BBC director general Mark Thompson has confirmed plans for an iTunes-style download service that will allow viewers to buy programmes minutes after they have finished on TV.
Thompson said the proposal, called Project Barcelona, would allow viewers to "purchase a digital copy of a programme to own and keep [for] a relatively modest charge".
Thompson was not specific about the timescale or pricing, but sources said it was hoped that programmes would be available to buy at the same time as they go on the iPlayer. Early speculation put the price at £1.89 a show.
People wont pay £1.89 per show, just as they didn't when they trialled publishing content through iTunes itself.
If they actually want to give this a reasonable go you'll need to be looking at a price south of 50p.
I would personally be happy to pay 99p for a TV show but no more than that.
The idea of paying, for example £12 for a series of Doctor Who which you don't tangibly own (so can't realise any value from it if you get fed up with it) is ludicrous, let alone the £20ish it'd be at £1.89/episode. A decade on from the fall of Napster and the old media institutions still don't get it.
People wont pay £1.89 per show, just as they didn't when they trialled publishing content through iTunes itself.
If they actually want to give this a reasonable go you'll need to be looking at a price south of 50p.
I would personally be happy to pay 99p for a TV show but no more than that.
The idea of paying, for example £12 for a series of Doctor Who which you don't tangibly own (so can't realise any value from it if you get fed up with it) is ludicrous, let alone the £20ish it'd be at £1.89/episode. A decade on from the fall of Napster and the old media institutions still don't get it.
Agreed.
"Micropayments" - wasn't that the watch word? £1.89 or even 99p is ludicrous.
Pricing will need to be close to the market though, iTunes and AZ Video Download (when available here - late 2012 I understand) will be the relevant market prices, esp. if independent producers are to come onboard.
Any suggestion of undercutting will lead to predatory pricing allegations, especially considering the multi retailer approach highlighted in Thompson's speech ...
I'd expect material broadcast in the last six months will attract a premium and will retail close to the quoted £1.89 level per episode, with appropriate reductions for whole series.
Older programming should come in at around £1.29 per hour, and genuine archive items at around £0.79 p/h. Series discounts applying. Fawlty Towers for example being available for something around £5.
There might be a Netflix package available too in due course.
You're right, of course, but I simply don't think people pay that - be it from iTunes or anywhere else.
£5 for all of Fawlty Towers works out as 41p per episode - a significant discount on the episode rates you've quoted but still too much. Not so long ago I bought both series of The Office and the specials all for £5 in as-new condition from That's Entertainment. For that I get a video which I can quite easily play on just about anything I want, and if I decide I'm never gonna watch it again I could release a couple of quid of its value through ebay.
If I was offered the same for a download, I'd just think "psssh" and hit up my favourite torrent site.
I'm guessing that older programmes will be 'airbrushed' to meet today's politically correct standards (or 'compliance policy' as the BBC call it), as has been the case with dialogue and scenes being chopped from re-runs of classics like Only Fools And Horses, Some Mothers Do Ave Em, etc.
If this proves to be the case then sadly it won't be a true archive, in the same sense that a library wouldn't be a true archive if every work of literature had been butchered with a pair of scissors to comply with someone's arbitrary policy on what is 'acceptable' by 2012 standards.
I'm guessing that older programmes will be 'airbrushed' to meet today's politically correct standards (or 'compliance policy' as the BBC call it), as has been the case with dialogue and scenes being chopped from re-runs of classics like Only Fools And Horses, Some Mothers Do Ave Em, etc.
If this proves to be the case then sadly it won't be a true archive, in the same sense that a library wouldn't be a true archive if every work of literature had been butchered with a pair of scissors to comply with someone's arbitrary policy on what is 'acceptable' by 2012 standards.
And yet nobody seems to have a problem with the Tracy Family sitting around smoking on Tracy Island in Thunderbirds?
Suspect how popular this is will depend on the DRM approach used and what 'Connected TV' platforms it will play on, and whether it is integrated into iPlayer or not.
If you can purchase a show, and then 'log in' to iPlayer to watch it on any platform that supports iPlayer via streaming, then that could be very persuasive, as loads of TVs and Blu-ray players now support iPlayer (as do Freesat and some Freeview receivers, and soon Sky boxes)
Personally, I'll always buy Blu-rays where possible, as the quality is usually better than that available via other outlets (even the new iTunes 1080p stuff is entirely average)
Presumably one big advantage of the BBC proposition over iTunes is that it won't be an unwatchably mangled standards-converted mess (as the current BBC content on iTunes is) The iTunes store only sells US frame rate content, so any UK material shot 50i or 25 is mangled to a US frame rate (and not very well). The current Apple TV also runs at 60Hz (it doesn't deal with 24Hz properly either) only AIUI - so even if you could get 25/50Hz content into it, you'd get it played out with nasty motion judder at 60.
If they can sort out delivering 50i or 50p content properly via their proposition (rather than converting everything to 25p) - so much the better (They've managed 720/50p on iPlayer for Strictly 3D)
If this proves to be the case then sadly it won't be a true archive, in the same sense that a library wouldn't be a true archive if every work of literature had been butchered with a pair of scissors to comply with someone's arbitrary policy on what is 'acceptable' by 2012 standards.
Some stuff can't legally be released or could only be done so with edits. For example, facts in some documentaries and news reports will have changed since broadcast and might not legally be able to go out again.
I believe that was part of the reason why they had to take their library database offline - there were data protection and legal issues with some of the logging