Have you heard of shift work? I work evenings and nights sometimes and therefore am not planted on my couch every evening. As a result I don't watch much TV but a few shows I enjoy and being able to drop 99 cents to catch one I've missed will be fine. I don't need to own it. Works for me.
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What's the point of 99 cent TV show rentals
- Thread starter Looon
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Have you heard of shift work? I work evenings and nights sometimes and therefore am not planted on my couch every evening. As a result I don't watch much TV but a few shows I enjoy and being able to drop 99 cents to catch one I've missed will be fine. I don't need to own it. Works for me.
I guess the whole point is why not own it for .99 from amazon instead of rent?
To rent should be less than to own.
Why don't you just TiVo/DVR it instead of paying to rent it? Apple made managing you library sound so difficult and time consuming. Are people really just getting that lazy that they can't delete a program if they don't want it?
LOL. Yes I do know that. So you just proved my point even further. You're paying almost double for even worse quality. I was giving Apple the benefit of the doubt and going as high a quality as 1080i. Must you be ignorant that 1080i > 720p?
Amazon only has a handful of episodes for .99 cents. So far it looks like only Bones, Glee and Lost are .99 cents per episode.
I want to own and will continue buying from iTunes. I watch what I buy several times a year.
No, you are wrong. 1080i is not better than 720p.
Progressive > Interlaced. The difference is discernible.
Ignorant you say? Rethink this statement.
Actually this post isn't all that smart. ;-)
Content from antennas in the US are all digital now ever since the FCC mandated changeover. Fox and ABC (as well as CBS, NBC, PBS, and others) are all now in Digital HD available free using an antenna. ALL the shows they provide. Better quality than either itunes, satellite, or cable because they are not compressed and come straight from the broadcast source.
You can even use a Tivo DVR to record them in full HD quality. Of course, some people are in locations where it's hard to get the signal but don't get confused about the quality. It's not like the old days anymore. It's actually the very best quality source you can get right now other than Blu Ray.
You're wrong.. They have a lot of shows for .99. You need to click on the 99-Cent Episodes Banner. There' about 404 results with x number of episodes in each result..
I don't think the 'Powers that Be', are thinking along these same lines for rental TV (your line of thinking, nor mine). If they were, then there's no way they are going to implement a system where everyone halves their TV consumption, and therefore those Execs would lose half their company's income. Here's what I think they see (or are being told)...the average kid (or adult) nowadays is believed to be watching 2+ hours of TV a day (or so they tell us). If so, then one's rental TV yearly expenditure is going to be more than our assumptive numbers.
I know our household isn't the norm (sounds like yours might not be either).....but we rarely go over 2 hours a day of TV for the whole household (seriously), let alone per person (the TV isn't on for mindlessness for us).... We'd be at the bottom of that extreme income loss that the TV execs are afraid of. We have just 1 TV (and plan on keeping it that way). 60% of our weekly TV watching comprises racing (SPEED TV, ESPN, ESPN2 and the few other channels F1, MotoGP and NASCAR get broadcast on). The other 40% is split between shows DVR'd (so no commercials) on the Science channel, Discovery Channel, and ABC Family and a finger or two of other channels. I'd rather a pay as you go system on just those shows/channels. Network TV, and 98% of the channels we receive in our FIOS TV package is 'Garbage TV' in our household. Moving to stick and ball games.....I can count on 1 finger the number of stick and ball games we've watched this year. Happens every February. The only other game category we watch happens every 2 years (Olympics).
One of the most interesting things I was told when I got my Verizon FIOS TV system installed, when the installer noticed my DirecTV system sitting on the floor, is where I was going to be using that. When I said it's headed to the dumpster, he told me that most of his FIOS TV installs now actually still have DirecTV and Verizon FIOS TV as an addition, without canceling the DirecTV.......crazy.
They're hoping to tap into families with kids.
For those with kids you know what i mean. The tv is on no matter what they are doing. Could be eating to playing with legos. And kids watch the same episodes over and over until they move on to another cartoon or kid show, then they watch that over and over.
Full disclosure: our household is a family of 4. Mom, Dad, a 7 year old, and a 6 year old (girls 13 months apart).
We don't, in our opinion, fit the normal mold of TV watching at all. Everything watched is monitored.
I understand that, guess i should have said "targeting the typical household".
I try and limit how much they watch, but they do well in school and get their chores done. So they can watch as much as they want.
No worries at all...was just mentioning our situation...it's all good.
Now, if we go over to someone else's house....there's a TV in each kids' room, the kitchen/dining room, the family room, the 'theatre room', and sometimes more.
One of my friends has 7 TVs (with 3 in the household)! And then still has iPads and other Apple toys for more content. Just too much.....
That's the 'target rich environment' for streaming rental TV. All this tied to a credit/debit card, billed 'out of sight, out of mind'. This is probably what the TV/Movie/Studio execs are being presented with in all of those meetings that got this idea rolling.
And, there's nothing wrong with it....it's free enterprise at it's best.....but obviously there's some that can see through the forest......
