Downloadable television, first made popular by Tivo and its competitors, is compelling stuff. As consumers become accustomed to watching a show whenever they choose, pausing at will and fast tracking through commercials, tuning in to a station at a scheduled broadcast time seems quaint at best. Today, 7% of U.S. households have a digital video recorder, or DVR and most cable companies offer a DVR as an option.
File trading networks, such as bittorent, are also extremely popular (if sometimes illegal) choices for consumers wanting access to time-shifted television content.
While DVRs are great, content producers and distributors are less than thrilled by the loss in revenue from all those skipped commercials. Also, DVR’d shows cannot be easily transferred to mobile devices or otherwise viewed away from their home television. Some consumers want more flexibility and options.
Enter downloadable television, spearheaded by iTunes.
On October 12 2005, Apple introduced iTunes 6.0 which added support for purchasing and viewing of video content from the iTunes Music Store. iTunes initially offered a selection of several thousand music videos and five TV shows, including most notably ABC’s Lost and Desperate Housewives, as well as the collection from past seasons. New shows are available 24 hours after the initial broadcast. Since that time, the collection has expanded with NBC Universal, USA Network, Sci-Fi Channel shows, and Viacom, in addition to further Disney-owned networks’ shows. iTunes also gives the ability to view Apple’s large collection of movie trailers. Format for purchased Videos is 128 kbit/s Protected MPEG-4 video.
By January 2006, iTunes offered over 40 television shows for download, including, most recently, additions from Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and MTV with episodes of such shows as the Daily Show, Spongebob Squarepants, South Park, and Punk’d. Showtime added some content in February.
The networks, though, are hoping that iTunes will not be the only way people watch TV on their computers. CBS, Fox and ABC are all experimenting with their own direct downloads or streaming.
ABC
ABC is offering streaming versions of a number of its hit shows to viewers within the U.S. for no charge: Lost, Desperate Housewives, Alias, and Commander in Chief. The shows are viewable in 400×700 Flash format. On the plus side, ABC’s offering is browser and platform agnostic, and are free. On the minus side, and these are big ones, you must be online to view the show. You can’t take these with you on a laptop or other device and watch them while on a plane, or otherwise offline. Also, There are a number of short commercials that cannot be skipped. So in the end, ABC is offering a nice way for me to watch time-shifted shows on my PC-enabled living room television, but not much else. See Mike Davidson for more on this.
CBS
CBS is going with downloads, through their CBS On Demand project. Only a single show is currently offered – Survivor – and you must be in the U.S. to use the service. Quality is 640×480 pixels. Shows cost $.99 and must be watched within 24 hours of downloading (again, not a very good option for travelers). You must have a Windows PC to view the shows. They cannot be burned to dvd. Frankly, with all of these limitations I’m surprised they even let you watch the show, period. It’s like they’re begging to fail so that they can say “hey, see, we tried, people don’t want this.” Note that CBS is also experimenting with shows on Google Video.
NBC
NBC is offering a number of shows through iTunes, but has no direct to consumer offering. They offer thirteen shows on iTunes, including The Tonight Show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Saturday Night Live, The Apprentice, Law and Order, Scrubs and The Office, as well as a number of vintage shows.
FOX
Fox is shaking things up a bit. In April they announced a six year deal with their affiliates to allow them to show back catalog shows on the internet. They are also starting to roll out downloads of the show “24″ through their Myspace property, but I am unable to find much information on it yet.
SUMMARY
It’s going to be a while before the service models are compelling enough for the world to turn away en masse from today’s TV, but it’s clear we’re at the start of a major disruption that will shake content producers (the networks) and the distributors (cable) to the core.
Nothing is close to challenging iTunes yet for downloadable tv dominance (well, except bittorent and DVRs), and it’s unlikely a single network will be able to do much to overcome them. People want to be able to consume their content in one place, and iTunes does a very good job of allowing that. It’s simple, has some flexibility with regard to moving to a device and the shows do not “expire”. The real competition to iTunes is still to come: Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and Amazon, among others, will have product offering in this space sooner or later. (Note: AOL is already streaming a number of vintage television shows to users).
