NBC to Offer Free Video Download Service

Damocles the Elder writes "Apparently NBC realized that people on the internet do watch TV, because after breaking up with Apple over iTunes pricing schemes, they're setting up their own free service." From the article "NBC first contracted with Amazon to offer its programs for sale to downloading devices like MP3 players. Now it is establishing its own downloading service, which NBC executives say they expect to become a viable competitor to iTunes. "With the creation of this new service, we are acknowledging that now, more than ever, viewers want to be in control of how, when and where they consume their favorite entertainment," said Vivi Zigler, the executive vice president of NBC Digital Entertainment. "Not only does this feature give them more control, but it also gives them a higher quality video experience."

Wait for comcast!

Cue Comcast and other ISPs complaining that NBC is taking advantage of the bandwidth they provide and should be forced to pay in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

Re:Wait for comcast!

I'm currently on what I call "low-speed high-speed". It's the 1 Mbit down, 125 Kbit up service that my ISP offers. If there was a good legal place to download tv shows for free, then I would probably get the 6 Mbit service that they offer. As it stands right now, I only browse the web, download music from eMusic, and download a Linux DVD ISO once or twice a year. If there was more content available on the web, I would probably sign up for the fastest package they had. But as for now, most of the stuff I do, even videos like Apple Movie Trailers play just fine over my 1 Mbit connection. You would think that bringing richer content to the web would make the ISPs happier, as there's more people paying for higher service levels. However, I'm not sure if it really helps them, as they have pretty much built their business model on selling 6 Mbit connections to people who do nothing more than browse the web and check their email.

not free

Also notice that the service only free till "mid 2008". And It also has commercials. The videos dont come out till a week after airing and expire 7 days after you download them. Finally what can we expect for the "real" price in 2008. Well some details have emerged on the price NBC wanted apple to charge. You may recall the price they wanted apple to charge was said to be $4.99 but NBC denied this vehemently. Well it turns out what they wanted was to force apple to purchase bundles of shows. SO to get a popular show like Heros apple would have to buy one episode of heros and 2 episodes of some re-run. The equivalent price of those 3 shows was 4.99. But apple could only charge 2.99 for the Hero's. This would have left apple with a net loss for all the re-runs it could not off load to other customers for 99 cents.

Nice to see...

...that MP3 players can now play videos

Yeah, whatever...

"With the creation of this new service, we are acknowledging that now, more than ever, viewers want to be in control of how, when and where they consume their favorite entertainment,"

...

Commercials will be embedded in the programs and viewers will not be able to skip through them.

Re:Yeah, whatever...

Commercials will be embedded, just like on television. Either tape it off your television or wait for the commercial to finish. Or wait for it to be released on DVD and buy it. Yeeesh, some of you people just don't want your content producers to make money, do you?

Re:Yeah, whatever...

I don't mind the producers making money, but they won't make any from me unless they sell me the product I want. For downloaded video, it has to be more convenient than renting the DVD. This means:

• Quick access. What I want, when I want it.
• No adverts. Adverts are the reason I stopped watching broadcast television.
• No DRM. Part of the convenience means allowing it to be played on portable devices. Unless your DRM supports Mac, iPod and Nokia devices, (and will support all future devices I might buy) it makes the content less valuable to me.
• No region restrictions.

I would love to pay a (reasonable) flat rate, in advance, for seasons of TV shows I want to watch, and have them automatically downloaded every week, but this seems not to be something the studios want to sell me. Until then, I'll stick to renting DVDs, typically some years after the shows have been created.

Re:Yeah, whatever...

The product needs to be equal or better than what you can get "for free" over the air.

A few years ago, I'd have agreed with you. About five or six years ago, my father stopped owning a TV, and I thought this was really odd. At the end of the month, our TV license expires and we're not planning on renewing it, and quite a few of my friends have also ditched the TV. It's still by no means a majority who have no TV, but it's no longer regarded as particularly unusual.

