I respectfully disagree. Sometimes, I miss a TV show because I failed to record it, or maybe I saw a new show mid-season and decided I'd like to view the rest. Renting for $0.99 is like buying music for $0.99. It's cheap enough to be an impulse buy. And even though you don't actually OWN the TV episode, I think the economics favor that route. I don't have to pay double or more to buy just one episode, which sucks up storage space. I'm not forced to pay full price for a whole season. If it streams over the web, then I can presumably watch it anywhere I go.
In truth, I don't care to own my TV episodes (or movies for that matter) in digital form the way I wanted my music in digital form simply because with video, visual compression artifacts are far more noticeable than in audible music. And video is much larger in terms of file size than audio as well. So if I can pay rock-bottom price just to rent one to watch it and no intention or need to own it, I like this idea.
$0.99 an episode is fine but I think they should offer the full season as well for additional cost...
... (re: TV's) And that's to say nothing of ever-changing technologies. Too expensive to keep up with. ...
As an older person, I find this comment hilarious.
TV "technology" has hardly changed at all for 40 or 50 years at least (that's when the vacuum tubes were swapped with circuit boards). Every year, since as long as I paid attention (the late 60's), manufacturers have come out with some kind of minimal innovation with a jazzy name, or a new line of TVs with a jazzy name, or promised that next year's TV would be even better, and every year they came out with the same old TV. The only thing they really did is think up those jazzy names.
The only changes in the entire TV manufacturing industry have been very *recent* with the new flatscreen TV's (plasmas, LCD's), and all *that* technology was produced for computers, and by the R&D departments of computer manufacturers. People were starving for bigger, and flatter TV's for 20 years before the computer industry finally kicked the TV makers in the butt and gave them the necessary technology on a silver platter.
So, if Apple *did* enter the TV making business, they would be following that same model of informing the old dying stupid industry (Television manufacturers), with possibly some new ideas and newer technology.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DanielSW
...Remember that Apple iPod portable speaker thing? Dead in the water. Too cumbersome. Too awkward. Too stupid.
This is not a good example to use.
In fact, that particular product was not successful because it was expensive, didn't satisfy "audiophiles" (as if anything ever could), and mostly because it was "ahead of it's time." It was roundly ridiculed at the time because "why would anyone want to plug an iPod into a speaker system?" (the reviews are still fairly easy to find). But here we are a few years later and there are literally hundreds of products that do exactly this and for more money and with lower quality than the supposedly "failed" iPod boombox.
Monthly subscription to the networks including the local stations for say $4.99/month the same as DishTV.
A la carte for other 'networks' such as TV Land, TCN, etc. with pricing at a couple of bucks per month for each of the selected stations.
All those are fed at a constant feed with the option to play any show with commercials at any time or any show for 99 cents without commercials at any time.
Movie rentals for $1.99 or so depending on the release date.
Cable and satellite won't give us a la carte pricing so maybe Apple will. I don't like having to order a package of channels that includes many shop at home channels crammed in and included in the channel count.
The average teenager watches 4 to 6 hours of TV a day, and the majority of the shows are half hour ones. In any fairly normal household in North America, the total hours of shows watched in a year is an astronomical figure.
I could just as easily argue that at $.99 a show that this will cost the family thousands of dollars a month. The counter to that is that you wouldn't necessarily be renting all the shows, but there are many factors that would affect your argument too.
Large numbers of people have recorders of some kind as well and shows are repeated endlessly as you yourself point out. No one misses a show anymore unless they really want to.
$.99 is way too much for a rental of a show, especially if we are talking half hours shows. It's a fantastically, ridiculously high price for something you don't even get to own. Especially when for a $30 cable bill, you get access to thousands and thousands of shows.
Well, better than 80% of that tv, both actual watch and on paper accessible is crap used to fill up time slots. That is something this model, and any pay per view/on demand system, kills. People will still pay for it, sure. Just like people pay to go see Twilight movies. But now, people are presented with a choice, a big thing, and also it removes the middle man of the cable/tv networks. For that alone, I would pay $0.99/eps. How many good shows were canned by networks because of some fantastical "ratings" which really doesn't signify reality. Even event shows, such as "american idol" like reality tv, News, award shows and sports casts will become live stream events on the net for free or limited subscription/PPV (which I think will happen to cable news networks and sports leagues), with sponsorship and ad backing.
