CTV.ca | Apple introduces video, TV-playing iPod
Videos will now be sold alongside songs on Apple’s iTunes Music Store.
Citing a groundbreaking deal with ABC Television Group, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said the online iTunes store will sell episodes of hit shows “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost” for $1.99 each, making them available the day after they air on television.
“It’s never been done before, where you could buy hit TV shows and buy them online the day after they’re shown,” said Jobs whose other company, Pixar Animation Studios Inc., has a long relationship with ABC’s parent, The Walt Disney Co.
$2 a show to watch network TV. It is to laugh. Still, this thing should sell like hotcakes to the Apple worshippers.
Good concept, but I guess people who buy it will just watch it on ITune instead of the video ipod. The screen is just too small.
Also, $1.99/Episode? That’s way too expensive. People will probably just download it from BT and use some utility to convert it for ipod.
I would rather have seen a deal with NPR. And, will our $2 buy us commercials as well?
LOL! So everyone was right, who predicted Jobs had one of those to pull out of his magic hat, despite the denials…
Buying current TV episodes to play on a 2.5 inch low-res screen seems dumb, but it’ll probably sell anyways. I hope they implement something along what Archos has for it’s AV400 series PVPs. You can schedule your handheld to control your satellite box so you can record shows like a VCR when you’re away, unplug it, then watch it on the go (on a 3.5 inch screen) when you want… Otherwise, I’m gonna have to buy one of those Archos AV500 (100GB) when they come out later this month… it promises to play my MP3s, movies, pictures, etc. with good battery life. :O
Is this HDTV so I can see the blades of grass on the football field on that huge 2 inch screen?
Whatever happened to those glasses that were supposed to project a virtual image the equivalent of a 30 inch screen? It would be nice to be able to hook a set of those up the ViPod.
Will sell like crazy, and wil be just as obsolete as an original iPod in a year.
1. I’m certain I’ll find one or two music videos I’d like to own. Well, I hope I will. But, I’ll only play them in iTunes on my computer. My wife owns the only iPod in the family and she uses it for audio books.
2. But, extended use of h.264 and mpeg4 warms the cockles of my heart — looking forward to hi-def video that might be streamed to my living room. Go, go, go!
3. Little mention in the “respectable” press of the game that I think Apple enjoys as much as the out-firm geeks. That is — keeping the news under wraps until official release time. I’ve been told there was mucho cell-phone jamming during Job’s presentation — keeping the instant bloggers from getting anything outside of the theatre until departure time. Tee-Hee.
Someone’s bound to think of something new for the next media show.
Your forgeting the coolness factor. Good move for Apple. Just goes to show you once again, the tech pundants were wrong, saying they doubted new ipod would do video.
Two words: Mobile. Masturbation.
Will it play Divx / XviD movies?! Nope. Then who gives a rat’s ass?! This is just as bad as Sony’s attempt to sell portable music players without any MP3 support. The market has spoken and the Divx / XviD compression codecs have won just as MP3 won. Why can’t they simply give us what we want?!
I’m glad cars were not developed in this anti-consumer climate. “Sorry, we don’t sell cars with round tires. Yeah, we know everyone likes round tires on their cars. But you see, we have a patent on square tires so that’s all we sell.”
Think beyond the box. Video podcasts.
Why is network TV a laugh? I like the show Lost quite a bit. If I missed it because I had to work late on night, I would happily pay $2 to catch the episode.
Remember, it’s an iPod with video. Not a Video Pod that does music.
Now with the Video iPod I can show little kids on the street hardcore XXX action. Or anyone, for that matter. Even you.
The reason it’s a laugh is that network TV is FREE. (In the ad-supported sense) No matter how much I like a show, and I like Lost quite a bit, there’s no way I would pay $2 an episode, even if it were in a DRM free format, which this won’t be. I’m also betting that these will be formatted to display on the iPod screen which is only moderately larger than a musquito’s bladder.
Hell, $2 an episode is more than you would pay for the whole season on DVD.
Want a good way to make this new iPod useful? Include iPod versions of a given show as extras on every DVD that is released. Apple gets the hardware sales, consumers (that own iPods) are happier, more DVD’s potentially get sold.
– ME –
Mike’s right. I missed Lost on 9/28. I’ll probably buy it. As for bit torrent, it’s a pain. 2 bucks, I download it, I’m caught up. Simple. This should work for shows like Lost and Desparate Housewives. For anything else, it probably won’t.
It has a S-Video out remember. Watch the small screen while on the train and then plug it into your TV.
“Think beyond the box. Video podcasts.”
So? The neat thing about podcasts (to me at least) is that I can listen to them while I’m at work. I’ve got an video or two of TWiT that I’ve never watched.
As for this new iPod, it has helped me finally make up my mind to never buy an iPod. Apart from the whole “vendor lock-in” thing, the cycle of planned obsolescence that Apple is maintaining for the iPod is fast enough to be insulting.
I think its crap myself. If I’m going to watch video, its going to be on a real screen, and for god sake I’m not connecting my ipod to a computer or T.V, I can just bypass the ipod thank you.
