NBC has partnered with Microsoft to use its new Silverlight media technology, which will be available to PC, Mac, and Linux users.

Maybe the Vista thing has something to do with Wavexpress, an Internet video distributor whose media platform, TVTonic, will be used to distribute the Olympics video online. TVTonic already provides 350 media channels through Vista. (Click here to learn about TVTonic and install the media player.)

A few other “NBC Olympics on the Go” details:

Yes, you read it right. It’s downloading, not streaming. The video will be cached on your PC to view when you want, where you want. The video will be “up-to-HD” quality.
The downloads are not compatible with mobile devices.
For those folks who have Vista Home Premium and Ultimate, they must download the Wavexpress media player. (Who needs another media player on their computer?“)
To be fair, downloading the Wavexpress media player does have one advantage: Those who sign up can pick any event they want to see like they’re programming a DVR. The software finds and downloads the desired video when it becomes available. (Cool, but remember to leave your computer running.)
Fans cannot download and watch games until they’ve appeared on TV. (That’s understandable.)
NBC will sell video ads to appear in the downloads. (Expected and, sigh, a streaming/downloading way life for network content.)

All in all, NBC scores points for ambition and chutzpah but it’s doubtful the network will medal with “NBC Olympics on the Go.

As an aside, why is it “NBC Olympics?” Shouldn’t it be the “Beijing Summer Games on the Go” or something to that effect?

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In just two months, Hulu becomes 10th largest online video streaming site

Daniel Langendorf — Wed, 21 May 2008 02:35:01 +0000

In just over two months, Hulu has moved from private beta to the No. 10 online video streaming site.

In doing so, Hulu bests all of the major networks — NBC and Fox (Hulu’s parents), ABC, and CBS. It’s an impressive feat.

At the same time, Hulu is expanding its content footprint by adding seven partners, meaning its library of current and vintage TV shows will be more widely available. Hulu videos will be distributed on entertainment and social networking sites TV.com, TVGuide.com, BuddyTV, Flixster.com, MyYearbook.com, Break.com, and Zap2it.com.

“While it is extremely early in terms of Hulu’s history of serving users, we’re quite excited to see such positive trends in Hulu’s growth and viewership,” Jason Kilar, Hulu’s chief executive officer, told Reuters.

In April, people watched 63.2 million videos on Hulu and its partners’ sites and spent on average 129.3 minutes per month, beating nearest rival ABC.com (60.8 million videos, an average of 57.3 minutes).

Hulu, Turner Entertainment New Media Network, CNN Digital Network, Disney Online, ESPN, MSN/Windows Live, Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network, Yahoo!, and Fox Interactive Media — Nos. 10 to 2, respectively — trailed online video behemoth YouTube by a huge margin. YouTube served up 4,052,984 total streams, everybody else combined presented 1,300,658 total streams, according to Nielsen Online.

To Hulu’s credit, it’s one of the few places on the Internet where people can easily find a library of recently broadcast and archived TV shows. It also helps that Hulu’s user interface is clean, reasonably well organized, the video player is above-average, and the quality is great.

In light of its success, NBC Universal digital boss George Kliavkoff said at the Streaming Media East conference that Hulu is beginning to look beyond streaming video on a personal computer to other Internet-connected devices, including mobile phones.

While expansion is laudable, here’s hoping that quick success doesn’t go to Hulu’s head. The whole relationship between TV over-the-air, on the Internet, and available for download hasn’t been worked out yet. No need to get cocky just yet.

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Just like version 1 of NBC Direct, version 2 will leave you screaming in frustration

Daniel Langendorf — Fri, 16 May 2008 04:24:21 +0000

I screamed then, I’m screaming now. NBC Direct, version 2, still disappoints. It’s like NBC is working overtime to piss off its users, or at least force them to use its other online video service Hulu.

NBC opened a second beta trial of NBC Direct, its Web-based video-on-demand (VOD) download service. The new-and-supposedly-improved Direct is now powered by peer-to-peer content distribution from Pando.

