p2p news / p2pnet: Would you buy a video iPod for between $300 and $400 and then pay Apple repeated hits of $2 to download limited numbers of shows when you could spend a once-only $110 for a mini-colour TV and see all the shows you wanted for nothing?

Apple is counting on it. And it now says it’s wrapped a deal with NBC Universal which means it’ll be able to start selling, "new primetime, cable, late-night and classic TV shows".

The promo blurb boasts of the iPod’s "legendary ease of use" (tell that to all the people who’ve spent $1 and up for iTunes lo-fi downloads to discover they’ll play only on Apple products) and "pioneering" features such as "groundbreaking personal use rights" (read Digital Restrictions Management: ask Sony BMG).

A recent Boing Boing post has Glenn Fleishman saying:

I have been musing on who the hell needs a video iPod all day in the form and design Apple chose.

* Can’t transfer TV programs, although if you have an eyeTV (which can’t tune digital cable or satellite) you might be able to port the output through a converter.
* Not much content yet designed to play on it.
* Battery life while watching video is rated at 2 to 3 hours, thus not long enough for even a half-country-hopping flight.
* Can’t burn the content you buy for it, so you suddenly have a storage and management problem.
* Only by violating the (anti-constitutional) DMCA in some cases can you begin to approximate how this device could be used as a fair use (not FairPlay) extension of one’s free TV, pay cable, and owned (not 0wnz3d) DVDs.

So this is for Greenwich-to-Manhattan commuters with disposable cash who don’t watch Lost or Desperate Housewives the night before because they’re too busy playing squash. They can watch DH on the way into work and Lost on the way back without running out of battery life…just barely.

Now, I’ll go all Long Tail on this and say that when the backlist of television is suddenly available in some reasonable form (yes, it will all be frickin’ DRM’d to death) then there’s an enormous amount of content people will pick and choose certanly at less than $1.99 per episode. I also read in one source that Apple is negotiating with the BBC for access to their massive library.

Also read:-
once-only $110 – Video iPod hard sell, October 18, 2005
Glenn Fleishman – Apple’s new video iPod, October 14, 2005

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 7th, 2005 at 1:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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