This is more about killing the transmission mafias of Cable/Networks, than about providing the same experience from a different outlet.
I proposed something similar to Steve Jobs in an email in February. I proposed that "half hour" shows ( 20-30 minutes) be $0.35 and "hour shows" ( 45-60min ) shows be $0.70-$0.99
You'd get discounts if you prepay to "subscribe" to a series, and you would also have further discounts for daily series like The Daily show.
Then you'd give users an option to "KEEP IT" , meaning after you watch the show if you like it so much you want to keep it, you can pay an extra $.50 premium, or having your rental cost apply to the cost of the show, etc.
99¢ for a 30 to 60 minute TV show I can load on any PC with iTunes or iDevice and take with me for 30 days and watch at my leisure offline? That sounds reasonable to me.
I’d rather do that than pay $1.99 for a TV Show I’ll only watch once just to make sure I’m up to date with a series. To each their own, I’m glad we so many choices. Remember when you missed a show in the past and had to wait for the reruns or wait for VHS and video stores to be invented so we could catch up with a show we missed for whatever reason?
$0.99 an episode is fine but I think they should offer the full season as well for additional cost...
I agree. Rental is by far the better option for me as I never re watch anything, except when I am in a vegetative state and Seinfeld or some such comes on. But I do hope there will be more options such as reduced price season passes (rental) and reduced rate subscription. I would love to ditch my cable and just watch free to air and either individual series off iTunes or even a subscription package.
How much do you spend a year on a cable/sat subscription? How many new programs, not reruns of older shows but actual first run shows, do you watch within that year?
Divide the former by the latter and that is how much you are paying per show you watch. Take that and divide it by the number of eps in a season and that is how much you are paying per eps.
I highly doubt that your number will be significantly lower that $0.99.
0÷0=Error!
Also, which is better, $1 to watch it once, or $2 to own and watch as many times and whenever you want? Or better yet find a place to watch it free, I mean legal places like Hulu. (Cue the people who insist all the legal free options like Hulu will eventually be paid access only.)
I'd rather pay a rental feel and get unlimited content for my video cravings.... At .99 cents that's about 10 bucks for 10 episodes which is not cost effective to me. I'd rather pay 10 bucks a month for as much content I can stream, actually I'd be willing to pay more. I have no reason to own a show after watching it. It's like my DVD collection, you watch it once and it sits on a shelf for dust collecting.
Now my music is a different story, I want to own my music only because I listen to it over and over on multiple devices.
Also, which is better, $1 to watch it once, or $2 to own and watch as many times and whenever you want? Or better yet find a place to watch it free, I mean legal places like Hulu. (Cue the people who insist all the legal free options like Hulu will eventually be paid access only.)
The key is choice. You offer both options. Some will like one, others the other. And some will still mix and match both options.
I proposed something similar to Steve Jobs in an email in February. I proposed that "half hour" shows ( 20-30 minutes) be $0.35 and "hour shows" ( 45-60min ) shows be $0.70-$0.99
You'd get discounts if you prepay to "subscribe" to a series, and you would also have further discounts for daily series like The Daily show.
Then you'd give users an option to "KEEP IT" , meaning after you watch the show if you like it so much you want to keep it, you can pay an extra $.50 premium, or having your rental cost apply to the cost of the show, etc.
I didn't get a response.
I thought it was a great idea at the time.
Heh you were selling the wrong person I'm afraid... By all accounts the entertainment industry doesn't want to give apple anything. We get a random lump of movies in SD and sometimes 720p. sometimes Apple can sell and rent the titles and other times they are restricted to one or the other...
Steve I'm sure would have far more options if they were to allow it...
99¢ for a 30 to 60 minute TV show I can load on any PC with iTunes or iDevice and take with me for 30 days and watch at my leisure offline? That sounds reasonable to me.
iTunes and DRM just suck. There is no way around it though. In our house we have multiple iTunes accounts and we constantly have issues trying to keep track of what we own. I think the whole idea of preventing legitimate owners from easily accessing their paid for online content is keeping the dvd/cd industry in business. The last thing I want to do is to authorize a device at the end of the day just to watch something I already paid for.
