NBC's Move to Amazon is Bad News for 'Must See TV' Fans
Where will you turn for "Must See TV" on the Internet? NBC says up until December you'll be able to download programming from iTunes. But after that you will have to turn to other download distribution channels for NBC content including Amazon.com's "Unbox" service and Rupert Murdoch News Corp's Hulu.com.
NBC wanted iTunes to jack the price of its TV shows to $5 an episode ? up from $2. ITunes balked, and now NBC is saying bye. It announced it's turning to Amazon's Unbox service instead.
NBC's Split with iTunes is Bad News for Peacock Fans
NBC's move to Amazon is bad news for NBC fans who like the reliability and familiarity of iTunes. I don't know much about Hulu.com (the site is not live yet), but at least with Amazon Unbox NBC fans are going to have to get ready to jump through some hoops. And if you're an Apple user, you are just plain out of luck.
System Requirements for Watching NBC Programming Over the Net
First off Amazon Unbox will never be confused for Apple's multimedia online superstore iTunes. In my opinion it's a very poor imitation. However I will cut Amazon some slack - given Unbox is only one year old.
For those unfamiliar, Unbox is Amazon's attempt at competing with iTunes. It allows you to buy or rent TV shows, movies, and other video content from the Internet.
If you own a video iPod or an iPhone the bad new is Unbox won't allow you to tranfer movies to those devices. Unbox allows you to move videos to selected portable players that support Microsoft's Windows anti-copying software.
Worse, the Unbox video player is not compatible with Apple Macs. It requires a PC running either Vista or the Windows XP operating system. Minimum system requirements are a PC with a 1.5GHz processor, 256MB of memory, and a DirectX 9.0 compliant Video (64 MB memory), and Sound Card.
Also, unlike with iTunes, Unbox allows you to rent or buy videos from the service. Rentals, as you might guess, are cheaper. However, when you rent instead of buy video content from Unbox you have 30-days from the time you pay for the video to watch the programming. And when you start watching the video you have 24 hours to finish watching the video before the digital programming deletes itself from you system.
When I shopped for NBC shows I only saw the option to buy, and was never given the option to rent. I don't know if NBC plans to change those options in December.
Apple and ITunes Continue to Bicker
Meanwhile the barbs keep flying between NBC and Apple. Apple called NBC's suggested pricing change a "dramatic price increase." NBC responded thus: "It is clear that Apple's retail pricing strategy for its iTunes service is designed to drive sales of Apple devices, at the expense of those who create the content that make these devices worth buying."
Until the mess is sorted out I predict one thing confidently. People will be more apt to turn to illegal copies of NBC content on P2P file sharing networks.
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NBC will definitely suffer for that. I don't buy their content as it is but right now Itunes is definitely the market leader. Nobody is going to some no name or alternative that isn't even strong competition with the Itunes store. Just like NBC killed the original Star Trek years ago, it once again prematurely pulls the plug one something for corporate greed. Great news company, very bad business tv station.