Applepie

TV Shows on iTunes - are networks having second thoughts?

Apple seems to be struggling with TV networks to provide timely release of TV shows on the iTunes store. Various new TV shows this season are not currently offered on iTunes at all - NBC Kidnapped is just one example. While ABC'S Heroes is on iTunes, it is still missing the series opener - episode 1. Battlestar Galactica season 3 took 5 days from original TV showing until it was available for purchase on iTunes. BSG episode 2 is still not listed for download even though the episode aired on TV last night.

It is too bad that TV networks have yet to truly embraced the internet as a viable medium for their programming. ABC's free internet streaming is a far cry from iTunes' commercial free downloads - user experience, quality, and accessibility are just not there with streaming videos. While I have never watched a single streaming show from ABC, I have purchased over 50 different TV shows from iTunes.

Hopefully Apple will be more successful in convincing TV Networks that iTunes provides the networks with an audience that is willing to pay for legal content and an audience that would not be watching TV shows otherwise.

TV Networks should be embracing iTunes as a legal vehicle for commercial distribution of their content instead of driving users to downloading shows from torrent networks.

NBC's Kidnapped was one new show this season that peaked my interest, but its absence from iTunes means that I will not be giving it a chance at all.

At our house, we switched to using iTunes exclusively for watching our TV shows (mostly Lost and BSG, and now 24). TIVo became relegated to simply pausing live sporting events.

BTW - we prefer iTunes over Tivo because iTunes gives us the ability to watch a TV Show remotely - on our laptop, desktop, TV or iPod. What ever happened with the Tivo to Go initiative?

Cris Pierry

Technorati Tags: Battlestar Galactica, iTunes, TIVO, TV

A Digital World

I recently realized how at our house we have slowly migrated much of our physical media to digital format.

Digital photographs have been the norm for us since 1999, we now have over 10,000 photos is our sorted collection, and we manage over 250GB of digital photos. We still have 10 years worth of old photographs sitting in albums awaiting to be scanned - as time permits, but every new photo since 99 has been digitally recorded.

Music - we transitioned to digital music just over 12 months ago, our collection now includes over 9,000 songs in over 400 albums that were painstakingly converted by my father during a visit last year. The music collection is over 50GB in size. After converting our CDs to digital we then transitioned to purchasing songs/albumns directly in digital format, using the iTunes music store.

Video - we are still DVD bound in our house, with a few old children VHS tapes. I have been meaning to convert the VHS to digital but haven't gotten around to it yet. In the US, there isn't a legal way to convert our DVDs to the hard-drive. We wait impatiently for a digital video store to come online with support for Macs (CinemaNow and Movielink are Windows only stores). iTunes, hopefully under a new name, is due to provide full-length videos by end-of-year. I can't wait.

TV - TV usage in our house is very limited, we will watch the odd sports event (cycling, F1, MLB finals, ...) and maybe once in a while local news or some other program. We used to be huge fans of TIVO, having bough one of the first models in 98/99 (which still works btw). We experimented with Windows Media Center for a while but couldn't handle the inferior performance compared to TIVO. I can't remember when was the last time that we watched a primetime TV show during its on-air time slot - the few shows we watch were always TIVOed. This all changed when iTunes started offering primetime TV shows. Ever since then, we purchase our ad-free primetime shows directly from iTunes (Lost, Battlestar Galactica, 24). Our TV library is now approaching 30GB in size.

News - I can't remember the last newspaper that we ever subscribed to. 99.9% of our current news comes from the internet, in the form of newspaper websites (New York Times, WSJ, Seattle Times), traditional TV news sites such as BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and now various blogs. We like the recent trend of more and more news stories being offered in video format. Unfortunately most Mac users are unable to access most of these videos (for example: BBC and MSNBC) - the internet needs an open video format/technology that works across all platforms. I am always surprised how a corporation like the BBC is willing to offer a video format that only works on Windows PCs.

Books - our children books are still 100% in paper format, but our own books are now evenly divided between paper format, digital audio format (iTunes Audible partnership), and soft-copies (O'Reilly Safari Bookshelf). 95% of our book purchase happens online - amazon.com, iTunes, or O'Reilly. However, technology has yet to offer a more compelling reading experience than a paper-bound book. While we enjoy having books available in digital form for quick reference and searching, nothing yet beats the feel of reading a paperback.

With all said and done, including our digital documents and emails, we have over 500GB of data that we need to backup and maintain. Current OS technology provides little support for the cataloging, indexing, and browsing of this vast digital collection, leaving the end-user to manually sort and organize the data. We need better data browsers and better cataloguing systems build into today's PCs to help the user transition to a truly digital world. A our data needs to be able to freely move across our devices: PCs, PVRs, TVs, Portable Media Players, Cell Phones, Cars, etc... Only then, will we be able to truly live in a digital media world.

Cristiano Pierry

TV Series

A new TV season is about to start and I realized that I no longer watch television. I get all of the news from the internet. CNN, BBC, CNET, WSJ and various blogs feed my daily dose of information.

Besides the occasional sports program (Cycling, F1) my TV set stays off most of the time. In some ways I miss following a series each week. My wife and I used to watch Star Trek "Enterprise", but the series was canceled last season.

While I was looking for a new series to watch, a friend told me about Battlestar Galactica, which plays on the Sci-Fi channel Fridays at 10PM. Unfortunately BG is not a new series, and in fact season 2 is already half-way done. I ended up ordering the mini-series from Amazon and both my wife and I loved it! Season 1 is coming out on DVD on Tuesday, September 20th, 2005.

Justin Winters recently pointed me to his post on Zaon were he gives a great synopses of 4 new sci-fi shows that are starting this season - check it out. CBS's Threshold, and ABC's Invasion look the most promissing.

I have programmed my Media Center PC to record these 4 series, as well as Battlestar Galatica. Who knows, maybe the next "Enterprise" will be found in one of these series.