This will end up being an extremely modest success if even that. People will pay for a subscription but $.99 is just not cost prohibitive if you watch 15-20 hours of TV a week.
I don't think that Apple can break the cable monopoly especially since they've been buying up networks. I beginning to believe that Apple's only hope of a service for the Apple TV is through a company's individual app that you pay for on the App Store. It'd also make the process for "channel surfing" much more cumbersome.
The average teenager watches 4 to 6 hours of TV a day, and the majority of the shows are half hour ones. In any fairly normal household in North America, the total hours of shows watched in a year is an astronomical figure.
I've said this before....
If "your" kid watches 4-6 hours of TV a day, you've got one dull ass kid who probably doesn't study enough. Further, it's my understanding that they are spending way more time on the internet these days anyway; it's changing the way Cartoon Network does business anyway.
Personally that just sounds like a bad habit. 1-2 shows a week is more than enough. Otherwise they should be encouraged to read or pursue some other physical activity.
I absolutely disagree. I think the TV market is complex because nobody has ever made it simple. It would be an easy market for Apple to enter. Selling TVs is not rocket science.
I wouldn't be so bold as to say I absolutely disagree, but I'm prepared to go with I respectfully disagree.
Like you, I think Apple could sell TV's. I think they need to take on the cable subscription model by finding a company to partner with. I'd swap to say, DirecTV if they had an Apple branded TV as an option and Comcast did not, so in the same way it's worth AT&T subsidising the iPhone, it would be worth DirecTV (or one of the others) subsidising an Apple branded TV.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bullish
$0.99 an episode is fine but I think they should offer the full season as well for additional cost...
That's a good point. I'm happy to pay 99c for an episode, but I'd also like there to be an option whereby you could watch an episode for free if you were willing to watch adverts.
iTunes and DRM just suck. There is no way around it though. In our house we have multiple iTunes accounts and we constantly have issues trying to keep track of what we own. I think the whole idea of preventing legitimate owners from easily accessing their paid for online content is keeping the dvd/cd industry in business. The last thing I want to do is to authorize a device at the end of the day just to watch something I already paid for.
Hey my friend.
I agree apple needs to find some way of creating "sub" accounts for families.
How much do you spend a year on a cable/sat subscription? How many new programs, not reruns of older shows but actual first run shows, do you watch within that year?
Divide the former by the latter and that is how much you are paying per show you watch. Take that and divide it by the number of eps in a season and that is how much you are paying per eps.
I highly doubt that your number will be significantly lower that $0.99.
Possibly.
Regarding your math, it is questionable if the new shows being supplied by the cable company subscription sucks! It would be hard to justify the numbers to plug in to your equation. However, this math is certain... If you bought the tv show for.99 cents and store it on iTunes to watch as many times as you'd like, you would increase the cost of that same tv show by 100% if you rented more than once be it the same year or the following year or the year after that!
This will end up being an extremely modest success if even that. People will pay for a subscription but $.99 is just not cost prohibitive if you watch 15-20 hours of TV a week.
I don't think that Apple can break the cable monopoly especially since they've been buying up networks. I beginning to believe that Apple's only hope of a service for the Apple TV is through a company's individual app that you pay for on the App Store. It'd also make the process for "channel surfing" much more cumbersome.
Whats the best way to beat cable companies? Bypass them!
I think cable service and cable companies are a real red herring. We could all go crazy trying to think of ways to beat the cable companies, but in the end Apple should just side step them. Just like how Apple isn't trying to be a cell carrier, they shouldn't try to be a cable company.
We already know that Apple doesn't think that a standalone box is going to be successful with the mass market. We also know that the cable companies are too big to beat. So how do you get into people's living rooms? Well, what is the one thing that every cable/sat/DVR/Apple TV customer has? A TV! Even people who don't have cable/sat have TVs.
The heart of the living room is the TV. So if Apple can sell a TV then they become first in line to also sell ondemand content onto that TV. Movie rentals, television episodes, etc right there in the TV. No extra box needed, no cable/sat needed... The user can just turn on their TV and start spending money.