***do not break the laws of the jurisdiction in which you reside! There is plenty of freely available material that is completely legal to acquire through torrents and other P2P means! Do not break the law!***
What percent of people actually buy any music and/or video from the iTunes store?
I've spent good money on apps but its just SOOOO easy to find music and video through alternative means. You know that the night any half-decent TV show airs multiple groups are going to upload competing torrents that each have huge swarms that will max out your internet connection. So you can actually get the media faster using torrents. And then as episodes get older, they simply bundle them into seasons to help keep the swarm sizes up, although with the right bittorrent client and a minimal amount of knowledge you can pick out only the files that you want, anyway.
Don't say that Apple doesn't know about this ****. The reality is that the iTunes store is simply a means to help tech illiterate people get some use out of their iPods. Piracy is what made Apple huge. This whole iPod/iDevice revolution is powered by free content. iPod Classic 160GB holds 40,000 songs! How many people have spent $52,000 on iTunes ($1.29/song) filling that up?!
I don't see why Apple is holding back their revolution with video. If they opened up
TV to the popular torrenting codecs, they could easily sell millions more of their new TV (the one that they're starting to sell for $99) and they could easily sell it for $199! People would gladly pay that price for a device that works without a hitch in Apple's current ecosystem of iTunes, iPods, iPhones, and iPads. I know I would.
But as it stands, $99 for a device that only plays h.264 well is worthless. Apple should at least make iTunes recognize video files in xvid/divx/etc and have its own automated transcoding solution to h.264. Ha! How awesome would that be! You can download files as they exist in the torrent community, and Apple would help you convert them to the efficient h.264 codec! With hardware decoding on all their Macs and iDevices, it would be another huge win for Apple in helping people be able to consume video while keeping down energy consumption and increasing battery life!
What percent of people actually buy any music and/or video from the iTunes store?
I've spent good money on apps but its just SOOOO easy to find music and video through alternative means. You know that the night any half-decent TV show airs multiple groups are going to upload competing torrents that each have huge swarms that will max out your internet connection. So you can actually get the media faster using torrents. And then as episodes get older, they simply bundle them into seasons to help keep the swarm sizes up, although with the right bittorrent client and a minimal amount of knowledge you can pick out only the files that you want, anyway.
Don't say that Apple doesn't know about this ****. The reality is that the iTunes store is simply a means to help tech illiterate people get some use out of their iPods. Piracy is what made Apple huge. This whole iPod/iDevice revolution is powered by free content. iPod Classic 160GB holds 40,000 songs! How many people have spent $52,000 on iTunes ($1.29/song) filling that up?!
I don't see why Apple is holding back their revolution with video. If they opened up
TV to the popular torrenting codecs, they could easily sell millions more of their new TV (the one that they're starting to sell for $99) and they could easily sell it for $199! People would gladly pay that price for a device that works without a hitch in Apple's current ecosystem of iTunes, iPods, iPhones, and iPads. I know I would. But as it stands, $99 for a device that only plays h.264 well is worthless. Apple should at least make iTunes recognize video files in xvid/divx/etc and have its own automated transcoding solution to h.264. Ha! How awesome would that be! You can download files as they exist in the torrent community, and Apple would help you convert them to the efficient h.264 codec! With hardware decoding on all their Macs and iDevices, it would be another huge win for Apple in helping people be able to consume video while keeping down energy consumption and increasing battery life!
Both of our television activity is quite similar.
When I had U-Verse, I watched just about 2 to 4 hours of television a week. I spent $120 every month. I payed for HBO, AMC and Showtime packages, for the shows I watch. I also had it for the World Cup and NFL. Now I DVR'd every show, because I was never home to watch them as they aired. It was during odd hours when I'd actually sit and have the time to watch select shows. As for sports, last season of Football, I think I watched no more than 8 matches at home. I watched most matches with friends. The only time I actually watched television consistently was during the World Cup, where I had a massive amount of free time. Amusingly, it was my girlfriend who would use my television more than I.
Now $120 was a ridiculous amount to pay for someone who barely used the service. And why did I pay this much? Well, I needed access to specific television shows, shows I would watch once after they aired. Sure, I could have gone online and watched the episodes after they aired, but in all honesty, the quality sucked. I actually prefer watching it on my computer, where I can watch it wherever and whenever. The other reason was NFL, but if I spent more time watching it with friends, why even bother having it for that oddball occasion?
Needless to say, I got rid of the service. Now that NFL is starting again, I'll just exploit my friends and their cable service. It's much more entertaining anyways. Now that iTunes released rentals, I only hope all television companies will adopt this system. I've been fine for months now just buying entire seasons of shows I like, because I know they're good. But when new shows arise, I want the ability to watch them without committing, with good image quality.
I'm one of them. If the product is good, I will oblige. If you're a part of either industries, you'll see how sad it is to illegally download content, good content specifically, that people worked their asses off to produce.
1. It's still antennas... a digital one. I know because I got one on top of my roof to get FREE HDTV shows.
2. Yeah so.
3. I record all my shows on DVR. No need to wait for download.
I think hulu plus is a better alternative, $10 a month for all you can watch. They just need to add CBS....