Well, I think this is actually going to drive up demand for the nano. You can’t jog with this thing. $1.99 is a bit pricey, but so are ringtones! You’re paying for convenience. I don’t think these will sell that well. What’s funny is that the average consumer is really going to think the iPod had video first (and they’ll forget all about those pop-locking Superbowl ads).
No, you cannot do HD video from this. And look, I like Divx as much as the next guy, but get serious. H.264 is the standard for Blu-ray and HD-DVD, that’s why it’s called a *standard*… Divx is only standard for porn and offbeat or niche stuff (flame on!). Someone actually spotted Divx somewhere on the specs page, but that might have been a mistake. H.264 is going to give superior results when scaling up.
Well, I think this is actually going to drive up demand for the nano. You can’t jog with this thing. $1.99 is a bit pricey, but so are ringtones! You’re paying for convenience. I don’t think these will sell that well. What’s funny is that the average consumer is really going to think the iPod had video first (and they’ll forget all about those pop-locking Superbowl ads).
No, you cannot do HD video from this. And look, I like Divx as much as the next guy, but get serious. H.264 is the standard for Blu-ray and HD-DVD, that’s why it’s called a *standard*… Divx is only standard for porn and offbeat or niche stuff (flame on!). Someone actually spotted Divx somewhere on the specs page, but that might have been a mistake. H.264 is going to give superior results when scaling up.
BTW John, your layout is broken in Safari (not that you’d care). Can’t scroll down to the Say It! button on smaller monitors (12″ LCD).
Yeah, but think of it. 20-26 episodes per season. $2 per episode. That’s $40-56 per show that you want to see. If you watch 10 shows religiously, that’s about $400-560 per year. I think that’s worth it, as long as EVERYTHING you want to see is available. Otherwise, you’ll still have to pay for cable or satellite.
And if it’s commercial-free… hey, sign me up!
…
I say 8 to 12 months until a iPod with a photo/video capture camara shows up.
One of the more interesting things that Jobs said was that it could take up to 20 minutes to download a one hour Television show. I think that broadband is still the big hurdle here. It was smart of Apple to position this as a music device that plays video, but I can’t see mainstream movie companies buying into this as distribution device until better compression or bandwith come into existence. I would imagine, however, that a pay cable channel such as HBO could benefit greatly from this model.
I think the biggest thing that was announced was not the iPod, it was Frontrow.
Taking that software into account along with the move to video and online sales of video, it seems to me that Apple is positioning itself to not only go after the PVR market, but also the video on demand market as well. They are building the infrastructure to buy video now. They are also teasing us with a new remote and software to use a computer from across the room. Put them together and what do you get? A media center capable of playing just about everything, buying just about everything and doing it from anywhere in your house….
Interesting….
I´m glad that finally Apple came up with a PVP, but I feel dissapointed that I bought a 20GB Ipod (color version) 2 months ago, and there is no software update for playing videos on my ipod that apparently have hardware very much alike the new Ipods. Why there are no updates? why they don´t offer a exchange or update offer? . . . Why????
Based on the runttimes that are posted in iTMS, it appears the commercials are stripped out.
That said, I’ve gotten used to the HDTV captures I get from Bitorrent when I miss a show. I might pay two bucks for one of those (sans ads, of course), but not for a QVGA resolution capture.
Without the ability to import all video formats, Apple will simply develop the market for for others to exploit. Remember, Apple introduced the Newton – the world’s first PDA. Excellent vision, inept execution and marketing.
It’s got video outs, so there goes the small screen limitation.
It’s also a fully functional (music) iPod.
In the not too distant future, ALL iPods will be video iPods, just as all current iPods are now Photo iPods.
The real news is Frontrow. Put that functionality in an Apple Mini with video outs and standard wireless and it’s as good as printing money.
I’m waiting to see how it play-out between full-season DVD collections, and full-season downloads.
DVDs have copy-protection – so you can’t make a backup copy of the discs without using “illegal” softare to bypass the CSS encryption.
It is easy – and legal – to make copies of the downloaded files. It will only be illegal to break the DRM for playback on “un-authorized” computers/iPods.
Will people prefer downloads that are easy to backup, or discs which are illegal to backup?
Copying existing DVDs is easy, but HD DVD and Blu-ray will have stronger copy-protections.
When you are done laughing, check out:
http://www.blu-raydisc.com/assets/downloadablefile/050809-13034.pdf
and that is just the software protections. Check the wikipedia definition of “HDCP” for the hardware protection.
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/H/HDCP.html
$2 an episode is how much DVDs cost.
I almost forgot, the brilliant thing is this whole upgrade cycle Apple is getting people hooked on.
You’re Ipod is so fat and so 2003, get a Mini! Your Mini is SO last year, get a Nano! (they ARE prettier, I admit). Hey look, the new Ipod does video and pix and look at the storage capacity. Get an Ipod Video! I’m wondering if people hock their Ipods when they upgrade or do they just have an army of these things scattered in their house?
I repeat, if they get this thing to be able to record broadcast TV like the Archos PVRs, I’m buying one for Xmas. There are just so many more cool accessories available for the Ipod than Archos. Apple are you listening?
Dumb, Dumb, Dumb!
Color TV Walkman $59.00