According to an article today on BroadcastingCable, media giant NBC will begin offering “free” downloads of some if not all of its shows. The reason I quote free is because theses downloads, while they cost nothing, will only play in NBC’s software AND you will only be allowed to view each show for one week after it has aired. Furthermore, it will not be possible to transfer the shows to portable devices, at least not at this time. In order to cover for the free cost, NBC will also force viewers to sit through commercials in their downloaded shows. After all of these restrictions, I find it hard to classify these downloads as free. The service is set to begin its beta-testing stage sometime in October.
For some reason, reading about this made the song “Another one bites the dust” begin to play in the back of my mind. Maybe it’s just me, but services like this that offer “free” downloads with tons of restrictions are just not very appealing, especially when there are so many alternatives. For someone looking for a legal way of getting shows, I can see how this would be great, but there are still way too many people out there that just do not care whether it is legal or not, and that is where the biggest problem is with services like this. If they want to succeed, they need to make the service even less restrictive and give the users more control. Only then will they begin to draw users away from the illegal options. Sadly, it seems like none of the major players have figured out how to do this yet. Also noted in the article, Ipod’s will most likely not be supported. This is just another huge shot in the foot. If you’re going to have a restrictive service to begin with, at least open it up to the biggest audience possible!
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