the mini Blog

Interestingly, although iTunes 6 was announced and you can see the ads places on Apple’s page above, if you click the link for iTunes it just shows the page for iTunes 5. This only seems to be happening for the UK site, which was updated later when iTunes 5 was released.

What do they cost? $1.99 [£1.89] each. But we didn’t stop there; we’re adding some other videos you can buy. Pixar is putting up six of their award-winning short videos. $1.99 each. We are downloading videos 320 x 240, which is the native resolution of the iPod. They’re about the size of six songs. All songs are governed by FairPlay. You can play them on up to five computers. They’re not rentals. You own them — they never time out. We have one more thing today, a pretty big thing. We’re announcing one more thing that you can buy off the iTunes store today, and that is TV shows. What’s the number one show on TV? What’s the second? Lost. And who has these shows? ABC. And who owns ABC? [Disney logo on screen.] I know those guys! Lost, Desperate Housewives, Night Stalker, That’s So Raven, The Suite Life. Yes, you can buy current episodes, and you can buy them the day after they are broadcast. They’re ad free so you don’t need to fast forward through the commercials, 320 x 240 again. An hour show is about the size of five albums. Depending on your speed it’s about 10-20 minute to download an episode. What are they going to cost? $1.99 an episode for current season and past seasons. We have free previews on every episode.

This seems really cool, as most of these shows air in the UK as well and are broadcast by a variety of channels, such as Channel 4 for ‘Lost’, The Disney Channel for ‘That’s So Raven’ and ‘The Suite Life’. I am going to be interested to see how Apple work it out in the UK, or at least I hope they do something because it would be a really big blow if it was only for the US. We just have to sit and wait, again.

Apple Website (US - iTunes 6)