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NBC leaving iTunes, hitching to Amazon's wagon

  For the past few weeks, stories have been circulating about NBC pulling out of iTunes. There were claims that NBC wanted to price their shows higher and take a much bigger cut. Their deal was set to expire this December, but they gave notice last week that it would end early.

Everyone's been speculating on what would happen next -- if NBC would launch its own store or if they'd go with another technology. Looks like the answer is Amazon's Unbox for NBC. They've just announced this Fall's shows will all be at Amazon. Starting September 10th, they'll even be offering free preview downloads of Bionic Woman, a new series set to debut.

Personally, when looking at my iTunes store history on buying TV shows, I pick up quite a number of NBC stuff I didn't get a chance to see live last season. Though I can buy shows through Unbox and watch them on my TiVo (as opposed to my AppleTV), since Amazon released Unbox, I've only watched two movies. The picture quality was fairly low so in the future I could only see myself using Unbox again when there was no other option to get a show.

Logically, it seems like a step back for NBC's distribution levels, if you compared the numbers of every video-playing iPod (tens of millions?) and AppleTV sold, compared with the number of TiVos out there (a couple million standalones?). If I was going to sit at a computer and watch TV, I'd just watch it off NBC's own site, but when it comes to buying video for portable devices or my living room, I'm guessing NBC just reduced their reach. Then again, I'm sure Amazon isn't in the position that iTunes was in bargaining-wise, so NBC probably got the bigger chunk they wanted of the pie.

update: Gruber points out that the DRM on NBC shows just got much more restrictive.

by Matt Haughey September 4, 2007 in News

Comments

How ironic, that Unbox isn't supported on Macs.

Posted by: Joost Schuur at Sep 4, 2007 5:38:56 PM

Yup, bigger slice of a smaller pie. Smooth move, NBCU. No one understands the digital landscape like you guys.

Posted by: ~bc at Sep 4, 2007 6:05:35 PM

I'm glad they will be offering NBC shows on Unbox. I will not buy movies or TV shows from I-tunes. I love Unbox downloads to my TIVO.

Posted by: Kimberly at Sep 4, 2007 6:21:38 PM

Being able to buy shows and watch them on my TiVo via Unbox would actually be a plus for me because I have been unwilling to lay out the cash for an Apple TV when the TiVo could do the exact same thing if they would let it. But I am betting the number of TiVo owners is somewhat outnumbered by the number of iTunes users. It would have made a lot more sense to do both. And does any understand exactly what the point of hulu is?

Posted by: Michael Pate at Sep 5, 2007 6:45:55 AM

How are people overlooking the obvious benefits of this move over sticking with iTunes?

NBC moving to Amazon offers:

1.) FAR better picture quality. I've yet to manage to play anything purchased at iTunes fullscreen without terrible artifacting.

2.) Prices unchanged for single shows. For seasons (example: The Office - Season 3), the price is $4.50 *cheaper* at Amazon than at iTunes.

3.) Being able to watch shows on your TV without having drop another $299 for a piece of Apple hardware.

4.) The ability to burn all these shows to DVD with any stand-alone recorder.

5.) Not having to constantly update software to buy, like I've been suffering with iTunes.

Better quality, cheaper to buy, easier to get, and less restrictive DRM. Unbox makes things easy as pie, too.

I, for one, am thrilled. NBC has a new buying customer...

Posted by: PookieBadMuffin at Sep 9, 2007 3:59:47 PM

"and less restrictive DRM"

How do you figure? I look at Amazon's terms and I can only play movies on two computers (as opposed to five for iTunes) and I can't play amazon unbox video on my iPod, thanks to their DRM.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Sep 11, 2007 3:19:27 PM

Matt... I'm not using the Unbox Player to watch shows on my computer - not sure why anyone would want to these days. Rent a show, download to your TiVo, burn it to DVD, watch it anywhere you like. Use Handbrake to get it on your iPod. You can sync shows to a slew of other portable devices. I had no trouble syncing to and watching on my Audiovox SMT5600 cell phone that's 2 years old.

iTunes won't let you burn video to DVD, you're stuck watching shows on a computer, and it's only going to let you sync with your iPod.

Posted by: PookieBadMuffin at Sep 14, 2007 9:31:05 PM

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