Sandy McMurray is a long-time technology journalist whose work has appeared in Time, the Globe & Mail, the Toronto Sun, Report on Business, Profit, and other sources. Between 1995 - 2002, Sandy wrote a weekly column about technology for the Toronto Sun, and served as Technology Editor for five Sun Media newspapers. He has been publishing on the Web since 1996. Contact:readme@mac.com
The NBC deal expands Apple's TV offering to 300 episodes of 16 different series and Zucker said that number will expand quickly as NBC Uni fills the iTunes pipe with new shows.
"You are going to see a series of announcements in the coming weeks," he said.
Variety says NBC was motivated by the growth of illegal downloads -- the network estimates that there are 430,000 illegal downloads of "Battlestar Galactica" each week.
The NBC deal expands Apple's TV offering to 300 episodes of 16 different series and Zucker said that number will expand quickly as NBC Uni fills the iTunes pipe with new shows.
"You are going to see a series of announcements in the coming weeks," he said.
Variety says NBC was motivated by the growth of illegal downloads -- the network estimates that there are 430,000 illegal downloads of Battlestar Galactica each week.
The new NBC lineup on iTunes includes some interesting price flexibility. Although most of the full-length episodes sell for $1.99 each -- just like the Disney/ABC shows -- there are some exceptions.
The award for highest price goes to Conan O'Brien, for the two hour-long specials that sell for $9.99 each: the 10th Anniversary Special and The Best of Triumph the Insult Dog.
(If something is already available on DVD, shouldn't the lower quality iTunes video version cost less? But I digress...)
First season episodes of Battlestar Gallactica are $1.99 each, but episodes from the current season are available for $15.99 as an "album" (hey, it's still the iTunes Music Store). That's nearly $4 per episode. (Update: My mistake. The $15.99 price was for the four episode BG mini-series, not for the current season, which sells for $1.99 per episode.)
Finally, consider the Tonight Show clips, which are priced at $1.99 but last about six minutes each. The Pixar short films look like an incredible deal next to the best of Jay Walking.
(Then again, that's the same price as the music videos, so I guess value is in the eye of the downloader.)
I guess we'll soon know which product is hot and which is overpriced. At least, Apple will know -- they'll be able to count the downloads and recommend pricing sweet spots to NBC, ABC and future partners.
NBC Universal and Apple today announced an unprecedented lineup of new primetime, cable, late-night and classic TV shows, including primetime hits such as “Law & Order” and late-night favorites such as sketches from “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on the iTunes Music Store (www.itunes.com). iTunes now offers more than 300 episodes of 16 popular TV shows for viewing on a computer or iPod. Customers have purchased and downloaded more than three million videos since their debut on October 12, making the iTunes Music Store the world’s most popular video download store.
NBC Universal programming now available on the iTunes Music Store spans from the 1950s to the present, including NBC’s “Law & Order,” “The Office,” “Surface,” “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” “Late Night with Conan O'Brien,” the USA Network’s Emmy Award-winning “Monk” and Sci-Fi Channel’s “Battlestar Galactica” as well as classic TV shows including “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Dragnet,” “Adam-12” and “Knight Rider,” on the iTunes Music Store beginning today. Customers can purchase and download their favorite shows, including current shows the day after they air on TV, and watch them on their computer or iPod. The NBC Universal programs will be available in newly designated areas of the iTunes Music Store featuring the NBC Universal brands, including the NBC network, Sci-Fi Channel and the USA Network.
“We’re thrilled to expand the iTunes video catalog with 11 popular TV shows from NBC, USA Network and the Sci-Fi Channel,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “In our first two months we’ve sold more than three million videos, and have expanded our TV catalog from five shows to 16 shows.”
Like the deal with Disney/ABC, this distribution deal is U.S. only for now.
You can bet the phones are ringing at CBS and Fox today. And Paramount. And Sony. And...
Freedom to Tinker takes another look at the Sony rootkit software (XCP) and finds something interesting inside.