Business models need to change. Content producers cannot rely on network deals, 30 second advertising and, later, dvd sales, to pull in the revenue. Shows will have to stand on their own, and will probably need to be free for the first few episodes to pull in viewers who may eventually be willing to pay. Frankly, I look forward to the day that a show, ignored by the networks, first decides to launch itself on iTunes and go straight to consumers. The press around it would be overwhelming. The first to do it will have a big advantage.
There is a market for third party service providers, too. Services like Meevee are starting to bridge the gap between providing online television listing information and allowing people to actually view the content on their computers. Cozmo.tv and Brightcove are allowing people to control their Tivo’s through their browser. And how long will it be before MobiTV, which currently streams television to mobile devices, is able contractually to simply flip a switch and offer streaming television direct to a PC? They are already making moves in that direction, and Orb offers a similar, free service.
Note: This article was written with my friend Neil Kjeldsen, a new blogger but longtime writer, and someone who knows the television and film space well. Look for more posts by Neil here on TechCrunch.
Under CBS’s offering, they are selling Survivor, not Lost.
Thanks Aaron. Typo. Fixed.
Typo 2 under the ABC overview (reads CBS instead of ABC): So in the end, CBS is offering a nice way for me to watch time-shifted shows on my PC-enabled living room television, but not much else. See Mike Davidson for more on this.
Also, Fox’s 24, Prison Break and oldschool stuff like Buffy are on iTunes too.
Otherwise good comparison!
Good review and summary. Under ABC, you mention CBS.
Under ABC’s summary, you call them CBS once…
I think ABC’s offerings are currently the best being free and requiring only access to the net. The quality is good too. I hope they put more shows online next season. It would be a good way to catch some new shows when my TiVo is already recording two other things.
I love comments. Thank you all for the typo fixes.
I was trying to get this posted as I’m running out the door for a London techcrunch event…
Unfortunately, all of these television shows that are available for download are only available to people who live in the United States.
“Also, DVR’d shows cannot be easily transferred to mobile devices or otherwise viewed away from their home television.”
http://www.torr...g_mytht_1.shtml
Perhaps not “easily” setup, but once you’ve got it running you can (freely) stream your (freely) DVR’d shows to your mobile device until the cows come home.
Gary: Some people on my site have mentioned tunneling through proxies to get around the international “requirements”. Now, I’m not saying I endorse that, but…
What about the BitTorrent option?
Stick teh RSS in your favorite BitTorrent client, go to sleep, when you wake up your favorite show is on your computer in its ad-free DRM-less XviD glory!
Mike, I would really like to get in touch with those proxies-expert you mention, but do not endorse…I live in Europe, no downloadable TV for me. Which I find strange, since the adds sponsoring those tv shows are about products the natives in far away France know and buy.
Another option for legal TV show downloads is AOL’s In2TV service. While it doesn’t provide any current programming, In2TV does have a wide selection of older shows, including some cult classics like La Femme Nikita and Babylon 5. I reviewed the service a few months ago on Geek In Gear and found it to be a decent service, though it suffered from a few shortcomings that kept it from being “great”.
http://www.geek...in2tv-iptv.html
I suggest giving it a try if you are looking for legal TV downloads on the cheap.
Thanks for the comments. I wanted to touch on the lack of international offerings. I did not find much on the intentions of the content producers with respect to the international market. Seems like a nice way to tap the international market versus going through state-run TV and the like. Best to walk before you run perhaps.
its great to see the major tv networks as well as smaller online television networks broadcasting programs over the net. check out these links for more similar news:
http://www.usat...edia-usat_x.htm
http://www.nyti...;pagewanted=all
http://www.vari...d=1009&cs=1
When we first launched Grouper’s P2P network in 11/04 no one knew what to make of our controlled P2P environment. When we launched our hybrid network in 12/05 everyone got it. Stream a compressed copy on the web and download the uncut original via P2P. There is no other economical and practical way to scale to support millions of simultaneous high quality viewers of video. That is why we are now starting to see WB, AOL and others experiment with distributed computing.
P2P is so core to our video plans that we had to build it ourselves. The hybrid streaming/download model will win in the end.
Someone mentioned sticking your favorite show’s RSS into your bittorrent client, and I’ve gotta say that they are absolutely right. Unfortunately, we’ve reached a tipping point where it’s too easy to get the media you’re missing and the broadcasters are too hesitant to offer it in any meaningful way. I use Democracy as a video aggregator, and since they’ve offered bittorrent downloads, I’ve taken to sticking my RSS feeds for various shows in it since my cable operator’s DVR is buggy enough that it doesn’t record at least one or two shows per week. I would go to the broadcasters’ websites looking for ITunes or Google Video means for getting the content I’d missed, and, after being severely disappointed, I turned to bittorrent. Here’s to hoping the nets get their acts together.
