If this is the case, it has been a brilliant move. Don’t know what their future sales would reflect, but mac has already accused the punch. Just that statement about NBC video content being 40% of their video download….ouch! that must hurt. Let’s see if, as you say, other will follow. It’s shaping into quite an interesting subject to keep an eye on.

And about the new oy!Pods, I can only laugh at them. The day they can show me a wireless 2TB (yes, Tera Bytes) media player (which I just turned my old pocketpc phone into and my wife’s 2002 pocketpc), then I MAY start to to see them with a little less pitty. But, as always, mac needs to play catch-up.

Actually all this is happening right now for a reason. In a couple of weeks Apple will be announcing a new video iPod, I am sure to much hyperbole in the Apple friendly blogosphere. A place filled with personalities that like to hear themselves talk(when they are not complaining). Otherwise, Apples demographic. By moving now, the media companies will seriously blunt the coming apple PR stunt. Who cares about the next gen video ipod when there is no content for it?

From other things happening, look for FOX to announce they are dumping iTunes in the coming weeks as well. The pattern is clear now. They launch programs on the XBox, then with a couple of weeks sales they lose interest in iTunes sales potential. Basically because Apple has so far failed to deliver a seamless path to the living room television set with mass market appeal.

Oddly Apples business decisions seem more motivated more by Steve Jobs pride than any other factor. Just look at the Apple TV, it is apparent now that piece of shit was designed to fail so Steve Jobs could say to the networks with maniacal eye, “SEE our consumers are not interested in watching tv in their living room, because their living room television is not an elegant Macintosh computer!”

But mostly this is happening as a result of Apples near total failure to capitalize on iTunes video. The fact of the matter is, the all important male 18-49 demographic (read “people with money”) are more than willing to rent HD download movies for $5 a pop, and buy a HD television show for $5 an episode. My proof of this the xbox media center has, in less than a year, become the dominant movie download service as well as the dominant HD on demand server (besting not only apple in total downloads, but besting the CABLE companies in HD downloads).

It is unfortunate for the bloggosphere, that during these very public negotiations they have shown their true colors. Which is, they want their tv shows without commercials and free. I am certain that the cacaphony of posters threating to use bittorent instead of pay for content is not lost on these media companies.

Ya. Apple very much has dropped the ball on many aspects of this whole media revolution. Plenty of things they should be doing, and some that they shouldn’t.

But even with their many fuckups, they’re still on top and poised to remain there – because the others fuck up so much more.

So what you are saying is that Apple should copy the Vista+xbox combo.

Um, right.

Now it is becoming clear why NBC is dumping the inferior iTunes video store, and jumping ship to the superior xbox marketplace.

Gottcha.

Personally, I hope this is a wake up call for Steve Jobs. He really needs to stop pretending that this situation is ever going to get better. He’s been pinning a large share of the company’s future on remaking the success of the iPod/audio paradigm in video, and it just ain’t going to happen the way he’s been playing it. The hollywood studios are just too paranoid of Apple’s success – and power – at the expense of the record companies. It doesn’t matter that he’s practically saved the music industry from financial oblivion (or at least delayed it). The CEOs of these video/movie companies would rather have the ship they sail hit the shoals than give up that kind of control to one man/one company – even if it is in their shareholder’s best interests.

Jobs has been pussy-footing around this fact for too long. As a studio exec himself, he’s been ‘self-indentifying’ with them way too much. What’s good for Apple should be his focus. And what’s best for his Apple customers – not for his country-club cohorts – is what’s good for his company.

I’ve said it countless times before here, and I’m going to say it again: The iPod/iTunes system works BECAUSE the system allows you to record and/or rip your own audio and do what you want with it. The record companies don’t dare leave iTunes now because they know that people will have absolutely no incentive to buy from them otherwise – the hardware and technology Apple provides makes it easy to make them irrelevant if they try to gouge their customers.

The same thing – and ONLY the same thing – will work with video. Only when companies like NBC/Universal come to fear an AppleTV DVR, with all the software polish that only Apple can bring to bear, as well as a built in DVD player that makes ripping a snap (even if Apple doesn’t provide the software for that themselves), will they begin to negotiate with Jobs in good faith. They will do so for the same reason the record companies do now; to do otherwise is to accelerate the coming of the day when they can’t make money on selling movies or TV shows any longer.

C’mon Jobs. What more is it gonna take? How much more do you need to see? Leave the DRM shit behind. Don’t screw us over like that. Forget about tying your customers to iTunes first & foremost. If you give them the easiest way ever seen, to record their own pre-owned or already freely obtained content, then – just as with audio & the iPod – everything ‘video’ will fall into place.

All you have to do is JUST DO IT

And you have won many arguments…hmmm

Keep dreaming.

I guess I am just forced to assume that little bit of gay bashing there means I won yet another argument on this website.

But I’v got to warn you… You have also proven to be a republican sympathizer, and nowadays when I republican starts gay bashing, I have to wonder where their sexual tendencies lay.

So is there anything you want to come clean about?

What part of that did you miss? FAKE STEVE JOBS thinks vista+xbox is a better consumer multimedia platform than the Macintosh. It doesn’t get any more decisive than that.

Bzzzzzzt. OMG! You lose! No cool aid there at all.