I just don't care if Unbox works with any Apple products, you see I've got a Tivo. Being able to download a show or movie from the couch and watching it on the TV is a bit more pleasant than matching a show on the iPhone.

If bandwidth were a bit better and I could watch while downloading, Amazon really would be the ultimate in convenience. It still beats iTunes by a healthy bit.

Content providers and distributors start fighting over money. Who loses?

Answer: The customer

I'm not much of an apple fan, but at least iTunes runs on Mac & Windows, more than can be said for unbox. The only solution to this problem (which affects Mac users who are unable to use the BBC iPlayer) is to stop relying on Microsoft or Apples DRM, but to develop a 3rd party, platform neutral, system

In the words of GOB (Arrested Development): "No-one looks good in this."

They wonder why we all stick to torrents? Here's your bloody reason. I want an episode to be released and for me to be able to download it, play it at full-screen DVD quality, keep forever, and play where/how I want. It's nnot rocket-science, it's just damn simple.

The reason I use torrents is not that it's free, but because it's simple without restrictions. I love Hereos and The Office, but I'm not jumping through hoops to get them. Both Apple and NBC can sod off, they seem to want to reject us as customers.

Idiots.

Agreed. (Ok, I tried "+1", but I was flagged for not entering enough characters!)

Thanks for the followup.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/31/apple_and_nbc_go_at_it/comments/

"Re: ‘Hmmm....’"

Sounds like I was right, and Universal was less interested in the money than in maintaining pissing-rights over the distribution stream.

I haven't tried Amazon's "Unboxed" feature. Are the DRM limitations stricter or looser than Apple's?

That means no legal NBC programs for us then. We can't get them from the BBC, Channel 4 or Five anyway. I'm not going to be using Amazon. So I'll stick with my torrents thank you very much. And no I don't want to watch them on an iPhone, I want to watch them on my lovely by HD TV using a Mac Mini, on my laptop, on my iPod and so forth. At least with iTunes stuff I can do all of that including my works Windows machine...

You could always watch TV programmes by watching TV you know...

> You could always watch TV programmes by watching TV you know...

Not if your parents are cavemen who thinks Satellite is the spawn of Satan and the local TV stations are run by idiots who prefer to air inane shows and cut up or cancel good shows just because they felt like it.

Not to pile on Tim J, but the ability to watch TV shows outside of the broadcast schedule is actually the greatest benefit of online distribution.