Broadcast TV has a lot more competitors now than it used to. The internet is a good source of entertainment, as are rented DVDs (through the post, no hassle, no adverts). Computer games, including consoles, are starting to become a lot more mainstream too, and TV viewership figures have been dropping a corresponding amount for some years. A big reason there are more adverts in TV shows these days is that the income per viewer has remained roughly constant, but the number of viewers has dropped. This increase in adverts then drives more people away, perpetuating the spiral. It's not enough for a new service to be as good as TV, because TV is already starting to lose out. It has to be better.

Re:Yeah, whatever...

Grab the video stream,

I.e. "Install software on your computer to do something you shouldn't need to."

edit out the commercial

I.e. "Install more software on your computer to do something you shouldn't need to, and spend at least as long as the show is futzing around with editing it."

Frankly, I'd rather just not watch the show than to go through all of this trouble. Other people will probably be downloading it illegally to avoid the trouble and still watch the show. I like my solution better, though, because 1) I get to do other more interesting things, and 2) I don't help perpetuate the popularity of shows that are made by companies that want to control when, where, and how I watch stuff that I'm willing to pay for.

Re:Yeah, whatever...

I was going to say "how long till they put adverts (other than trailers) on to DVD's (there is nothing stopping them after all..) then I realised that children's DVD's are already littered with them (I put a postman pat DVD on for my son a while back, the feature is maybe 60 / 90 Minutes (3x 20 or 30 minute episodes) and there is at least 25 minutes of advertising material at the beginning, some of it totally inappropriate for really young kids (in terms of cartoon violence but still, its a Postman Pat DVD I wouldn't expect *any* violence* cartoon or otherwise) not to mention its is really annoying to have 2x 3 minute adverts for the same thing 5 minutes apart on a single DVD. Thankfully I can skip all of that, but I would hat to be someone who has a regular DVD player that honours whatever non-skip protection is on those Disks.

*Except in "Pat and the Armed Post Office Robbery" where Pat foils a terrorist plot to rob the Post Office and use the proceeds to blow up the viaduct, or in "Pat goes Postal" which should be self explanatory... :)

AntiTrust yet again....

Is anyone suspicious about the fact that Microsoft has a HUGE stake in NBC and all of a sudden NBC's content is pulled from Apple's store?

Criminals.

Re:AntiTrust yet again....

Ultimately this is a good thing; it forces NBC to be better than Apple or they fail. It then forces Apple to be better than NBC. Which forces everybody else to be better. Because everybody is competing with free. You've got to be good to compete with free.

Now the trouble is, companies hate competing, so ideally, Congress will ignore the whining of these big companies as they ask for laws to shield them from competition. It should also look aggressively at these companies if they try to work together to avoid competing with each other.

This should be interesting to watch.

Re:AntiTrust yet again....

As proved by MS. Actually, Windows has improved leaps and bounds since Linux took off, so I guess your point stands.

As proved by MS. Actually, Windows has improved leaps and bounds since Linux^h^h^h^h^hMac OS took off^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^hstarted eating into their market share

There you go. Fixed that for you.

Seriously... Apple is poised to become a fierce competitor once again. Look at the shares of MacBook sales. Linux? I know this is Slashdot and I know we're all pulling for Linux but honstly, "The Year of Linux" is a looooooooooooooong way off.

From free to pay...eventually?

From TFA:

Commercials will be embedded in the programs and viewers will not be able to skip through them...

Further into the article:

But NBC intends to transform the service into a model similar to iTunes by the middle of 2008 -- that is, consumers will pay NBC directly to download episodes of the shows. "We did this to eliminate the middleman," said Jeff Gaspin, the president of NBC's digital division.

That's fine and dandy, but will the paid version of the episode come complete with ads or is this just an interim solution until the paid model is in place, because I sure as hell wouldn't want to pay for episodes if they contained unskippable ads.

pirates win

I've always advocated that pirates pirate things they wouldn't pay for anyway, hence why they were always going to win.

make all media pirate proof 100%, make no money. the slightest crack in the system and you make no money.

simply release your media in a format everyone can enjoy for free in a quality higher then the pirates are putting out, slip in some well targeted adverts, hey presto you just won over a market you had no chance of ever having previously and your making money from it.