NBC Direct, in the works now for nearly a year, is a free download service for NBC programs. It requires a software install (still Windows only); the shows expire in seven days and 48 hours after you begin watching; and include advertising. Direct was universally panned when version 1 debuted last November.

The panning continues.

The best panner of the bunch is Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee, who wrote, “I tried to give the software a whirl tonight, but despite my best efforts to upgrade, restart, agree, continue, login, trouble-shoot and force-quit, it just wasn’t happening.” The folks at Ars Technica hung in there a little longer but generally reached the same conclusion.

As for my own experience, I should have known. On the front page of NBC Direct there are lengthy instructions for downloading and an FAQ, not a good sign for easy installation. The upgraded software took about 15 minutes to download over FIOS. Afterward I received an escalating series of messages: a script error, a security upgrade notice, and a dialog box challenging the player’s ability to play its own file extension. And I’m using Windows XP, not Vista.

Best of all, after watching the same intro ad four times, I found my license had expired even though I downloaded and installed the player 20 minutes before. I had also just completed downloads of fresh episodes of “The Office” and “30 Rock”.

Content has gotten worse. When NBC Direct first launched, “Life,” “Bionic Woman,” “30 Rock,” “The Office,” “Friday Night Lights,” and “Heroes” were available, but only a single current episode. For whatever reason, now only “The Office,” “30 Rock,” “American Gladiator,” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” are available, with only the last two with new content.

My advice for NBC Direct version 2? If you love a challenge like downloading software, installing it, solving error message puzzles, and looking for needles in the haystack, then go for it. For the rest of us, use Hulu, make sure your DVR is set, or wait patiently for favorite shows to come out on DVD.

Otherwise, you’ll be screaming too.

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Something is going on at iTunes: Apple reportedly agrees to variable pricing to get HBO shows

Daniel Langendorf — Tue, 13 May 2008 01:10:13 +0000

Apple and Home Box Office will be achieving a couple of very important firsts when HBO content comes to iTunes in the next few weeks.

For Apple, it will be the first time the company will allow variable pricing for content on iTunes in the United States. According to Josh Saul of Portfolio.com, sources indicate that Apple has agreed to a separate price structure to bring HBO content to iTunes.

No details were given, but it’s expected that HBO shows will sell for more than $1.99 a episode. Apple has held steadfast to its philosophy of fixed pricing — $0.99 cents per song, $1.99 for TV shows, $2.99 to $4.99 for movie rentals and $9.99 to $14.99 for movie purchases.

Apple has been so adamant about fixed pricing that NBC to pull its shows from iTunes at the end of last year after a loud, public dispute over, in part, variable pricing demands.

For HBO, the expected agreement marks the first time the cable station’s content will be available online. This content includes current shows such as “John Adams” or “Entourage” as well as old favorites like “Sex in the City,” “The Sopranos,” and “The Wire.”

HBO is currently testing an online download service, known as HBO on Broadband, letting subscribers watch 400 hours of programming a month and stream its main channel. HBOB is being tested in Wisconsin before moving to other markets.

HBO on Broadband is available only to current subscribers, while selling through iTunes would make current and catalog content accessible to many more people.

HBO has long frustrated online viewers by not making its content available except on its cable channel and on DVD, often many months after a show’s final episode in a season. Additionally, HBO DVD sets of shows such as “Deadwood” or “Rome” sell at a premium price — about $80 a set when other networks offer full seasons of their shows for $50 or less.

Whether HBO’s higher price tag for shows on DVD is the reason for the flexible pricing on iTunes, no one has said. But it’s clear something significant is happening to iTunes, most of which has not been revealed to us yet.

Our guess is that Apple is about to relax fixed pricing, at least for television shows and movies, or maybe even do away with it altogether.

Low-cost fixed pricing helped Apple establish iTunes and digital downloading, but it may have run its course and Apple is preparing for a shift in the market. Access to greater and more diverse content for variable pricing may be a tradeoff Apple is willing to make for its customers and content owners.

