Filed under: Apple Corporate, iTS
Apple: 200m TV episodes sold, 1m in HD
Apple issued a press release today saying over 200 million television episodes have been purchased through the iTunes store, one million of them in high definition.
High definition episodes have been available since Apple's "Let's Rock" event on September 9. That averages out to over 27,000 HD downloads per day.
The press release also said the iTunes store is offering America's four major networks' fall prime-time lineup in HD for the first time.
Apple was a little late to the HD download game, however. The Xbox 360 introduced HD via Xbox Live way back in November of 2006.
[Via IGM.]
Get a WordPress.com Blog
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Josh said 1:44PM on 10-16-2008
Does that count the freebies they gave out the first few days?
Reply
Aron T said 1:51PM on 10-16-2008
What really frustrates me about HD TV shows on iTunes is that you can't access the 5.1 audio stream unless you output using an Apple TV.
You can see the stream in QuickTime and VLC but it is locked down in someway that prevents it from being played back. The file is limited to 2.0 stereo on a Mac and has use of 2.0 or 5.1 surround on an Apple TV.
I wrote a nice letter of complaint and while Apple was kind enough to refund my money that does not solve the underlying problem of me not wanting to buy an Apple TV.
Reply
Aron T said 1:55PM on 10-16-2008
I should clarify, you cannot actually see the audio "stream". What you can do is use QuickTime or VLC's useful movie properties inspector to visually confirm the presence of a 5.1 audio stream.
Efforts to extract the 5.1 stream or transcode the video file without the 2.0 stream proved to be fruitless.
NutMac said 5:19PM on 10-16-2008
While I can understand iTunes for Windows not being able to handle Dolby Digital, every Macs come with Dolby Digital playback codec (included with DVD Player). It is rather strange that neither QuickTime nor iTunes can decode Dolby Digital audio. Perhaps DVD, too (not just Blu-Ray) suffers from complex licensing issues.
totoro said 2:19PM on 10-16-2008
Any idea how many HD TV shows Xbox360 has sold since 2006?
Reply
adam said 9:49PM on 10-17-2008
useless for Canadians ... xbox 360 doesn't have any tv shows available in Canada and the tv shows that apple has available for Canada I wouldn't watch even if I was paid!
Reply
required said 4:48PM on 10-16-2008
Netflix or your local rental is a much better option for HDTV (1080p) because an entire season of a show fits onto one Blu-Ray.
Paying to view episodes piecemeal is crazy.
Reply
Eideard said 5:09PM on 10-16-2008
And, uh, how many HD downloads from the free-spending XBox crowd?
Reply
Chris said 5:47PM on 10-16-2008
Oh wow! In how many countries is it available??? Over here in Austria (i.e. EU) we don't even have films. Rentals, TV shows and stuff would also be nice but there you go. But who would imagine a country with only 8 Mio. inhabitants worth the money of starting discussing with the appropriate studios etc. See not much money to be gained here and we don't speak English as our mother tongue which makes the matter even more difficult (which lets me assume that if films etc will be available her in 2021 I guess I won't be able to watch them in English which I prefer because the rights to that would be somewhere else...namely the US and the UK bla bla bla). Damn it why can't there be some sort of world wide regulation or at least a EU wide. I just want to give you money!
Reply
Cetha said 8:21PM on 10-16-2008
someone should tell those 200m people that most of those shows are available to watch for free on nbc.com and abc.com, heck even sci-fi.com for your BSG fix....cbs.com is a bit behind the times, but they are getting there slowly....and let's not forget hulu...I used to have season passes to quite a few shows on itunes, but now I don't pay for any, and I got rid of cable as well...all hail the 21st century :)
Reply
endoverend said 8:38PM on 10-16-2008
I don't understand how they sell one.
So let me get this straight...I can buy "The Office" season pass from Apple for $60 in HD. And I can watch it in 5.1 only if I have an AppleTV. ($229).
Or I can run a MythTV and legally obtain it from an HDTV card and $20 over-the-air HD antenna in 720p quality with 5.1 audio intact, and no digital rights management headache. The OTA version does of course come with commercials, but those can be automatically skipped.
Or I can buy the season on DVD. In the case of "The Office", season 4 is currently $31 on Amazon, vs. $42 on iTunes. The DVDs can easily be ripped out with HandBrake as well.
And of course torrent sites have it all for free as usual, which means that the producers of the iTunes-marketed TV shows have absolutely nothing to gain from embedding them within a DRM layer other than to annoy their customers.
The only business case I can see for wanting to use iTunes to buy a TV show is if you missed a particular episode and want to watch it right now.
Reply
rdas7 said 4:56AM on 10-17-2008
"The only business case I can see for wanting to use iTunes to buy a TV show is if you missed a particular episode and want to watch it right now."
It has to do with licensing issues, and content providers' restrictions that they place on Apple. Steve Jobs' letter about DRM in regards to music establishes fairly clearly Apple's position on DRM as a whole. You can be sure that as soon as the business deals allow it, they will remove DRM restrictions to video as they did for audio.