Re:pirates win

simply release your media in a format everyone can enjoy for free in a quality higher then the pirates are putting out, slip in some well targeted adverts, hey presto you just...

...invented broadcast television.

Commercials you can't skip?

From the article:

...the files, which would be downloaded overnight to home computers, would contain commercials that viewers would not be able to skip through. And the file would not be transferable to a disk or to another computer.

The files would degrade after the seven-day period and be unwatchable. "Kind of like 'Mission: Impossible,' only I don't think there would be any explosion and smoke," Mr. Gaspin said.

The programs will initially be downloadable only to PCs with the Windows operating system, but NBC said it planned to make the service available to Mac computers and iPods later.

You can't skip through the commercials? Can't transfer them to a disk or other computer? Any bets on how long this will last?

But maybe this will help...

In a second phase of the NBC rollout, customers would pay a fee for downloads of episodes that they would then own, and the files would be transferable to other devices. NBC hopes to offer this service by mid-2008, depending on how quickly the company can put in place the secure software necessary to allow payment by credit card. [emphasis added]

Right, because online payment systems are magical. Only the top wizards understand the spells that make them work. That's why nobody except Apple has secure software to allow payment by credit cards: Steve Jobs is the toppest of the top wizards.

I suspect it'll only apply to US and maybe europe

I've tried downloading/watching heroes from NBC before.
Because i was accessing it from a non-american IP address, they locked me out, citing no advertisers for my region (New Zealand)

Talking of which, they previous/already offered the ability to watch previous episodes of heroes before, what exactly has changed?
Isn't this just a rehash of what they already have, just with plans to turn it into an iTunes competitor later next year?

iTunes causes music piracy?

FTA:

Mr. Gaspin said, "piracy was and is our No. 1 priority." He said that the music industry had been devastated by the free exchange of music, much of it facilitated by iTunes.

Holy smokes: the most succesful legal online music distribution service on the Internet is actually a haven for piracy? Up is down, war is peace. Next up: the beef market has been terribly devastated by the popularity of McDonald's restaurants.

I think what's he's saying

I think what he's trying to imply is that iTunes (not iTMS) allows people to rip their own CD's unencumbered by DRM. In fact, it doesn't even have an option to force DRM on songs. I was curious about this too, until I realized that MS Windows Media Player has an option to "Copy Protect Music" and presumably has the ability to force people to "copy protect music" if Micrsoft deems it important. Imagine if iTunes never became the dominant music software; I'm guessing this option would already be turned on.

This is probably some sort of PR spin over the fact that NBC is most likely going to use Windows Media Player to base their options, and this is a feature that a marketing person would tout as important. And at first glance, I think Joe Average will see this as important too, since it will cut down on those dirty hackers and pirates from stealing music.

Six years too late

If studios had addressed this in 2001 we, as "consumers", would be much better off.

As it is this is all coming about because of a tiff between studios and Apple, which will culminate in differing DRM models as more media sources decide to go online, greater likelihood of a "pay-to-play" internet (at least in the US), and the certainty that commercials will be inserted into the shows *real*soon*.

Thank god USENET remains an option, as does Miro.

Not as good as it sounds

Well, I read TFA, and I have to say, it's not such a great thing.

The service will allow customers to download full episodes of NBC shows for seven days on Windows-based PCs. The file will expire after the seven days.

So it sounds like they are saying, this is Windows only. Lots of Mac and Linux users are going to be disappointed.

Commercials will be embedded in the programs and viewers will not be able to skip through them.

...

... consumers will pay NBC directly to download episodes of the shows.

