No New Apple Television Products Coming in 2012 as Content Negotiations Stall Once Again

[Rogifan]

How do we know that Steve telling Walter Isaacson's he "cracked it" was just part of his reality distortion field? I mean until the public sees whatever it is Jobs said he cracked, how do we know it's any good or what we want? We just assume if it was something Steve worked on it's great?

 

[bbeagle]

I don't see why the networks wont do it. They already sell to Comcast, DirecTV, UVerse etc. Just add another player. Maybe Apple doesn't want to pay as much as the others do?

I think there are many reasons. Not at all to do with money. Or things that are hard to monetize in switching to a new paradigm.

1) Apple wants to change how the content comes in. Like 'watch live' or 'watch previous episodes', or a 'genius' of shows across all networks. NBC doesn't want you to know CBS exists unless you change the channel. You could search for 'Celebrity Apprentice on NBC' and Apple wants to alert the user that 'Survivor on CBS is starting based on your like of reality shows'.

2) Apple wants to change the actual content. Right now, say NBC is on Channel 2. They control all of what appears on channel 2. Can CBS advertise a show on NBC by talking to Comcast? No. But I think this is similar to what Apple wants.

3) Apple maybe wants to do break-in alerts of Hurricanes, Tornadoes, or the such, maybe Apple wants to highlight certain channels or shows at certain times, like when the President is speaking, that would be displayed on top before your favorites.

I think the 'Apple TV' product envisioned is very different from TV today.

 

[samcraig]

How do we know that Steve telling Walter Isaacson's he "cracked it" was just part of his reality distortion field? I mean until the public sees whatever it is Jobs said he cracked, how do we know it's any good or what we want? We just assume if it was something Steve worked on it's great?

put simply - we don't. Apple has had many successes- but they've also had failures as well. Time will be the arbiter.

----------

I think there are many reasons. Not at all to do with money. Or things that are hard to monetize in switching to a new paradigm.

1) Apple wants to change how the content comes in. Like 'watch live' or 'watch previous episodes', or a 'genius' of shows across all networks. NBC doesn't want you to know CBS exists unless you change the channel. You could search for 'Celebrity Apprentice on NBC' and Apple wants to alert the user that 'Survivor on CBS is starting based on your like of reality shows'.

2) Apple wants to change the actual content. Right now, say NBC is on Channel 2. They control all of what appears on channel 2. Can CBS advertise a show on NBC by talking to Comcast? No. But I think this is similar to what Apple wants.

3) Apple maybe wants to do break-in alerts of Hurricanes, Tornadoes, or the such, maybe Apple wants to highlight certain channels or shows at certain times, like when the President is speaking, that would be displayed on top before your favorites.

I think the 'Apple TV' product envisioned is very different from TV today.

Apple is a business and wants to make money. If it's not a profitable model - they won't do it. And quite frankly - I don't think anyone here can state what Apple does and doesn't want to do with TV as fact.

 

[sddave]

Handbrake is great, especially for encoding high end Blu-Ray rips. I spent a year learning about encoding, understanding the process, and ripping all my SD/BD DVD's. I went overkill with the "Advanced" Handbrake settings for my BD encodes, mainly as I definitely saw a difference in experimenting with settings and comparing them with the original Blu-Ray...

[off-topic] Thanks for the valuable information. I have accumulated a number of discs and would like to start ripping as well. Without taking one year--looking for a jump start! Do you have some "most useful" links or Web sites for info? I assume you have an external (USB) BD drive, any recommendations?

 

[samcraig]

...and in my opinion - I don't think it's a good analogy to compare what Apple did with the music industry. For many reasons. The biggest being that the music industry isn't subsidized - heavily - by advertisers. If CDs had ads on them - it would have been a much harder "sell" to get record companies to sell their content without advertising or using a different/untested model.

 

[Jacquesass]

OK, so the cable companies and media companies don't want to play ball. That's fine - Apple can execute an end-run around them.