Everybody else is trying to compete by adding boxes to the TV. So why struggle to get noticed in that mess? Why not just be the TV? Let everybody else be the afterthought.
Comments
I respectfully disagree. Sometimes, I miss a TV show because I failed to record it, or maybe I saw a new show mid-season and decided I'd like to view the rest. Renting for $0.99 is like buying music for $0.99. It's cheap enough to be an impulse buy. And even though you don't actually OWN the TV episode, I think the economics favor that route. I don't have to pay double or more to buy just one episode, which sucks up storage space. I'm not forced to pay full price for a whole season. If it streams over the web, then I can presumably watch it anywhere I go.
In truth, I don't care to own my TV episodes (or movies for that matter) in digital form the way I wanted my music in digital form simply because with video, visual compression artifacts are far more noticeable than in audible music. And video is much larger in terms of file size than audio as well. So if I can pay rock-bottom price just to rent one to watch it and no intention or need to own it, I like this idea.
$0.99 an episode is fine but I think they should offer the full season as well for additional cost...
... (re: TV's) And that's to say nothing of ever-changing technologies. Too expensive to keep up with. ...
As an older person, I find this comment hilarious.
TV "technology" has hardly changed at all for 40 or 50 years at least (that's when the vacuum tubes were swapped with circuit boards). Every year, since as long as I paid attention (the late 60's), manufacturers have come out with some kind of minimal innovation with a jazzy name, or a new line of TVs with a jazzy name, or promised that next year's TV would be even better, and every year they came out with the same old TV. The only thing they really did is think up those jazzy names.
The only changes in the entire TV manufacturing industry have been very *recent* with the new flatscreen TV's (plasmas, LCD's), and all *that* technology was produced for computers, and by the R&D departments of computer manufacturers. People were starving for bigger, and flatter TV's for 20 years before the computer industry finally kicked the TV makers in the butt and gave them the necessary technology on a silver platter.
So, if Apple *did* enter the TV making business, they would be following that same model of informing the old dying stupid industry (Television manufacturers), with possibly some new ideas and newer technology.
...Remember that Apple iPod portable speaker thing? Dead in the water. Too cumbersome. Too awkward. Too stupid.
This is not a good example to use.
In fact, that particular product was not successful because it was expensive, didn't satisfy "audiophiles" (as if anything ever could), and mostly because it was "ahead of it's time." It was roundly ridiculed at the time because "why would anyone want to plug an iPod into a speaker system?" (the reviews are still fairly easy to find). But here we are a few years later and there are literally hundreds of products that do exactly this and for more money and with lower quality than the supposedly "failed" iPod boombox.
A la carte for other 'networks' such as TV Land, TCN, etc. with pricing at a couple of bucks per month for each of the selected stations.
All those are fed at a constant feed with the option to play any show with commercials at any time or any show for 99 cents without commercials at any time.
Movie rentals for $1.99 or so depending on the release date.
Cable and satellite won't give us a la carte pricing so maybe Apple will. I don't like having to order a package of channels that includes many shop at home channels crammed in and included in the channel count.
This is a meaningless argument.
The average teenager watches 4 to 6 hours of TV a day, and the majority of the shows are half hour ones. In any fairly normal household in North America, the total hours of shows watched in a year is an astronomical figure.
I could just as easily argue that at $.99 a show that this will cost the family thousands of dollars a month. The counter to that is that you wouldn't necessarily be renting all the shows, but there are many factors that would affect your argument too.
Large numbers of people have recorders of some kind as well and shows are repeated endlessly as you yourself point out. No one misses a show anymore unless they really want to.
$.99 is way too much for a rental of a show, especially if we are talking half hours shows. It's a fantastically, ridiculously high price for something you don't even get to own. Especially when for a $30 cable bill, you get access to thousands and thousands of shows.
Well, better than 80% of that tv, both actual watch and on paper accessible is crap used to fill up time slots. That is something this model, and any pay per view/on demand system, kills. People will still pay for it, sure. Just like people pay to go see Twilight movies. But now, people are presented with a choice, a big thing, and also it removes the middle man of the cable/tv networks. For that alone, I would pay $0.99/eps. How many good shows were canned by networks because of some fantastical "ratings" which really doesn't signify reality. Even event shows, such as "american idol" like reality tv, News, award shows and sports casts will become live stream events on the net for free or limited subscription/PPV (which I think will happen to cable news networks and sports leagues), with sponsorship and ad backing.
