The sub-headline on this could have been, “I can’t figure out if I dislike NBC or Comcast for this!”
I am a big fan of iTunes for enabling my life to not involve stores for media that can easily be delivered rather than purchased in shrink wrap format. I do have two issues with iTunes:
1) I’m still not convinced I won’t lose everything should my PC die or I upgrade so I have as many backup copies as they will allow (multiple iPods and PC’s in the house plus a backup drive on a different part of the network) but I do draw the line at using their backup tool. In no way am I interested in backing up my hundreds or thousands of songs, podcasts and other media to CD. In fact, that is the exact opposite of what I want.
2) I’m also not conviced of buying movies. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve experimented with a few purchases but it just doesn’t feel “there” yet. Their sales pitch goes a little something like, “Hey, but this movie and we’ll deliver it right now. All you need to do is pay just about the same price and we’ll send you a low def, slimmed down version of the movie you want to buy and by ’slimmed down’ we mean we’ve taken all those annoying extras out of the content we’ll be sending you. We did that just for you because you’re special!”
Huh? So I can pay within a few dollars of the DVD price and I get less content? Isn’t it cheaper for you to distribute this electronically? Isn’t it better for the environment without all that idiotic plastic and security tags you won’t need to bundle to keep people from stealing it? I’m happy with the price until I find out someone else is getting more for the same price.
But this isn’t even the thing that prompted the post. I’m still annoyed at NBC because they’re screwing around with selling their shows on iTunes. Yes, Hulu is on the way and I know they have high hopes for their own YouTube type distribution site but they are also selling the shows via Amazon’s content service. I’m really not interested in Amazon installing software on my PC to manage content that I may or may not be able to watch on my iPod. And oh, watch it on my iPod is exactly what I want to do!
You see, I love downloading 30 Rock episodes and several other shows just to have them. I carry them with me all the time, first on the old Video iPod and now on the iPod Touch. When I’m waiting for folks, getting my car washed, or whatever I can pull out the iPod and it gives me a whole new option for entertainment on top of the music or podcast standards.
Ok, finally getting to the point…
Tonight I got home from my dinner to find that something on the DVR had gone wonky and shows were missed. No biggie… networks have taken a page from MTV and are now airing their lead shows at least twice a week in an attempt to drum up interest and catch people who might have missed it during the work week. But even better is Comcast On Demand… or so I think.
With On Demand I can hit the red button and browse by shows or movies. Some movies are free while the newer releases tend to be at video store rental rates which is again funny given the lower cost of delivery. Anyway, tongiht I saw that they have episodes of 30 Rock in the NBC directory and I got all excited thinking this was at least an option while I wait for tonight’s shows to become available and then I saw it.
The price.
They are now charging $.99 per episode to watch 30 Rock in On Demand format. Are you kidding me? $.99 for renting a TV show? A rental that limits me to sitting in front of my TV, is probably timed and probably does have some small amount of advertising associated.
So, let me get this straight… you want me to pay the same amount and get even less control over the content and how I enjoy it? That’s insane. I wish I knew for sure that this was all NBC’s doing because that would be easy to write off as them being angry at iTunes for figuring out what users would pay and then feeling locked into giving us what we want. But I bet it is also Comcast looking at NBC and spotting a void that they could fill. This service gets NBC the $.99 for the rental but doesn’t give the user any control.
I’m betting NBC got mighty excited when they were presented with or came up with a setup that gets them money but removes the real value for the user / consumer.