1) Software update for current AppleTV that allows apps to be installed, effectively hitting every checkbox of Roku/XBox apps. Apple can "curate" which apps are available, but by opening up the aTV to HBO GO, Comcast Xfinity, WatchESPN, etc. you suddenly have a lot more content available to cable subscribers - but you also have things like Amazon Video, Crackle and Disney to give people reasons not to subscribe to cable. Implement unified search so that people can easily look for a show/movie by name across all services. For a bonus, outbid DirectTV for NFL Sunday Ticket.

2) License all necessary patents from TiVo. It should be cheaper to acquire the patent rights than to buy out the whole company, but buying TiVo would give Apple inroads to the cable operators.

3) Release a quad-tuner networked DVR box with 2-3TB of storage. This box could be plugged in to a cable jack anywhere in the house, giving every aTV (and Mac/iPhone/iPad) access to broadcast TV and recorded shows. Allow transfer of shows to iOS devices for mobile viewing. As a nod to the cord-cutters, include an OTA tuner.

4) Roll out the rumored "iTV", a top-of-the-line panel with an aTV built-in, including WiFi and ethernet.

Just like upending the music and cellular industries didn't occur overnight, there's a long-play with cable. The above scenario gets Apple in a lot of living rooms, feeds the Apple ecosystem, would sell a lot of high-margin iTV's - and appears to help the cable TV companies while still encouraging cord-cutting. With time, the content providers (like ESPN or Showtime) would likely realize that the cord-cutters aren't coming back, so they'll remove the need to be paying a cable company to fully access their apps, likely including in-app subscriptions that work across all your devices. And just like that, we get a la carte programming (the wife downloads the HGTV app, you download the Golf Channel and G4) and the cable companies lose their grip on your TV.

 

[C.Calthrop]

Where is the Apple IMDB?

If Apple had something like IMDB I would be able to put movies that are currently unavailable on iTunes and Apple TV on my Favorites list. When a large number of people had an unavailable movie on their Favorites list Apple could point out to the Hollywood goons how much money they were leaving on the table. That would be a powerful negotiating tool for Apple. Bezos was very wise to buy IMDB. IMDB would be very expensive to reproduce. Rotten Tomatoes doesn't come close. IMDB has the enthusiasts. If Apple wanted to cooperate with Google again a reproduction of IMDB functionality would be a good project to collaborate on.

 

[jontech]

I pay cable nothing right now, after years of having one of the most heinous bills of the people I know.


I buy what I want (commercial free) on iTunes, or rent via Redbox..

Thank you for saving me $120 bucks a month cable companies....

 

[samcraig]

I pay cable nothing right now, after years of having one of the most heinous bills of the people I know.


I buy what I want (commercial free) on iTunes, or rent via Redbox..

Thank you for saving me $120 bucks a month cable companies....

How much do you pay for internet and how much are you spending a month/yearly on iTunes and Redbox?

 

[usersince86]

iPad Mini is becoming the new powerbook G5

Laughter of the out-loud variety happened when I read this.

 

[mdelvecchio]

Note to Apple:

Stop playing around making "Toys" for people to play with.
Yes, I know toys make you a lot of money but you are neglecting your roots.
[...]
Don't just dumb society down with easy to use toys, please.

you sound just like the Mainframe Priests of the '80s. how wrong they were...ease of use is the future of computing, not the ending.

Oh how I wish you were "cutting edge" for people's main computers once again.

hmm so the new rMBP is not a cutting edge computer? how very strange you are.

 

[Eriden]

From my understanding of the situation, content providers have every reason to string Apple along in bogus negotiations that are designed to go nowhere. TV and movie producers have every reason to fear that an Apple monopoly in digital TV/Movie distribution would eventually cripple their archaic revenue streams the same way Apple and iTunes did with the recording industry from 2000-2010.

Most content producers want their newer stuff available for direct purchase at a higher price (e.g. the aTV Rental/Purchase model) and their catalog of older stuff available via a Netflix/Hulu style subscription service at $4.99-9.99 / month. The problem is that many of them each want their 4.99 piece of the pie (which is a reason why it is highly unlikely that any Apple subscription service that eventually surfaces will be much less expensive than a traditional cable subscription).