So wait, we have to pay to see un-skippable commercials? Forget that! They aren't going to win over the people who are simply TiVo'ing their favorite shows, or (god forgive) the ones who downloading them elsewhere. NBC is asking a little too much here.

Just great...

Just great, another advertiser-based Internet-distribution video service. And naturally not compatible with any other service and/or PMP.

Here we go...
1) download
2) crack (?)
3) strip advertising/convert format
4) watch
5) share (optional)
6) delete when DVDs are released
7) repeat steps 1-5 with DVDs
8) when pay service starts change 1 to "pay & download".

Meh. As long as my PVR keeps working I'll stick with 1,3,4 & maybe 6.

Naturally, everyone has to do their own thing!

I am an Apple fan boy. With that out of the way, it is simply obvious to me and millions of others that iTunes is a well-refined product. With years of polish it has become one of the best media management packages around. So what are NBC going to end up releasing? My bet is some clunky, flash-in-the-pan web site with Windows-only formats and all the broken crap that comes with then. I am not denying problems with the Apple offering (DRM among them), but this move has the unfortunate effect of fragmenting a service that, for the consumer, is best unified.

Used Amazon Unbox

I've used Amazons Unbox on my Tivo HD [hackrag.com] and downloaded the NBC pilots for Bionic Woman and Journeyman. Neither had commercials, so ran in about 42-45 minutes. Both were in SD format, which I should have expected given the amount of bandwidth required for HD, but I could set up a download from amazon.com at work, go home and then watch a show.

Neither of these were shows I might have watched otherwise (or told the Tivo to record), but I may watch a few episodes of both now and give them a chance. Thanks NBC! Now bring back Studio 60 and all will be well with the world.

The Real Reason They Left iTunes Is...

Apple wouldn't let them double dip. Now they can charge the advertisers to embed their ads in the program. Then charge the viewer to watch the ads. Boy am I glad I have a DVR... Not only can I watch Heroes when I want; I can skip the commercials pretty easily.

How does it work?

Are there any players where a media file can disallow 'skipping the commercials'? Will it disallow skipping for commercials only, or will seeking be disabled for the entire file?

consume?????

"With the creation of this new service, we are acknowledging that now, more than ever, viewers want to be in control of how, when and where they consume their favorite entertainment,"

You know, you should really change 'viewers' to customers and 'consume' to view. You act as if your customers are mindless drones that gain sustenance from viewing your content.

Oh, wait...

Brilliance

According to this paper [psychiatryonline.org] the revenue to NBC would be about one dollar per viewer with traditional media distribution. I'm not an Apple fan boy, but at the $1.99 price for television I would guess that NBC was actually making more money per video than they will running their own distribution system and supporting it with advertising.

That didn't take long

August 31 - NBC announces that it will terminate its relation with iTMS. The reason is reported by Apple [apple.com] to be that "Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99." NBC announces a relationship with Amazon to sell shows.

September 20 - NBC announces that they will give the shows away, with ads. Note that they could have kept their pricing with iTMS and also given the shows away if they had wanted to. This seems to me to indicate a major screw-up on NBCs part.

I wonder if anyone got fired over this - after all, the Fall season is beginning. Maybe NBC felt that they won't get any Internet audience at all. Clearly, there is something going on behind the scenes we haven't heard of yet.

Great move!

I like this idea. If the content is high-res enough and manageable size - say about 300 MB, then I don't mind this have non-skippable commercials. For one, it beats downloading the content illegally. Second, it supports the content providers. Third, there are few shows I'm interested in watching and of those some are on NBC. Cable is an expense I would rather spare. And buying box-sets on DVD (or renting them) is expensive in my area.

Lastly, I live in Canada - it sends a big Fuck You to the CRTC (I'm quite sure there won't be too many opposing me here ;) ) - they don't have to exist anymore since they don't have any control over digital mediums. Besides, in Canada, the CRTC *makes* cable TV more expensive since I *have* to buy Canadian channels and American channels. I could care less for all the Canadian channels save the CBC.

"Degrade"?