This is more about killing the transmission mafias of Cable/Networks, than about providing the same experience from a different outlet.
You'd get discounts if you prepay to "subscribe" to a series, and you would also have further discounts for daily series like The Daily show.
Then you'd give users an option to "KEEP IT" , meaning after you watch the show if you like it so much you want to keep it, you can pay an extra $.50 premium, or having your rental cost apply to the cost of the show, etc.
I didn't get a response.
I thought it was a great idea at the time.
I’d rather do that than pay $1.99 for a TV Show I’ll only watch once just to make sure I’m up to date with a series. To each their own, I’m glad we so many choices. Remember when you missed a show in the past and had to wait for the reruns or wait for VHS and video stores to be invented so we could catch up with a show we missed for whatever reason?
My Macs... Not So Much due to their lack of (built-in) cable/TV tuners et al
Most of what I want to watch from broadcast sources will never be available in iTunes.
$0.99 an episode is fine but I think they should offer the full season as well for additional cost...
I agree. Rental is by far the better option for me as I never re watch anything, except when I am in a vegetative state and Seinfeld or some such comes on. But I do hope there will be more options such as reduced price season passes (rental) and reduced rate subscription. I would love to ditch my cable and just watch free to air and either individual series off iTunes or even a subscription package.
How much do you spend a year on a cable/sat subscription? How many new programs, not reruns of older shows but actual first run shows, do you watch within that year?
Divide the former by the latter and that is how much you are paying per show you watch. Take that and divide it by the number of eps in a season and that is how much you are paying per eps.
I highly doubt that your number will be significantly lower that $0.99.
0÷0=Error!
Also, which is better, $1 to watch it once, or $2 to own and watch as many times and whenever you want? Or better yet find a place to watch it free, I mean legal places like Hulu. (Cue the people who insist all the legal free options like Hulu will eventually be paid access only.)
I'd rather pay a rental feel and get unlimited content for my video cravings.... At .99 cents that's about 10 bucks for 10 episodes which is not cost effective to me. I'd rather pay 10 bucks a month for as much content I can stream, actually I'd be willing to pay more. I have no reason to own a show after watching it. It's like my DVD collection, you watch it once and it sits on a shelf for dust collecting.
Now my music is a different story, I want to own my music only because I listen to it over and over on multiple devices.
0÷0=Error!
Also, which is better, $1 to watch it once, or $2 to own and watch as many times and whenever you want? Or better yet find a place to watch it free, I mean legal places like Hulu. (Cue the people who insist all the legal free options like Hulu will eventually be paid access only.)
The key is choice. You offer both options. Some will like one, others the other. And some will still mix and match both options.
This option offers a choice, cable doesn't.
I proposed something similar to Steve Jobs in an email in February. I proposed that "half hour" shows ( 20-30 minutes) be $0.35 and "hour shows" ( 45-60min ) shows be $0.70-$0.99
You'd get discounts if you prepay to "subscribe" to a series, and you would also have further discounts for daily series like The Daily show.
Then you'd give users an option to "KEEP IT" , meaning after you watch the show if you like it so much you want to keep it, you can pay an extra $.50 premium, or having your rental cost apply to the cost of the show, etc.
I didn't get a response.
I thought it was a great idea at the time.
Heh you were selling the wrong person I'm afraid... By all accounts the entertainment industry doesn't want to give apple anything. We get a random lump of movies in SD and sometimes 720p. sometimes Apple can sell and rent the titles and other times they are restricted to one or the other...
Steve I'm sure would have far more options if they were to allow it...
99¢ for a 30 to 60 minute TV show I can load on any PC with iTunes or iDevice and take with me for 30 days and watch at my leisure offline? That sounds reasonable to me.
iTunes and DRM just suck. There is no way around it though. In our house we have multiple iTunes accounts and we constantly have issues trying to keep track of what we own. I think the whole idea of preventing legitimate owners from easily accessing their paid for online content is keeping the dvd/cd industry in business. The last thing I want to do is to authorize a device at the end of the day just to watch something I already paid for.