“I look forward to the day that a show, ignored by the networks, first decides to launch itself on iTunes and go straight to consumers.”
isn’t that what a number of video podcasts are already doing? tiki bar tv comes to mind.
I agree that this is an important trend that will eventually revolutionize the way people consume their entertainment. To have that sweeping effect, however, the technology MUST be such that it allows consumers to watch their favorite TV shows on their favorite spot – the TV. Until that convergence really happens, all of this will remain in ‘geek territory’.
Great post. Looking forward to more from Neil.
In the UK, the BBC has been trialling a TV download service but only for UK users. The trial is now closed (according to the BBC website), but they haven’t given a date for when the service will launch (at least, not that I know of). As far as I’m aware, the BBC project is designed to allow *all* BBC programmes to be downloaded for up to seven days after broadcast. But they will be using DRM to set the content to expire after a set period.
If they do launch this service, it will be interesting to see if they will allow international users paid access to their content or whether they will restrict it to UK users only.
I transfer shows from my TiVo to my computer and my iPod video quite often. It’s quite easy and involves very little work thanks to a great program that I use.
I’m really excitied about ABC’s streaming since the quality is quite good, considering.
“While DVRs are great, content producers and distributors are less than thrilled by the loss in revenue from all those skipped commercials. ”
This all about potential and false numbers.
This is some what misleading by those who are against DVRs. The return on advertising is somewhere between 0 and 4%. There is no direct revenue from advertising. Additionally, unless some one is anal, the commercials still play or at least are viewed in part. (Even ABC lets you skip part of the online commercials.) Plus, some advertisers are using recorded commercials to promote via the “find the hidden message” game.
I have DVR and VCRs – I dont really thing advertising is going to be “lost” but rather forced to adapt after decades of the same ole, same ole. Besides, product placement is still going strong.
nice
“…content producers and distributors are less than thrilled by the loss in revenue from all those skipped commercials”
WHO GIVES A CRAP HOW THEY FEEL?
They can kiss my mute button all the way thru the commercial, I can’t even remember the last time I heard one lol.
iTunes will try to control the content availability thru their vertical integration as usual. Other small aggregators/directories/search engines for videos (or all media) such as genwi, Mefeedia, Truveo with portability on most devices might be good competitors. The winner might be the one who is on most devices and has extensive portability.
In contrast to Apple, Microsoft seems to be supporting and building a better ecosystem for all content owners than anyone…what would happen if Microsoft decides to include bit torrent as a procotol in their OS along with api’s to connect to Windows Media Player. Note that most of these ecosystem is repeated in MS IPTV, XBOX, Media Center….etc
I love downloading tv shows and watching on my schedule. I applaud ABC for offering some of their shows for free. I don’t mind watching the ads at all. Leave it to Steve Jobs to start yet another revolution.
Here is another option
http://tv.peekvid.com/
how could you miss mariposaHD ?!!?
free to download AND in HDTV:
http://www.mariposaHD.tv
(lots of nice models too … trust me, you’ll like it)
this is the future of television .. not what the networks are giving us
[quote] Unfortunately, all of these television shows that are available for download are only available to people who live in the United States. [/quote]
That’s right. It’s our world and you’re just living in it!
You can always cross the porous U.S. – Mexico border if you want to watch our T.V. shows.
Good write-up Neil, an interesting insight into the new online TV saga.
I have seen numerous geek tools on the net to download tv shows via RSS. But no one could explain to me what is legal and what is not. Apparently , dowloading in not illegal, sharing it via peer to peer is. How absurd can you get? On forums, some users reported that they had started receiving warning letters from their cable provider. Someone “in the know” could maybe inform us…
Last night at&t had an ad on CSI: Miami which touted viewing the same video content (movie, tv show, etc.) on your TV, PC and cell phone. Coming soon!
Last week this link
http://www.torr...g_mytht_1.shtml
gave directions on how you can get this today from existing technology. For at&t to offer the service is not much of a leap.
