Apple making me put my money where my mouth is.

Pilitus

Apple just released something called a multi-pass, their own version of a subscription model. You buy it, and it grabs you the current episode and gets you the next 15, so it's 3 weeks of shows for ten bucks.

And they have The Daily Show.

I'm not like our illustrious hosts, I can see the balance of the time/money equation favoring spending money sometimes, so I've used the iTunes video store.

Apreche

I saw this today. We almost talked about it on the show. My general feeling is that $10 for 16 episodes is not such a good deal. Sure, it's less than a dollar per episode. That's definitely in the ballpark of where we need to be. But when I think about what I'm willing to pay for other services it doesn't add up.

What we really need to get into is a subscription model where I can pay $5 a month for complete access to every episode of a show ever. Or perhaps $5 a year for every Formula 1 race. $10 a year for every NY Rangers Hockey Game? $5 to subscribe to a feed which gives me every episode of a new anime as it comes out. You get my drift.

Tivo/MythTV and every other PVR provides essentially this service, but with the heavy cost of Cable Television. With cable you are spending lots of money on channels you don't watch or want. We need a system where you pay only for the stuff you want when you want it, and it costs less than cable as long as you don't watch too much. Until then, bittorent.

Pilitus

The basic problem here is trying to find a justified price point. You think that the costs should be set that low. It's part of the hard part about the price for the media.

I've had this argument with another friend. I think that people who are too used to bittorent or DC think the costs should be dropped as low as they can be, or they will just steal it. I think you're probably right that media's still too expensive, but I don't want to bother with the potential legal hassles anymore and will accept paying as much as I might for a drink or a bite to eat for a piece of media.

Is $5 the right amount to pay for a TV show? To stream the episodes, maybe. The context overlords still think they are providing you with an object, and price it from that point. But what the price should be? They are giving you a digital object that is yours.

DRM is a stupid idea, I'm not going to argue that point. I've grabbed some things from DrivethruRPG.com, and I think they've gotten wind of the right idea: Watermarking. It gives you the file, free from restrictions, but with all the responsibility. Putting the file up for download is like photocopying a book and leaving it on the street corner. Giving a watermarked version to friends is just sharing the responsibilities with your friends.

Apreche

Yeah, watermarking is a different way of looking at it. Let you share stuff uninhibited with eveyrone, but know that it will be traced back to you if it gets found. The problem is that watermarking is just another form of DRM and someone will find a way to erase it. But at the same time, I might pay for something with a watermark, but not for something with "real" DRM.

Pilitus

Someone will find a way to get around every piece of DRM they come up with. I like watermarking because it makes you responsible for the file. If you want to strip it out, they can't stop you, but you probably already know of a dozen different ways to grab this file, and probably know how to get the Hi Def version of whatever video it is.

The only purpose of DRM, of any sort is to raise the effort threshold high enough that they limit the number of people who pirate.

frostbitten_panda

Regarding the second post, from Apreche, there is a service out there where you can watch streams of TV shows for 5 dollars a month. There are 44 channel/shows where they play every episode of a series in order. It can run on a number of programs and operating systems. Even if you are not subscribing you can access the channels here. If the servers are full, consider subscribing. No I am not paid to do this, this is my honest, and totally original oppinion.

Apreche

Streaming is no good. I have to be able to watch whatever I want whenever I want, even if the network connection is down.