The last thing any of them want is a service that allows people to pick and choose the good content. TV Networks, especially, want to be able to bundle their crap in with the good content to help spread the costs from super successful shows to the ones that flop. If cable companies suddenly became irrelevant with the introduction of an aTV style service that let you pick and choose which shows you wanted as a part of your monthly subscription, the most popular shows would be the only ones that survived. TV producers would have incentive to only go with safe bets. If a network like CBS or NBC only gets one hit show a year, they see their advertising revenue dry up fast under that model.

To reiterate, the content producers have no incentive to negotiate with Apple over anything other than what arrangements they already have via Apple TV. As backward and knuckle-dragging as they are when it comes to technology and the digital age, there is simply no reason for them to negotiate with Apple over a possible death-blow to their primary revenue stream.

Hopefully, someone with better knowledge of the TV industry can explain why my theories are full of ***** and why content producers would make more money working with Apple than by protecting their current revenue steams. I'd love to see a Siri-enabled Apple TV with an Apple-backed TV subscription as much as the next guy, but it certainly seems that the content producers don't see things Apple's way.

 

[jontech]

How much do you pay for internet and how much are you spending a month/yearly on iTunes and Redbox?

Spend 50 bucks a month for iTunes roughly

Redbox, maybe 3 bucks a month

Internet is paid by Work, but otherwise would be $100 a month for 50mb connection (business)

 

[macnews]

Apple needs to skip the cable companies and become their own cable provider just in a very different way. I believe if Apple were to stop trying to work with cable providers and become their own cable company they would gain more headway with the content providers. I suspect Apple would provide a more ala carte model of cable with ability to add on individual channels per month. This would allow Apple to make a little bit of money off contant (like iTunes songs) but pay more the content providers then they probably currently receive. Fewer users but higher price per user.

Probability it will happen - not likely. Too many content providers are skating by on the royalties paid by cable/dish companies for channels no one watches but allows the content provider to mix funds and support what they want and shift blame. Blame shifting comes in the form of bad ratings for a show vs over all ratings for the company. One or two hits masks a lot of crap.

 

[Fandongo]

Can you imagine what type of product Apple could have if the TV providers with the media either didn't exist or were happy to play ball....

Not just Apple either.


It used to be media that was held back by technology.

Now technology is being held back by the media.

 

[samcraig]

Spend 50 bucks a month for iTunes roughly

Redbox, maybe 3 bucks a month

Internet is paid by Work, but otherwise would be $100 a month for 50mb connection (business)

so if your work didn't subsidize your internet - it wouldn't be much of a price difference?

 

[tivoli2]

"The two sides are also at loggerheads over whether Apple would sell a new set-top box directly to consumers or if the device would be distributed by the cable companies."

Whatever you do, cable companies, do NOT give one bit of control to the consumer. JFTDC.

 

[-hh]

Ha. Remember what happened when Verizon wanted control of the iPhone operating system? Peace out. We're going to AT&T.

5 years later...

Jump on board, or regret making the biggest mistake of your life. That's my advice to these content providers.

I'm sure that this gambit has been tried. It is a game of 'chicken', sure, but it can also have the problem that it isn't necessarily negotiations with a just single party, but at least two parties - there's the original content provider and then there's all of the delivery contracts (service providers).

As a few others have pointed out, although perhaps not so susinctly, the Cable TV bill is going to be a zero-sum game: if the payment for TV goes down, the cost for the broadband connection is going to go up to compensate.

I doubt Apple will play ball until cable providers start to change their current business model. That's hardly going to happen when people don't have much choice over who to go with region to region. The only way to change this is if we stop paying for traditional cable/satellite television on the whole.

Or a 'friend of the court' happens to break up some of these regulated monopolies.

Cable providers will continue to want control of the software and hardware so they can continue to control the content and push higher priced content on us. They're not desperate to hand over control of how people watch their television... Yet.

Agreed, but that's backwards: Cable providers want to maximize their revenue stream, and they're willing to enact all sorts of controls so as to accomplish that. That's why consumers can't buy their own CATV decoder box, but are forced to rent them from the CATV providers...the rental business model is substantially more profitable for the Cable provider.