I don't think that Apple can break the cable monopoly especially since they've been buying up networks. I beginning to believe that Apple's only hope of a service for the Apple TV is through a company's individual app that you pay for on the App Store. It'd also make the process for "channel surfing" much more cumbersome.
This is a meaningless argument.
The average teenager watches 4 to 6 hours of TV a day, and the majority of the shows are half hour ones. In any fairly normal household in North America, the total hours of shows watched in a year is an astronomical figure.
I've said this before....
If "your" kid watches 4-6 hours of TV a day, you've got one dull ass kid who probably doesn't study enough. Further, it's my understanding that they are spending way more time on the internet these days anyway; it's changing the way Cartoon Network does business anyway.
Personally that just sounds like a bad habit. 1-2 shows a week is more than enough. Otherwise they should be encouraged to read or pursue some other physical activity.
I absolutely disagree. I think the TV market is complex because nobody has ever made it simple. It would be an easy market for Apple to enter. Selling TVs is not rocket science.
I wouldn't be so bold as to say I absolutely disagree, but I'm prepared to go with I respectfully disagree.
Like you, I think Apple could sell TV's. I think they need to take on the cable subscription model by finding a company to partner with. I'd swap to say, DirecTV if they had an Apple branded TV as an option and Comcast did not, so in the same way it's worth AT&T subsidising the iPhone, it would be worth DirecTV (or one of the others) subsidising an Apple branded TV.
$0.99 an episode is fine but I think they should offer the full season as well for additional cost...
That's a good point. I'm happy to pay 99c for an episode, but I'd also like there to be an option whereby you could watch an episode for free if you were willing to watch adverts.
iTunes and DRM just suck. There is no way around it though. In our house we have multiple iTunes accounts and we constantly have issues trying to keep track of what we own. I think the whole idea of preventing legitimate owners from easily accessing their paid for online content is keeping the dvd/cd industry in business. The last thing I want to do is to authorize a device at the end of the day just to watch something I already paid for.
Hey my friend.
I agree apple needs to find some way of creating "sub" accounts for families.
How much do you spend a year on a cable/sat subscription? How many new programs, not reruns of older shows but actual first run shows, do you watch within that year?
Divide the former by the latter and that is how much you are paying per show you watch. Take that and divide it by the number of eps in a season and that is how much you are paying per eps.
I highly doubt that your number will be significantly lower that $0.99.
Possibly.
Regarding your math, it is questionable if the new shows being supplied by the cable company subscription sucks! It would be hard to justify the numbers to plug in to your equation. However, this math is certain... If you bought the tv show for.99 cents and store it on iTunes to watch as many times as you'd like, you would increase the cost of that same tv show by 100% if you rented more than once be it the same year or the following year or the year after that!
This will end up being an extremely modest success if even that. People will pay for a subscription but $.99 is just not cost prohibitive if you watch 15-20 hours of TV a week.
I don't think that Apple can break the cable monopoly especially since they've been buying up networks. I beginning to believe that Apple's only hope of a service for the Apple TV is through a company's individual app that you pay for on the App Store. It'd also make the process for "channel surfing" much more cumbersome.
Whats the best way to beat cable companies? Bypass them!
I think cable service and cable companies are a real red herring. We could all go crazy trying to think of ways to beat the cable companies, but in the end Apple should just side step them. Just like how Apple isn't trying to be a cell carrier, they shouldn't try to be a cable company.
We already know that Apple doesn't think that a standalone box is going to be successful with the mass market. We also know that the cable companies are too big to beat. So how do you get into people's living rooms? Well, what is the one thing that every cable/sat/DVR/Apple TV customer has? A TV! Even people who don't have cable/sat have TVs.
The heart of the living room is the TV. So if Apple can sell a TV then they become first in line to also sell ondemand content onto that TV. Movie rentals, television episodes, etc right there in the TV. No extra box needed, no cable/sat needed... The user can just turn on their TV and start spending money.
Everybody else is trying to compete by adding boxes to the TV. So why struggle to get noticed in that mess? Why not just be the TV? Let everybody else be the afterthought.