According to TFA, the videos will "degrade" after seven days.

I'm assuming this means that your download of 30 Rock will slowly morph into an episode of Studio 60, and eventually, Saturday Night Live itself.

Greedy Fucks

"With the creation of this new service, we are acknowledging that now, more than ever, viewers want to be in control of how, when and where they consume their favorite entertainment," said Vivi Zigler, the executive vice president of NBC Digital Entertainment. "Not only does this feature give them more control, but it also gives them a higher quality video experience."

Followed by:

The service will allow customers to download full episodes of NBC shows for seven days on Windows-based PCs. The file will expire after the seven days.

More control? Windows-based PCs only?

In control of how, when and where? File expires after seven days? Windows-based PCs only?

But, the best part (which actually manages to top the above marketing double-speak), is this:

Commercials will be embedded in the programs and viewers will not be able to skip through them.

Followed by:

But NBC intends to transform the service into a model similar to iTunes by the middle of 2008 -- that is, consumers will pay NBC directly to download episodes of the shows.

Consumers will PAY to be forced to watch commercials? Consumers will be scammed by a company double-dipping?

Greedy fucks. Media corps are wondering why consumers are getting sick and tired of their bullshit? It isn't hard to figure out.

Glad I'm Canadian. I'm going to vote with my dollar and exercise my legal right to download for personal use only.

Gee, too bad no one has tried this before...

Now it is establishing its own downloading service, which NBC executives say they expect to become a viable competitor to iTunes

Suuure. A viable competitor - but without a quarter of the video content, no music, probably crap software, lousy integrated experience, and no iPod support. It's as if they just opened a new brick and mortar NBC store which sells laser disks.

Let me know how that goes for you.

Fragmenting the market is a poor strategy

Although I suspect this is more of an attempt by NBC to get people to pay to watch commercials, it's ultimately going to be bad for their business and the on-demand market in general. It's almost never a win to fragment a potential market, particularly for the consumer but who really cares about them anymore? With entertainment consolidated to a few major players, the consumer is an abstract concept with no form or value as an individual.

Ultimately this will prove to be a fruitless endeavor. You can't drive an internet market by conscription. The history of the internet is littered with the corpses of companies that thought the same thing. Imagine needing a set-top box to tune in an individual TV station. NBC and CBS use the same type box, but you need a different one for ABC and Fox. WB has their own. It seems silly in any other market context, but that's what Apple and NBC are trying to do.

Personally, I don't think the big media players are ever going to catch on. The farther down the road we go, the big media companies actually seem to be devolving. Fortunately that will open up markets for smarter players. Production companies with a leaner cost structure and the freedom of thought to consider product placement, co-branding and a host of other revenue streams rather than a strict commercial model.

I gave a keynote at a NAB convention a couple years ago about the likely impact of the internet on media distribution and the opportunities for new revenue channels. Got a lot of head nodding but when I talked to them afterwards it was pretty clear it wasn't sinking in. They were still trying to fit the internet into the revenue models they already knew.

Does anyone see the Microsoft in MS[NBC] here?

Let's be honest guys and see this for what it is.

The iPod is *the* portable media player. period. Zune has made no traction in the market. NBC's affiliation with Microsoft is now being used to forward the Microsoft monopoly machine.

Microsoft says shut off apple and ipods and only serve Windows machines. You know the shoe will drop when the Zune becomes the *only* portable media player that will work. Just you watch.

Big companies like Windows with its DRM because it allows them to manage your pesky "fair use" rights for you to their benefit.

And so it begins:

the Balkanisation of online video. Instead of being able to find everything in one place, I'm back to using Google to find individual shows. Also, NBC currently doesn't allow video on its site to be seen outside the US, I suspect the new service won't be any better in this regard.

At least we could count on Apple wanting to distribute these shows worldwide; I doubt NBC will want the trouble of allowing worldwide access (they'd rather sell the rights to the show to a national broadcaster instead).

