Apple Category

Apple’s innovations and steps towards becoming dominant in the broadband video sector.

Posted in: News, Deals, Funding & Acquisitions, Video Distribution and Apple by Tanya on September 6, 2007

large_nbc_logo.jpg NBC recently announced that it has chosen Amazon over the almighty Apple and will be migrating their digital video content to Amazon Unbox soon.

This decision has not surprised Industry Pundits as NBC and Apple had been embroiled in a very public stand-off over the past couple of days.

The bone of contention being Apple’s uniform pricing policy and payment distribution method which was found not too favorable by NBC, hence the company’s shift to Amazon.

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NBC iTunes

Who came off better and worse in the recent Apple NBC iTunes debacle?

The Internet is buzzing with opinions and viewpoints in the light of the planned severance to come next week, when The Peacock’s fall programming has its public debut.

Chris Tew covered the news soon after it broke, and now we receive word that, following its exit from the iTunes shop, NBC has tapped Amazon for the distribution of its content for the season ahead. So we figured we’d pick the story apart some more.

There’s no doubt that both Apple and NBC are going to lose out as a result of this separation. Whether or not NBC did in fact want a premium paid by iTunes customers for its new shows, doesn’t really matter all that much. 

Sure, the alleged demands of $4 or so per episode are no doubt outlandish, if that is indeed an accurate number. I dare say $1.99 is a pretty hefty fee already. 

Apple Provides NBC With Most Income

More important than anything, however, is the fact that NBC needs the sale of its programming on iTunes to continue, regardless of cost, because, simply put, Apple’s outlet has consistently provided the network with the most income this side of the online-offline divide. 

There’s really no getting around that truth.

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Posted in: News, Deals, Funding & Acquisitions, Broadband Video Companies, Video Distribution and Apple by Chris Tew on September 1, 2007
NBC iTunes

NBC got a little greedy yesterday when it decided to drop its contract with iTunes to sell digital downloads of TV shows on iTunes (source: NYTimes.com).

NBC was requesting that iTunes introduce stricter piracy controls and higher pricing, something that Apple was unwilling to provide. Personally I already think that iTunes is already packed with far too much DRM and the prices for TV Shows are about as high as I’d be willing to pay.

The current contract that Apple has with NBC was to run up until December this year. However, Apple bit back and decided to cut this short and stop selling NBC TV Shows in September at the end of the current TV season.  

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Posted in: Broadband Video Companies, YouTube, IPTV Research Papers and Apple by Fraser MacInnes on August 15, 2007
iphone_youtube.JPG

Is it possible that the iPhone could be a catalyst for a surge in mobile IPTV services? That’s what a recent study by the research firm Interpret seems to suggest.

According to the study, since the Apple iPhone’s release 63% of users have viewed videos on it in comparison to 28% of regular cell phone users.

Top of the touch-screen has of course been YouTube with over half of all iPhone owners claiming to have watched at least one YouTube clip on the device. Of this group 46% watched a music video, 34% watched a news report and 32% watched a movie trailer.

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Posted in: News and Apple by Fraser MacInnes on August 13, 2007

union-jack.jpgAccording to trusted sources *gestures inverted commas*, Apple is planning to bring movies and TV shows to iTunes in the UK sooner rather than later.

What is especially exciting is that the timescale mooted by these whistleblowers is weeks rather than months.

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Posted in: News, YouTube, AT&T and Apple by Kevin Groppe on July 24, 2007

apple-iphone.jpgAT&T, the sole U.S. service provider for Apple’s first phone, said it activated 146,000 iPhone subscribers in the first two days after launch on June 29. Apparently, this was well below analysts expectations for the device, resulting in over a 6% drop for Apple’ stock price in one day.

The much hyped iPhone is supposed to revolutionize the cellular market, providing easy access to online video through YouTube and the iTunes video store. I am surprised that the iPhone did not meet analysts expectations in light of the intense marketing campaign and non-stop press coverage.

By all accounts, iPhones were selling out throughout the U.S. on the weekend of its release. I wonder how many of those sales were by people looking to make a quick buck on Ebay, similar to the release of the Sony Playstation 3. A quick look on Ebay shows iPhones being sold for over $1,000. Ouch!

One interesting side note to the Apple story is that the stock price for AT&T, Apple’s partner with the iPhone, was up for the day.

Posted in: News, Peer to Peer, Mobile Video and Apple by Chris Tew on July 21, 2007

Apple iPhoneYou’ve all got your lovely brand new iPhones now then? No, ah well, those who have could be using it to download movies and media torrents.

According to a recent article on Torrentfreak, it may be possible to run Bittorrent on your Apple iPhone.

In the article they discussed the fact that the hardware of the Apple product may make it a viable option, but there are some obvious obstacles.

This is a portion of the original article:-

“The technical specifications of the device certainly make it possible. It has more than enough cpu power for it, assuming a nice, tightly coded client was written.

The built in WiFi (802.11b/g) and use of the EDGE 2.75G wireless network data transfer system allows a fairly widespread availability of reception.”

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