Apple is trying to increase TV and movie sales on iTunes and the awareness of its AppleTV device, which allows people to rent or purchase movies or buy TV shows over the Internet from their televisions. Access to top-rated and newly-released content is appealing to viewers. At the beginning of May, Apple announced that movies from all major studios will be available for purchase from iTunes the same day the DVDs go on sale in stores.

As far as music, in mid March the Financial Times reported that Apple was in discussions with the major record labels to allow customers unlimited access to the entire iTunes music library in exchange for paying a premium for iPod and iPhone devices. The subscription is an “all you can eat” model similar to Nokia’s “comes with music” deal.

Yes, something is going on at iTunes. Maybe Steve Jobs will tell us more in his keynote at the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference.

Photo Illustration above by: Taylor Umlauf, Portfolio.com

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A hint at what’s to come? NBC streams “The Office”, “30 Rock” to iPhone

Daniel Langendorf — Fri, 09 May 2008 04:09:37 +0000

It’s certainly not the best quality video, and the show selection is severely limited, but it’s a start and — maybe — a hint at what’s to come.

As Silicon Alley Insider and Saul Hansell of The New York Times note today, you can stream NBC shows to an iPhone or iPod touch, completely bypassing iTunes. As everybody knows, NBC and its network properties pulled their shows off iTunes late last year over a pricing and copy protection spat.

NBC is streaming full episodes of “The Office” and “30 Rock” to the iPhone in unprotected Quicktime format. The files are split into four small segments with no advertising (Update: I watched the whole Office episode again, and at the end of each segment there is a super brief ad — in this case, one for the Toyota Carrolla). The quality is fuzzy at best, but the shows are watchable in portrait and landscape modes.

Unfortunately, only one episode of “The Office” is available — the one where Michael puts his face in cement and Pam is wearing glasses. There’s also one episode of “30 Rock.” The NBC site hints that there may be more shows coming.

Poking around at m.nbc.com/iphone I found no other shows available, although there was a note that episodes were “coming soon” for “Battlestar Galactica.” It was unclear if these would be full shows or just clips, which are also on hand for streaming. Clips were included for shows such as “Chuck,” “Heroes,” and “My Name is Earl”.

It takes a bit of digging through the user interface to find the programs. Once you navigate to the site, you land at a mobile NBC page. Look above the picture and choose the “Shows” tab; it will give you a list of programs to pick from.

Choose “The Office” or “30 Rock”, select the “Watch Video” link, and then “Full Episodes”. Whatever show is available can be found here. You’ll have to experiment to find clips for other programs.

Hansell notes that this is an “important development,” and I agree. “As network bandwidth and compression quality get better, a lot of the music and video that people are now downloading could be streamed instead.” He reminds us that streaming video on a PC was poor several years ago but acceptable now.

There are many compelling reasons why a network like NBC would want to stream shows to the iPhone and other mobile devices.

the stream is real-time and cannot be easily saved
streaming is better suited to advertising than downloading
streaming gets around piracy and digital rights management issues
streaming bypasses storefronts such as iTunes, where people purchase TV shows for $1.99 per episode — and we all know how NBC feels about iTunes

While working on NBC’s deal to sell its TV shows through Microsoft’s Zune, Hansell ended his discussion with J.B. Perrette, the president digital distribution for NBC Universal, with a question about the paid download strategy. Interestingly, Perrette said the number of people watching free, ad-supported programs on Hulu.com is “far greater” than those buying $1.99 copies from iTunes or Amazon Unbox.

Perrette suggested that streaming to mobile devices may be a better answer, particularly when the technology improves, which it undoubtedly will in time.

“As the mobile Web becomes a popular access point, and video content is available on those platforms, that will become a very relevant and compelling way to get video content,” he told the NYT.

Perhaps NBC’s streaming-to-mobile-devices is a sign of what’s to come.

Photo credit: George Frey/Bloomberg News [via NYT]; Gizmodo

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