Why not just put a cable card slot and coax input in the Apple TV, and spend the money lobbying the FCC to make cable cards even more readily available? No need to negotiate with the cable cos., which are obligated to provide cable cards already.

Because there's 1001 individual CATV feifdoms to then try to deal with.

What Apple is trying to do is to relegate these guys to the role of a "dumb pipe" for bandwidth, which will conform to Ethernet's existing open standards.

Though cable companies are required to provide cable cards, they are not required to do so for free. Also, even if you use a cable card, you're still paying a monthly fee for content that you may not want/need.

Yup, at the tune of $10/month ... that's $120/year for a device that probably only costs them $20 ... an effortless business revenue path to at least a $100/year **per customer** profit center.

Apple needs to skip the cable companies and become their own cable provider just in a very different way. I believe if Apple were to stop trying to work with cable providers and become their own cable company they would gain more headway with the content providers...

I do find the idea interesting for Apple taking a stakeholder interest into a 'dumb pipe' provider - - it would appear to be a strategic move to counter the potential threat of bandwidth caps.

IIRC, someone mentioned Dish Network...? I'd expect some sort of wireless based technical approach which can cover a geographically broad area with minimal infrastructure investments to be the direction that Apple would prefer for this type of strategy.


-hh

 

[lzyprson]

I have the solution that can help Apple's case...


Lets just start copying TV and Movies to digital files. We can distribute them over torrent sites!!!! As if it were a 9 to 5 job!!!! And Whammmm - cable companies will give in.

 

[divinox]

Said it before, and ill say it again. You cant really disrupt an industry where content is so tightly connected to its distribution and so dependent on its distributors. The music revolution wont happen again, and the music industry was barely disrupted at all anyway. Cracking the TV industry is not about devices. Its about becoming invaluable to it.

----------

I have the solution that can help Apple's case...


Lets just start copying TV and Movies to digital files. We can distribute them over torrent sites!!!! As if it were a 9 to 5 job!!!! And Whammmm - cable companies will give in.

We did it with music. But i doubt well ever succeed doing it with movies, and even there we barely managed to do anything at all; the record companies are still very much in control over the business. Just look at the charts. Video content is not anywhere near the crisis the music industry was in at the end of physical distribution. Heck, the whole industry seems to be thriving.

----------

From my understanding of the situation, content providers have every reason to string Apple along in bogus negotiations that are designed to go nowhere. TV and movie producers have every reason to fear that an Apple monopoly in digital TV/Movie distribution would eventually cripple their archaic revenue streams the same way Apple and iTunes did with the recording industry from 2000-2010.

Most content producers want their newer stuff available for direct purchase at a higher price (e.g. the aTV Rental/Purchase model) and their catalog of older stuff available via a Netflix/Hulu style subscription service at $4.99-9.99 / month. The problem is that many of them each want their 4.99 piece of the pie (which is a reason why it is highly unlikely that any Apple subscription service that eventually surfaces will be much less expensive than a traditional cable subscription).

The last thing any of them want is a service that allows people to pick and choose the good content. TV Networks, especially, want to be able to bundle their crap in with the good content to help spread the costs from super successful shows to the ones that flop. If cable companies suddenly became irrelevant with the introduction of an aTV style service that let you pick and choose which shows you wanted as a part of your monthly subscription, the most popular shows would be the only ones that survived. TV producers would have incentive to only go with safe bets. If a network like CBS or NBC only gets one hit show a year, they see their advertising revenue dry up fast under that model.

To reiterate, the content producers have no incentive to negotiate with Apple over anything other than what arrangements they already have via Apple TV. As backward and knuckle-dragging as they are when it comes to technology and the digital age, there is simply no reason for them to negotiate with Apple over a possible death-blow to their primary revenue stream.

Hopefully, someone with better knowledge of the TV industry can explain why my theories are full of ***** and why content producers would make more money working with Apple than by protecting their current revenue steams. I'd love to see a Siri-enabled Apple TV with an Apple-backed TV subscription as much as the next guy, but it certainly seems that the content producers don't see things Apple's way.