For weeks, the blogosphere has been abuzz with tales of intrigue about Sony’s XCP copy protection system. Among the strangest revelations was that XCP itself infringes on the copyrights to several open source software projects. In one case, Sam Hocevar found conclusive evidence that part of XCP’s code was copied from a program called DRMS, which he co-authored with DVD Jon and released under the terms of the GPL open source license. What made this finding particularly curious is that the purpose of DRMS is to break the copy protection on songs sold in Apple’s iTunes Music Store. Why would XCP rip off code intended to defeat another vendor’s DRM?
The answer is that XCP utilizes the DRMS code not to remove Apple DRM but to add it. I’ve discovered that XCP uses code from DRMS as part of a hidden XCP feature that provides iTunes and iPod compatibility.
Paul Murphy at ZDNet predicts that Intel delays and high costs will force Apple to delay the launch of Intel-based Macs, or make serious compromises to meet price targets.
Apple said that net sales of iPods rose $3.2 billion, or 248 percent, during 2005 compared to 2004. The company said it sold 22.5 million iPods in fiscal 2005, an increase of 409 percent from the 4.4 million iPod sold in 2004. Apple has now shipped more than 30 million iPods since the device’s introduction four years ago.
After accepting the plea and a previously arranged deal with prosecutors on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton ordered Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and its U.S. subsidiary, Samsung Semiconductor Inc., to pay $300-million (U.S.) — the second-largest fine in a criminal antitrust case in the United States...
Earlier this year, Seoul-based Hynix Semiconductor Inc. agreed to pay a $185-million fine; rival Infineon Technologies AG of Germany agreed to pay $160-million last year. A fourth chip maker, Micron Technology Inc. of Boise, Idaho, has been co-operating with prosecutors and was not expected to face charges.
In my other life as a tech writer, I occasionally write video game reviews. The pre-Christmas flood of product began to arrive a few weeks ago, and I've been playing console games -- Xbox, PS2 and GameCube -- ever since.
Although we have an iMac and an iBook in the house, we have very few recent Mac games. Like many people with game consoles, I rarely think of my computer as a game machine (except when I'm playing Lux or Pax Galaxia or iPoker).
We have family coming for the holidays, and I need some ideas. Can you recommend some great games? (We have a pretty good collection of games for OS 9, but I'm trying to run a Classic-free Mac household these days.)
Categories of interest:
1. Simple arcade-type online games (e.g. GameHouse titles).
2. Inexpensive (or free) games for children under 12.
3. Puzzle games for adults (especially for women).
Post suggestions in the comments section or send e-mail to readme@mac.com
I'd also like to hear from companies that make or sell games for Mac OS X. (Yes, I would be delighted to play and review your games, thanks! Contact me for shipping information.)
idleTunes has a host of useful features:
- find and insert album artwork into tracks
- copy iTunes playlists to any MP3 player
- export iTunes playlists as M3U, PLS, or B4S
- remove "dead" tracks from your library
- create playlists for all of the albums in your library
- create playlists for all of the artists in your library
- delete user playlists
By far the coolest feature of idleTunes is the way that it makes iTunes compatible with non-iPod portable music players, including intelligently renaming files when copying a playlist onto a screenless flash player to ensure the play order stays intact. Brilliant! And did I mention it’s free?
Finally, no post about how to fix iTunes would be complete without some directions on how to clean up your library and get consistent ID3 tags. For that, I'll direct you to Connected Internet, who has a great primer on how to use MusicBrainz Tagger to rationalize your music collection. It takes some time, but MusicBrainz makes it as quick and painless as it can be, and the results are definitely worth it.
Tony Smith at the Register suggests that Microsoft is pushing for a universal dock standard to help competitors take on the iPod.
Tony's reasoning: if rival MP3 players can use the iPod dock it loses a competitive advantage. If Apple opposes an emerging industry standard, that's bad for Apple and good for its competitors. Either way, creating an industry standard is good for those who create it.
In other words, if you can't beat 'em, make them join you.
Tech buzz of the day goes to Microsoft, not just for the launch of the Xbox 360, but for Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE) -- a proposal to extend RSS to make it easier to share data more easily. Call it bidirectional RSS.
Those who have seen Microsoft embrace, extend and extinguish technologies before will probably be more than a little suspicious, but on the face of it, SSE looks like a good idea.
NBC President 
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