This is an interesting post, but seems biased by a traditional view of television.
Internet video is beginning to eat into people’s tv time, and the way people use Internet video is very different than the traditional network/show model. People are browsing for interesting content, sampling it and skipping on to something else. The first-movers are subscribing to the Internet video content that they like. If you are looking for Internet tv to resemble traditional tv, you may be waiting a long time.
The fact is, networks are late to the party, and it’s already in full swing.
“Nothing is close to challenging iTunes yet for downloadable tv dominance.” This seems to be overplaying iTunes significance. Tunes is important, but it represents a very small percentage of the audience for downloadable video content. Most of the content producers I’ve talked with say that a large portion of their audience directly downloads their content.
“I look forward to the day that a show, ignored by the networks, first decides to launch itself on iTunes and go straight to consumers.”
A major network, NBC, has already debuted a new television show, Convictions, on iTunes. Why go through iTunes, though? That’s a sure way to limit your Google exposure. Check out Port City PD for an example of a straight-to-podcast show (http://feeds.fe....com/PortCityPd). Check out Daryl Hannah’s Love Life (http://www.dhlovelife.com/). There are many more examples.
Instead of waiting for the major networks to figure this out, we should be asking whether the big networks are going to be relevant anymore. As content creators realize they can deliver content directly to consumers, the big networks will have to find ways to convince both the creator and the consumer that they add value.
Forgot to mention that Sci-Fi Channel has Pulse… see scifi.com for more details.
I’m enjoying this TV revolution that is taking place; it just further affirms the whole “anything anywhere” mentality. If I want to watch a show on my computer there should be a means, and eventually it will all be streamlined from one device in the very near future.
The ABC web player is dismal. Who want’s to sit at their computer chair to watch a TV show? I want to sit on my couch and watch it on my 20″ iMac across the room or better yet; I would like to plug a Mac Mini into a HD TV and watch it in it’s full glory. But to do either of those I need to have higher res versions of the TV show’s and in a format I can use.
So, the question we should be asking is where is the HD versions or hell even the wide screen versions of the TV shows in format’s we can use. iTunes is the only one close but there versions are formated for little iPods screens. Why they don’t give you and option to purchase a slightly higher res version in wide screen format boggles my mind.
Mike, the 24 site on Myspace is live:
http://24on.myspace.com/
Just a quick correction:
“Format for purchased [iTunes] Videos is 128 kbit/s Protected MPEG-4 video.”
Videos sold on the iTMS conform to the 5G iPod’s playback abilities which consists of two tracks: a 128 kb/s audio track and an up-to-750 kb/s video track. (Wikipedia says 540 kb/s for video, but others have reported some downloads to be higher, which is probably due to 2-pass and other adaptive encoding techniques.)
“The ABC web player is dismal. Who want’s to sit at their computer chair to watch a TV show?”
Me. I’ve watched all my TV on my computer for years now, between a capture card and downloads. I don’t like having to split my attention between two screens… make it easier to watch TV as I work. (I’m watching it right now, in fact).
Some nice research here! Great Work- Neil Kjeldsen.
See this for an alternative way TV will be distributed in the future
http://l3media.blogspot.com
Great post Neil, very thorough recap of where we are at and where things are headed with all the disruption in the market. Look forward to more posts from you soon. –Heather
I found a great free TV Shows and Movies download site at http://www.markets-shop.com with over 80 million titles to download free.
Hey guys. Good article. I also think that tv will be replaced by the computer in the next years. Actually, I almost never watch TV. There are plenty of sites that offer live video streams from all sort of tv channels for free like http://www.tevootv.com . Heck, it even has free HBO.
The drawback is the image quality. It’s not like on the tv, but you win some, you lose some.
Regards,
i am new
Canada currently has 2 of its national networks offering free service.
ctv.ca
globaltv.ca
They include some US content as well.
MyPath*TV was born out of a real desire to provide support to people who are searching out a more meaningful, healthy and spiritual life.
Viewers access the content through an intuitive Web interface that delivers commercial-free programming in a full-screen format. All the videos are available 24 hours a day, with new program updates offered on a weekly basis.
Exclusive, commercial-free programming that will enrich your mind, body and spirit. http://www.mypathtv.net
Where can i watch usa network online
hi
Check out http://www.download-tv-now.com
Great site for tv downloads!!