While i agree with many of your points, what crippled the music industry wasnt iTunes but rampant piracy. As for knowledge about the industry, mine is limited to decades ago. Not sure how much things have changed.



----------

If Apple had something like IMDB I would be able to put movies that are currently unavailable on iTunes and Apple TV on my Favorites list. When a large number of people had an unavailable movie on their Favorites list Apple could point out to the Hollywood goons how much money they were leaving on the table. That would be a powerful negotiating tool for Apple. Bezos was very wise to buy IMDB. IMDB would be very expensive to reproduce. Rotten Tomatoes doesn't come close. IMDB has the enthusiasts. If Apple wanted to cooperate with Google again a reproduction of IMDB functionality would be a good project to collaborate on.

Speaking of IMDB, its amazing that Amazon arent doing more with it... or they are, but just doing so in the dark. Amazon still own IMDB, right? And like stated, replicating IMDB will be hard. Data is everything, IMDB has it. But... like i said, IMDB could be so much more, so there certainly is _some_ room for disruption, but it wont be easy.

Edit:

Just in. Its as if Bezos read my mind (well, its something at least).

http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/06/amazon-announces-x-ray-for-movies-a-kindle-feature-that-uses-im/

 

[Reef555]

I'm not a TV expert, so I may be wrong, but:

Apple is basically offering:

We control the "cable box"
We take 30% of the profits
We remove all commericals (or control them and take another 30%)
We offer ala carte pricing per Show, per Season, per Channel or per Network Group (like how NBC owns 10 channels).

You become a dumb pipe, just like the cell phone industry where we raped them of:
Per min revenue
Logn distance revenue
Text msgs revenue
Ring tones, apps, everything else.
Facetime/skype/IM = Phone = Dumb data pipe, $15/mo, thanks.
And screwed the phoen companies out of their $60-$5000 bill depending on how much long distance/features you used.

Music industry used to control distribution and get $18/CD
and now they get 66 cents ($99 - the 30% cut to apple).

We have netflix so for $10/mo digital streaming, I get 5 star treks, all the Doctor Sho's and my kids get 1000 episodes of Transformers/HEman and Strawberry short cake. My kids love cartoons from any era.

So now if we have to choose $4.99 for a season, or 99 cents per channel, our cable bill will become $10 total. instead of $80.

Plus Networks can't support weaker shows/networks with the combined package price that they sell it to cable companies.

Plus we want to not watch ads, which is 90% of their revenue.

And right now, the ratings set the buy rates.
So say BMW buys ads on a show, if the show tanks, they pay the same?
If they buy the ads via apple on a per view bassis, they only pay if people really see the ad.
Plus, maybe BMW will say "I only want to show the ad to Households making more than 80K/yr". That's now easily controlled vs showing it to "everyone on nbc" including the people on welfare.

Apple would become the Google of TV ads and reaching the right customers.

Apple will also not let you skip the ads.
My DVR lets me skip the ads, and we record everything and never watch TV live. That way a 1 hour show takes 44 min and we dont watch ads.

I rather like that.

Also, I have no idea how the ad revenue is split between the network (producers of the show) and the Cable companies. Is there any sharing?

And if making Seinfield costs 3 million/show, what will happen when Apple gives them $129K per show?

And there is no way I'm gonna pay $20/episode to watch a show cuz it costs $3million/show and only 1.2 million people pay for it that week.

TV costs way more to make than a song, whcih costs 15K in a studio and whatever u pay the singer/band(which is 100 hours of their time).

 

[divinox]

I'm not a TV expert, so I may be wrong, but:

Apple is basically offering:

We control the "cable box"
We take 30% of the profits
We remove all commericals (or control them and take another 30%)
We offer ala carte pricing per Show, per Season, per Channel or per Network Group (like how NBC owns 10 channels).

You become a dumb pipe, just like the cell phone industry where we raped them of:
Per min revenue
Logn distance revenue
Text msgs revenue
Ring tones, apps, everything else.
Facetime/skype/IM = Phone = Dumb data pipe, $15/mo, thanks.
And screwed the phoen companies out of their $60-$5000 bill depending on how much long distance/features you used.

