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05/08/2008, 10:00am, EDT

Thursday, May 8th

NBC streams iPhone/Touch-ready TV shows

Owners of an iPhone or iPod touch can now stream episodes of select NBC TV shows, observers note. By visiting nbc.com, users can gain access to complete episodes of 30 Rock or The Office, presented free of advertising and in an unprotected QuickTime format. The video quality is extremely rough, however, and at least one publication has reported iPhone lockups.

Any form of NBC support for Apple products is unusual, as the two companies had a public falling-out in 2007, which resulted in the removal of NBC videos from iTunes. The studio also went on to form a rival collaboration with Fox, Hulu.com, which operates in Flash and as such does not support iPhones or iPod touches. The company's main complaint has been Apple's inflexibility in pricing schemes; the impasse may be nearing an end though, as the UK iTunes Store recently began selling NBC videos at varying price scales. Apple has not commented publicly on the matter in recent weeks.


Filed under: iPod, iPhone
Other story tags: video, iPod touch, NBC

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Awful quality
0
05/08, 9:52am, EDT
Video is muddy and out of sync with audio. Unwatchable.
Hmmm
1
05/08, 10:56am, EDT
So you leave because of inflexible pricing, and your solution is to give it away free, with no ads? I don't see the revenue model in there, but, then again, I'm no media exec.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined Jul 2003
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Wow
0
05/08, 11:16am, EDT
The audio is out of sync with the video by 2-3 seconds. It's really only useable to listen to and glance down at occasionally.
Junior Member
Joined Oct 1999
User is offline
NBC insulting
0
05/08, 12:45pm, EDT
I almost see this as NBC flipping-off Mac users. In a world where most online video quality has progressed to mpeg-4/H.264 quality even for Flash, for NBC to present this deliberately backwards level of quality is an insult.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined Nov 2006
User is offline
what?
0
05/10, 10:22am, EDT
So NBC benefits by getting $0 instead of $2 and we benefit because instead of high quality we get low quality?

I'm going to trade in my mid size SUV for a Hummer, since I'm fed up with gas prices.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined Jun 2005
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