As usual, lots of good regarding the 2005-10-12 announcements by regarding new iPods, iMacs, and iTunes.
$1.99 for each TV show, in only 320×240 resolution, doesn’t seem like a good deal to me. I already get these shows with my cable TV; paying for them again in a crummy low-res format strikes me as a bad deal ’ like if you had to pay for songs you already own on CD. Of course, I think ringtones sound like a bad deal, too, but people buy billions of them.
“Good deal” is a relative term, of course. “Oh crap! The TiVo didn’t record !!” leaves you with a few options:
- Skip the episode and rely on next week’s “Previously on ‘Lost’” to catch you up on what was important. Cost: free. Time needed: 0. Satisfaction level: 0
- Try and get the episode on some sort of file-sharing network. Yeah, hard to believe, but people actually do this. Cost: free. Time needed: Unknown. Satisfaction level: 0 (if you can’t find it) to 100 (if you can find it and have the time and bandwidth to download it) to 0 (if you find yourself at the business end of an investigation by the MPAA)
- As of Wednesday, spend $2 to download a copy of it.
No one is going to buy a season of Lost at $2 an episode. They would have to be a High Priest of Stupid. Last season there were twenty-four episodes of Lost. That’s $48. You could buy . No one is going to cancel their cable/satelite subscription for this.
But to catch this week’s episode that you missed: $2 is a deal. Go to iTunes, click the show you want, “set it and forget it”
I’m totally with you on the ringtones thing. What are people thinking?!?!
On the other hand, I can see a lot of people buying music videos. After all, there’s nowhere to see those on television anymore. If only there were some sort of TV station that might be devoted to playing music videos. Now that might be something.
(No, I’m kidding, I can’t imagine anyone buying music videos either, but then again I’m nearing the edge of marketing usefulness for such things. Sure, soon I’ll be able to run for president, but I also have to check that next age-group box…)
One thing I’m very curious about: How do you get your own video onto the iPod, and can you put better quality on there? I realize that the screen dimensions are set, but if I have a higher resolution video already on my computer, do I have to change it to match the specs of the iPod or can it “Just Work” somehow?