Music industry used to control distribution and get $18/CD
and now they get 66 cents ($99 - the 30% cut to apple).

We have netflix so for $10/mo digital streaming, I get 5 star treks, all the Doctor Sho's and my kids get 1000 episodes of Transformers/HEman and Strawberry short cake. My kids love cartoons from any era.

So now if we have to choose $4.99 for a season, or 99 cents per channel, our cable bill will become $10 total. instead of $80.

Plus Networks can't support weaker shows/networks with the combined package price that they sell it to cable companies.

Plus we want to not watch ads, which is 90% of their revenue.

And right now, the ratings set the buy rates.
So say BMW buys ads on a show, if the show tanks, they pay the same?
If they buy the ads via apple on a per view bassis, they only pay if people really see the ad.
Plus, maybe BMW will say "I only want to show the ad to Households making more than 80K/yr". That's now easily controlled vs showing it to "everyone on nbc" including the people on welfare.

Apple would become the Google of TV ads and reaching the right customers.

Apple will also not let you skip the ads.
My DVR lets me skip the ads, and we record everything and never watch TV live. That way a 1 hour show takes 44 min and we dont watch ads.

I rather like that.

Also, I have no idea how the ad revenue is split between the network (producers of the show) and the Cable companies. Is there any sharing?

And if making Seinfield costs 3 million/show, what will happen when Apple gives them $129K per show?

And there is no way I'm gonna pay $20/episode to watch a show cuz it costs $3million/show and only 1.2 million people pay for it that week.

TV costs way more to make than a song, whcih costs 15K in a studio and whatever u pay the singer/band(which is 100 hours of their time).

Exactly.

(other than that you dont pay .99 per album, but per song...)

P.S.

Plus, just imagine how much money that goes from the cable companies/networks to the production studios. Hint: A lot!

 

[The Captain]

Spend 50 bucks a month for iTunes roughly

Redbox, maybe 3 bucks a month

Internet is paid by Work, but otherwise would be $100 a month for 50mb connection (business)

Comcasts' basic cable service is around $60 a month (according to the website) that's for 80 channels and on demand service. I bet all or most the shows you get on itunes are available in that package plus you'd get news, sports, local news and shows, plus a ton of other choices for $7 more. Seems like a better deal to me.

 

[3282868]

[off-topic] Thanks for the valuable information. I have accumulated a number of discs and would like to start ripping as well. Without taking one year--looking for a jump start! Do you have some "most useful" links or Web sites for info? I assume you have an external (USB) BD drive, any recommendations?

No problem. I'll try to help.

I have a Mac Pro with an internal LG Blu-Ray Lightscribe drive, but LG makes great external USB Blu-Ray drives. I've used LG for years, highly recommend them.

It's been over a year, but I keep all the links for future reference. I'll list a few that may help on learning about different containers (mkv, m4v, etc.), audio (Dolby, DTS, etc) and Passthru versus encoding (passthru simply passes the original audio and/or video through while encoding modifies the original content to the settings you chose).

Apps​

DVD Ripping:

- Fairmount: It was a free DVD ripper application, however it was recently acquired by DVDSuki Software and has been merged into Mac DVDRipper Pro. I still have the app, but I used other apps that I paid for as they did a better job. Unfortunately free ripping app's have been bought out by companies, so most app's require a license.

- "Mac the Ripper 4": Great app, will rip some discs that may have tough encryption.

- "RipIt": The app I use the most, rips and can transcode into a myriad of formats as well.

- Mac DVDRipper Pro: Haven't really used this one, I prefer "RipIt", but check it out in case you want to compare.

- Mac Bluray Ripper Pro: I JUST discovered it no longer works! Bummed. This was a great app for ripping my Blu-Ray's. The site is down, the only link I found was here. I tried launching my copy in 10.8.2, won't even launch.