Ill get in on that

Im willing to get in on that and even pay for downloads if they put RATIONAL prices. and by rational i mean nothing like the dvd 'prices' they are circulating around in the market. I need logical stuff.

there are loads of nbc comedies i want to get on my disk.

aaah, and i wont be using no microsoft stuff for that. if thats part of the deal, forget it. id rather make a sock puppet and watch it, instead of having to buy a zune or zone or whatever.

A report ... based on last year's offering.

They offered Heroes and about a dozen other shows in HD downloadable content last season. I watched the 2nd half of the Heroes season this way. The download files are about 500 MB; very large. And they come slowly. Each one needed about 1015hours to find it's way to my computer. The results were great - it's like DVD-quality video. (Not quite 1080p but I don't remember the exact specs.) Very, very pretty video. And only one 15-second commercial between each segment means you're done in about 45 minutes. The only downside is that you had to watch your video during the week that it was broadcast, otherwise it would "expire" and be deleted from the player.

Speaking of the player - Proprietary player. Very clunky. The GUI is all about NBC content, just what you'd expect. Worse than ITMS by far. But, you know, I put up with a lot for that kind of convenience, and I'm pleased to send NBC the "message" that I'm interested in great high-quality video that I can timeshift on my computer, no TV required. I LOVE IT. I just run it in a Virtual PC because I'm a little scared of their software.

Cheers.

Late in the game, aren't they?

Don't at least ABC and Fox already do this? I distinctly remember watching Andy Barker this way and I'm pretty sure it's also how I watched the Lost finale. Frankly, both of those systems suck hard. Lost kept skipping and the quality of Andy Barker was dismal. And I thought that NBC offered online viewing of select shows anyways? Or was that just recaps?

Watching TV online

i dont think i'd even consider downloading anything with drm, but i have to say its nice to be able to watch the new heroes chapters online though the nbc site when i get a free hour in college, now if fox would just follow their example ...

*Free* download is misleading

It's not a free download. As others have pointed out here, the file can only be played on Windows with a proprietary player, and the file expires after seven days. This is so lame. I wouldn't mind it so much except that NBC is trying to milk this for the we-care-about-users-and-are-providing-them-with-choices angle. This is not free, and no better a choice. Anyone who really cares about TV probably has a DVR anyway. And really, there is nothing new here. NBC has been doing limited downloads and streaming for at least all of last season. Please NBC (not the you read /.) get a clue!

Now playing: battle of the loose verticals

In this corner you have: Disney/Pixar/ABC + Apple + Google

And in that corner you have: GE/Universal/NBC + Microsoft

The industry has learned from AOL/Time Warner. Why buy each other when you can get the same advantages from partnerships and board placements?

What are we thinking the odds are that the new NBC pay-for-download service will be based on Microsoft's DRM? Anyone?

Gloating gone too far.

"But NBC intends to transform the service into a model similar to iTunes by the middle of 2008 -- that is, consumers will pay NBC directly to download episodes of the shows. "We did this to eliminate the middleman," said Jeff Gaspin, the president of NBC's digital division."

What this sanctimonious prick would never admit is that he and his ilk are the middlemen. If Apple accomplished anything, it concealed them behind the façade of iTMS' superior user experience, one that will outlast and outperform anything these morons devise.

What a coincidence!

breaking up with Apple over iTunes pricing schemes

Wow, that's the exact same reason I broke up with my girlfriend!

No thanks to your DRM'ed crap...

Bittorrent and streaming sites work perfectly fine for me.

Mo Money

So the plan is, you pay NBC for the download, still have to watch the commercials, presumably can't burn a DVD so you don't have to sit at your computer, are still paying the cable bill to get NBC in the first place, and are paying the internet bill to get the download. Plus you can only avail yourself of this high privilege if you use windows. Do I look like the tooth fairy, NBC? Thank gods for VCRs.

Whenever/Wherever?

With the creation of this new service, we are acknowledging that now, more than ever, viewers want to be in control of how, when and where they consume their favorite entertainment,"

I can't play it on a mac at home.

