How viable is thisand how will it change things?
Will it allow for more and diverse programming (For example could it have saved a show like John Doe or will it be strictly for the Lost and Desperate Housewife’s of the world?
Speak up Dopers!
Depends on whether or not I can watch it full screen on a TV and not an iPod-like device and whether or not I can burn it to a DVD if I want.
Even then, $2 may be a bit high considering the price of some box sets (which also give you extras like deleted scenes, commentaries, etc).
It depends. As said, if the quality is godo enough that I could play it on my TV and still enjoy it, then for some shows, it oculd be better than the DVDs (like one hour dramas.) As an example: I recently bought a Babylon 5 box set. It cost me over $80. At $2 an episode, I coudl get it from the download service for $44. Granted, I get none of the extras…but I have rarely ever used DVD extras. I have listend to the commentary on my Futurama and Simpsons DVDs, seen a few deleted scenes (which are mostly for movies, not TV shows) and that’s about it. So I’m more than happy to pay half as much for the same content that I, myself, view. No fancy box? Well, good, less shelf space taken up, no chance of a DVD getting ruined, and more versatility.
I assume that the major market is for the Tivo-less or VCR-challenged who have missed the current water-cooler show and want to catch up.
If I’m out of town and miss the latest episode of a favorite series, I might pay it.
The article mentions that the quality isn’t good when you see a show on a TV, so it is possible to watch it on something other than an iPod. Perhaps you can see the show in iTunes or Quicktime on your PC? But I doubt you’ll be able to record it to DVD.
I would gladly pay $2 an episode for something I really like, if the quality was good enough (not necessarily DVD quality, but something fairly good). Unfortunately, I don’t necessarily see that happening long-term. All of these other organizations (that will refuse to note that they are becoming relatively more obsolete) are going to beg for their money, and they will have to find some way to get the advertisers more involved, and suddenly we’ll be paying $5 a shot with mandatory commercials that you can’t seek through unless you break some ridiculous DRM.
If they can keep it at $2 and get the quality high enough, I think the legal music downloading scene has shown that they will pull together enough business, between both people who might have otherwise downloaded it illegally and people who wanted to download it but didn’t want to do it illegally, that it will become an extremely viable method of business.
As someone who is never around in the evenings, I’d certainly welcome the opportunity to download the shows I want to see but just cannot due to other obligations. However, I don’t think I’d want to download shows for an iPod Video. It’d need to be at least 480p and DVD-burnable.
$2 is a pretty good price point, but the quality’s just not there. For me to buy a TV download, it’d have to have quality as good as the DVDs and allow me to archive to DVD. I’m not going to spend $40 downloading a show in crappy quality as it comes and then another $40 on DVDs. I’ll just wait until the DVDs come out. In fact, right now I do.
Another option would be to offer the DVDs at a greatly reduced price to those who downloaded the entire season of the show. I’d be ok paying $2 per episode for crappy quality if I knew that I could get DVD quality when the season ends for an additional $10-15.
I was out of town when the Lost season finale aired. My primay VCr started to eat tapes, so I used my backup VCR. Due to my inexperience with it, it didn’t tape right. The finale was reaired the next saturday and I was still out of town.
I had to wait from may to September to see the season finale. I could have seen it a little earlier had I bought (or rented) the DVd.
But in May, I probably would have paid $3.98 to see it, even at crappy quality.
I’d probably pay $1.99 to see the new Doctor Who (at least one episode to see what it is like)
But in general, probably not.
Brian
I’d use it now and then. I don’t have a TV and I’m certainly never going to pay for cable, but sometimes I hear buzz about an episode or show and want to see what the buzz is about. Finding specific episodes of shows without a cult following on peer-to-peer networks is hard and rarely gets you what you want. It’d be worth two bucks to me to be able to see it.
It’d have to be good enough quality to watch full size on my computer screen, though.
Looks like you could be right about advertising. Apple’s planning on keeping tv shows ad-free for now, but it sounds like advertisers are getting upset about yet another way for people to bypass annoying commercials.
As for whether I’d pay $2 for an episode of a tv show, it isn’t available yet in Canada, so I don’t have the option. If it becomes available in the future and the quality is good enough, probably, but only if I’d missed that episode and forgot to record it.
There are about 10 weekly episodes I watch religiously: Lost, The Office, The Daily Show (4 times a week), and The Colbert Report (x4) (assuming it takes off).
Would I pay $20 a week just to watch those shows at VCD resolution? Hell no! That’s too steep even for DVD quality. That’s more than I pay for cable. It’s great that Apple is trying to kickstart the TV show downloading market, but count me out.
I think Finagle is right about who the market is for. A good cable subscription is about $15/wk, including a DVR service so you don’t miss your favorites. You’ll only get 8hrs of TV per week at $2 per show, it isn’t viable for everyday viewing.
OTOH, I’m trying to catch up on Nip/Tuck, renting the DVDs. That costs about $3 per rental, 3 shows per disk, $1 per 1hr show. That’s half of Apple’s price for better quality video, but I have to wait for the DVDs to come out, and I have to bring it back in 5 days, and I don’t get to keep it unless I illegally copy it.
The price point sounds right to me, but the market is limited. It will be a while before this really affects TV viewership. Tivo has done 10x more to change that market than this will.