14 DAY TRIAL // Things are definitely heating up in the digital video download market and unlike with music, the studios seems to be more willing to experiment and reach out into new ways of getting their content across. Despite the conflicts, Apple is holding its ground and doing things its way.
NBC Universal's fall out with Apple had people worried that other networks would follow suit but it would seem that this was just a minor step on the roads that both companies are walking. Beside its upcoming Hulu service, NBC has announced that it will be offering TV shows such as Heroes and The Office through its NBC Direct download service. Supported by embedded advertising, these shows will only be available to Windows users. Considering the way in which these shows are offered, it seems that this would have been NBC's next move regardless of whether they continued to do business with Apple or not.
Far from siding with NBC, both Fox and CBS are extending their partnership with Apple to bring season premieres to the iTunes Store for free. Fox will be offering the season premiere of Prison Break for free download through the service and intend to follow it by offering the premier show of new series, K-Ville. Meanwhile CBS plans to make the series premiere of The Big Bang Theory sitcom available for free download through the iTunes store.
Despite its partisan nature, the maneuvering between the networks will only end up being beneficial to customers. The more alternative methods of getting the content across are experimented, the greater the chances that people will find a service that they do like. The only real downside is that almost no service outside of Apple's will work on any non-Windows platform. There has been speculation that NBC will eventually return to iTunes for the simple reason that it will make business sense to do so. So far Apple's service remains the most popular and not being on board means losing money pointlessly, considering that the contracts are non-exclusive.