I can't put these videos on an iPod to go.

I can't watch the videos after seven days.

How dare they proclaim the service is about allowing the viewer to watch wherever and whenever I like!

They were already offering this.

I watched Heroes episodes by downloading them for free from NBC's "VIP Access" service that was available to anyone with Intel based PCs. So it sounds like they're just opening it up to everyone now, with the possibility of moving it to a pay service later on. They say you can't skip the commercials, but that's only within their player. If you open up the actual file that is downloaded, you can play it however you want.

Iphone - doubtful they will support it.

If it doesn't play on my iPhone I will just DVR it, use TiVoToGo transfer and reencode. I would rather pay the $1.99 at iTunes for episodes than go through all of this trouble.
I don't want another online account.
I don't want yet another line on my checking account statement to keep track of.
I don't want to hassle with another piece of (shit) software or whatnot.
Screw this.
I'll use my DVR. Other people will just get from IRC or Torrents. Good Goin'. You suck once again at television.

Why not sell on all three services.

They could take advantage of Amazon, iTunes and NBC site. Then viewers will have a choice. Go to Amazon or iTunes and pay for it without commercials or download it free from NBC. That really starts to give the consumer options.

Is Windows dominant in entertainment?

It keeps happening that vendors roll out Windows Only services (like Netflix's option to view some movies directly). Obviosully we all know that Windows OS has the dominant market share, but has anyone broken this out by home vs. buisness, or are the stats aggregated?

For example: My group at work has 10 windows licenses for office desktops and laptops. However, 8 of us have Macs at home, and the other two don't have computers at home. We can't use our office computers to watch TV, but we could use our Macs. Expanding, globally my company must have 100,000 or more Windows OS licenses, but not a one of them is for entertainment purposes. I know I haven't included Linux here but nobody I work with uses it at home, but again, that's probably also a signficiant entertainment market share.

In general, Mac users are more entertainment focussed (lots of exceptions on both sides, I know) so I'm wondering if excluding them from something like this actually cuts off a larger share of the downloading market, both in terms of numbers of users and amount of downloading each user does, than apparent when one looks at what percentage of all computers using one OS vs. another.

How pointless

The thing that I find interesting about all this selling of TV Shows crap is how pointless it all is. I mean, I support my favorite shows by buying their releases on DVD but I don't feel a need to buy them because TV is free to watch and record. With the exception of a few rare events(NFL games and a few others) all television can be recorded and distributed as desired as long as profit is not being made. The Supreme Court legally upheld this position when the MPAA tried to fight it in recent years. They are effectively trying to roll back time to before VCRs were invented. I have heard many people say that they will just watch illegally recorded TV shows that they download. Well, according to national law, it's not illegal. Go look up the laws for yourself and you'll see that the MPAA and similiar abusers of law are trying to create a campaign of fear against people on false legal grounds.

Re:I'm really happy to hear this

instead of "buying shows on iTunes and getting ripped off" you will be buying commercials from NBC and getting screwed.
instead of buying an episode from iTunes and watching it (maybe even with out commercials) as much as you like, you will get 7 days to watch the commercial content. You can't even fast forward these things.
truely a TV executives wet dream.

this is just like the stupid lillypond thing. WMA, DRM, crap.
but I'm sure that this will stop piracy. yar.

Re:I'm really happy to hear this

iTunes shows cost $2. These shows contain unskipable adverts. Both contain DRM. Assuming they include 10 minutes of adverts in a one-hour video, and that you will only watch the show once, your time would have worth under $12/hour for them to be better value than the iTunes version. Where I live, that's barely minimum wage.

Re:I'm really happy to hear this

Assuming they include 10 minutes of adverts in a one-hour video, and that you will only watch the show once, your time would have worth under $12/hour for them to be better value than the iTunes version.

Of course! Time spent watching TV is billable time. I think we've found the ???? step before PROFIT!