Over 1 Million NBC Downloads Since Return to iTunes

[hazmatzak]

An hour TV show that is rougly 500 mb is not really HD. It is all about the mpbs. For example, eyeTV recordings are roughly 5 - 7 GB, and the mbps is 13 - 19, whereas the iTunes downloads are less than 2 mpbs.

First, the HD files are more like 1.5GB. And ABC and Fox both use 1280x720, just like iTunes. It's HD. Both have AC-3 soundtracks. But there are differences:

• iTunes HD also has stereo AAC soundtrack, for playing the file on your computer (makes it bigger)
• OTA HD uses MPEG-2, iTunes uses H.264 (makes it smaller)
• OTA HD can go up to 60 frames per second, iTunes is 24 (makes it smaller)

Not a coincidence that AppleTV's max supported resolution is 1280x720 @ 24fps. This also means that all the HD shows (so far?) were originally shot on film.

 

[japanime]

A list of all free HD iTunes episodes provided by TUAW include:

It's nice that TUAW has begun providing free HD iTunes episode.

 

[FightTheFuture]

I've always stood firm that NBC was idiotic to pull out of iTunes. The fact that they claimed that the DRM wasn't strong enough and that the pricing wasn't at a high enough level for them was all ridiculous.

don't forget the media and blogo-circus that spun around when this happened. everyone thought that other networks would follow suit, and assumed that hulu and network sites would get all of the ad supported viewership.

makes you wonder if they make more money off of iTunes or from the Norton Disk Doctor System web ads?

 

[mirffy]

So, after queueing two episodes via the shopping cart, and noticing they were both SD, I enabled 1-click. Trying to re-"purchase" the free episodes just told me "you've purchased this HD episode already, check your download queue where incidentally I can only see the SD version being downloaded. Seems like a small bug to me. Any way I can get the HD version? I'm thinking "If this happens when money is involved customers might be surprised"....

 

[penguy]

Try turning on one-click purchasing for these shows. There's some sort of bug that prevents you from purchasing many of the NBC shows when using the shopping cart. It worked for me with the Battlestar Galactica season 4 HD episodes.

Thanks...it worked with one-click.

 

[mirffy]

So, after queueing two episodes via the shopping cart, and noticing they were both SD, I enabled 1-click. Trying to re-"purchase" the free episodes just told me "you've purchased this HD episode already, check your download queue where incidentally I can only see the SD version being downloaded. Seems like a small bug to me. Any way I can get the HD version? I'm thinking "If this happens when money is involved customers might be surprised"....

Resolved.
Strangely enough, if it is repurchased once it's done downloading it will work just fine, but not if the item (only the SD version that is!) is in your download queue.

 

[beate]

I downloaded three or four free shows that I wanted to check out & bought Season 2 of Heroes, the latter to make a point.
Not sure exactly, what point I was making, but it felt good.

 

[reverie]

That's quite little.

1 Million in 13 days is not that much. It equals 540k per week, and if you strip the free downloads that would be more like 200k to 300k per week in sales.

The last time Apple announced their TV show sales (which was quite some time ago, probably early 2007 if I'm not mistaken), the iTS sold around 1 million TV shows per week, across all publishers, with NBC allegedly holding a 35 % to 40 % share. And that was at a time when the iPod nano did not have video and the Apple TV had just been released.

Average weekly iTS sales should be closer to 1.5 million now, and NBC should sell at least 400k per week on average, although there are probably significant seasonal fluctuations, because people watch less TV in summer than in winter. I guess NBC's sales on iTunes will go up by 100 % in the coming weeks as people start watching more TV again and new seasons and shows are premiering.

 

[cantthinkofone]

I wonder how many they lost by not selling on iTS, especially during the Olympics.

2-3 million i would say. Idiots.

 

[donga]

So, after queueing two episodes via the shopping cart, and noticing they were both SD, I enabled 1-click. Trying to re-"purchase" the free episodes just told me "you've purchased this HD episode already, check your download queue where incidentally I can only see the SD version being downloaded. Seems like a small bug to me. Any way I can get the HD version? I'm thinking "If this happens when money is involved customers might be surprised"....

there seem to be HD and SD specific pages in the iTunes store, and you might've gotten them from the SD only page. look for the HD in the title or on the page and it'll dl the HD and SD versions