- Blu-Ray on OSX Lion (10.7) Guide! Lists two apps I use for playing and ripping Blu-Ray's:

1. MacGo Blu-Ray Player: Great app for watching Blu-Ray's right in OS X. Also plays many other formats.

2. MakeMKV: Another site/app that just went offline yesterday (and I just now found out). Here's a link in which MakeMKV is discussed, with some posts linking to available downloads. MakeMKV is a great app for ripping Blu-Ray's, but requires a license. Here's a description:

From GuinpinSoft:

MakeMKV is your one-click solution to convert video that you own into free and patents-unencumbered format that can be played everywhere. MakeMKV is a format converter, otherwise called "transcoder". It converts the video clips from proprietary (and usually encrypted) disc into a set of MKV files, preserving most information but not changing it in any way. The MKV format can store multiple video/audio tracks with all meta-information and preserve chapters. There are many players that can play MKV files nearly on all platforms, and there are tools to convert MKV files to many formats, including DVD and Blu-ray discs. Additionally MakeMKV can instantly stream decrypted video without intermediate conversion to wide range of players, so you may watch Blu-ray and DVD discs with your favorite player on your favorite OS or on your favorite device.

Links to available versions:
MakeMKV 1.7.7 -
v1.7.7 Beta
MakeMKV Mac OS X version
MakeMKV Windows version

MakeMKV 1.7.4: Some claim this link downloads 1.7.5, and it may or may not work as anything older than 1.7.7 is written to expire (1.7.6 expired at the end of August, and 1.7.7 should expire 10/13/2012).

Another link for MakeMKV 1.7.7 beta

Transcoding Apps:

- Handbrake: The best app for transcoding rips. It's free, can do about everything you throw at it, and the advanced settings allow for excellent transcoding.

Tutorials/Guides​

- Encoders: Handbrake has a guide explaining the various video and audio encoders/containers

- How to Create HD-SD Dual Versions of a Movie for iTunes:

Have you ever noticed that movies you purchase from the iTunes Music Store (ITMS) usually show up in your iTunes Library with a little tag that says “HD-SD”?

That’s because most movies in the ITMS come to you with both an HD version and a second version that’s smaller in file size and better suited for iPods, iPhones, and other portable devices. You can create your own dual versions of your home movie collection and add the HD-SD tag.

- How-To: Automating DVD & Blu-Ray (Backup, Encoding & Tagging) for Mac OS X

- What Handbrake settings should I use for HD files so they can play on AppleTV

- This guide is a bit dated, 2008, however it still is helpful with the basics and references many of the app's I've used (of course the app's have been updated since):

How to backup/copy/rip video DVDs to your HDD and transcode them to another format.

- MKV -> MP4 without conversion?: An old thread from 2007 but leads to discussing how to convert an mkv container/file to mp4 format without converting/transcoding

Have to run, but hope this helps.

 

[Reef555]

Lets also do the math:

Say 80 TV channels and avg of 1 show per hour (some 30 min, some 1 hour, some 2 hours).

80channels X 1 show per hour X24 hours X 30 days = 57600 possible shows that I could watch. or 57 600 hours of TV.

At apple charging $99 cents/show (which they LOVE to do) that's $57 600 per month?

Say I watch 12 hours/day (which my whole family does combined), that's $360 per month in TV.
Cable's bill is $80.

if it's not 99 cents per show, then 99 cents per season?
per channel? I bet the apple model will restrict you to 10 shows if you want to stay under $50. Nothing is 'cheap' with Apple.
I could live with 99 cents/channel. We'd buy about 15 channels and be done.
But then we are cherry picking 15/80 channels and the big 8 or so networks that produce the 80 channels will only get $15 vs $80 (just ignoring the cable's cut for the sake of comparing).

It's like going from "you get EVERY single song ever made for $80/month"
to "you can buy each song for 99 cents". The $80/month is way better if you like music.

TV shows are also made per season. They have contracts with the actors/production to make 24 shows.
If people can opt-out of shows cuz they 'start to suck', then their revenues will drop to $0 and they already paid/comitted to spending X for the show.
You can't produce a show in 1 day cuz "the previous episode's buy rate was good, so we can make another today". There's actors contracts, huge commitments to sets etc.
TV shows aren't like apps or music. The only 'tv' show that can be made on a per episode basis is a XXX feature.