Comments on: ‘The Office’ moves to Amazon’s Unbox

By: Disco Lemonade

Disco Lemonade — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:38:25 +0000

I sent this to NBC today: If you want to sell your product on amazon, so be it. I’ve read forum posts about it and it seems like it limits your sales by not being available to mac users and not being available outside the US. Why can’t you offer it on iTunes as well? You can have your loyal iTunes fans buy it at your old wholesale price and people who don’t like iTunes or don’t have iPods can buy it from amazon for your new wholesale price. It’s a win win. You’ve covered more markets and the customers get to buy from the platform they want. I tried to buy The Office as soon as it premiered and just found out why it wasn’t available last night. I will not download it or buy the DVD unless it’s put back on iTunes though. I’ll just have a friend tape it on her VCR for me and go watch it at her house and fast forward through the commercials. I will also share this work-around solution, so that people stop feeling trapped by this and remember that we have other options besides the few you are giving us.

By: Shayna

Shayna — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 19:05:55 +0000

Like one of the previous posters, I live in the Middle East and NBC does not allow me to download the episodes. I also own a Mac (my second strike) and Unbox does not work with Mac. What am I supposed to do?

By: nowwhat?

nowwhat? — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 23:26:13 +0000

[from tanster: 200-word limit]

By: Lauren

Lauren — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 12:30:57 +0000

I’m confused. Does this mean that the Office will still be available on itunes through December?
The NBC statement seems to confirm this, but the statement from Apple says the new season won’t be available at all. This is a matter of life and death for me. I just moved to Vietnam with the understanding that I could still catch TO on itunes. I even bought a $50 gift certificate b4 i left the states just so I could do this without any problems. I checked out umbox and it says that TO will only be available in the continental U.S. I’ll die if I can’t get any Office over here.

By: kt42

kt42 — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 06:14:49 +0000

I’m glad the episodes will be available from elsewhere. iTunes picture quality is so terrible you have to play episodes half-size so they appear clear.

And hopefully this NBC/iTunes rift means that there will be less annoying Apple product placement in future Office episodes.

By: _bales

_bales — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 19:10:19 +0000

hi everyone! I was just browsing through Amazon UnBox and discovered that NBC is offering the premieres of “Chuck”, “Bionic Woman”, “Life” and “Journeyman” for free download. I was harboring the faint hope that the premiere of “The Office” might also be available too, but alas, it seems the offer is only limited to new shows. Still, hope this news is helpful to fellow OT posters!

By: Alison

Alison — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:25:10 +0000

I am still extrememly angry at NBC, but maybe this is why they left Apple:

Link
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117971505.html?categoryid=14&cs=1

I think 99 cents would be a wonderful price for a tv show, and I would totally still buy the dvds because I HAVE to have the extras.

By: _bales

_bales — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 02:58:59 +0000

I’m just thinking during the negotiation for a new iTunes deal, the NBC negotiator was trying to pull a Wikipedia on Apple, but the Apple negotiator found out the NBC guy was wearing lady clothes.

By: Shane

Shane — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 13:24:28 +0000

NBC has now shut out all Mac users too, as Unbox doesn’t work on a Mac. I’m hopeful NBC will rethink their decision and come back to iTunes.

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 00:47:48 +0000

NBC may be getting more of cut of each download through Unbox, but I sure hope they notice when their sales tank as the episodes for Season 4 start coming online.

So they decide to leave the most popular service that has the most devices attached to it. They’re certainly not making a statement by leaving – just ticking off a bunch of customers.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 17:23:21 +0000

Does anyone know if any other networks have decided not to sell programing on iTunes, or is it just NBC Universal?

By: Rayne

Rayne — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 16:41:19 +0000

To Ashman:

Did you try the Amazon download or Hulu?

By: Ashman

Ashman — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 14:03:48 +0000

At first I thought this was great news, that we would be able to download the show after all… then I tried it out. Ugh. It was a pain to set up and download and the video quality is inferior to that of the iTunes downloads, big time. NBC and Apple, kiss and make up already!

By: Jane

Jane — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 05:21:25 +0000

I frankly don’t know why NBC is bitching about the price. iTunes literally gave The Office (and thus NBC) its much needed fan-base and regular viewers.

By: kla

kla — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 05:00:09 +0000

As a die-hard Creative Zen (I own a Zen Micro identical to Pam’s Prism DuroSport) girl, I’m totally fine. Never have been a fan of the iPod, (I much prefer Creative,) but I understand people’s frustration since it is the big mp3 player out there.
I have a feeling that NBC and Apple’s relationship isn’t over, just sidetracked for a while. The contract isn’t up until December, so it’s still possible.

By: Big Turkey

Big Turkey — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 03:14:00 +0000

Maybe NBC wanted iTunes to pay more per episode, not neccessarily charge customers more per episode. Does that make sense?

Sure, Amazon is charging the same price as iTunes was at $1.99, but that doesn’t mean that NBC isn’t getting more money from Amazon than they got with their previous contract through iTunes. For example, say Apple was paying NBC 75 cents for every download, but now NBC is wanting Apple to give them $1.25 for every episode downloaded. Add that up, and that’s a lot of extra moola. Apple said no, and Amazon said “$1.25? No problem.”

Either way, though, I shun Unbox and NBC for this terrible decision. I will unshun when it’s undone. :)

By: Fat Halbert

Fat Halbert — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 02:21:08 +0000

[from tanster: please punctuate and re-post. thanks!]

By: zurik

zurik — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 02:17:31 +0000

Deer Jerky made a good point… The heart of this issue is DRM. Apple has not licensed their DRM technology to other companies, meaning you must have an Apple product to play your purchased iTunes content. On the other end of the spectrum, Microsoft’s DRM technology is freely licensed and there are dozens of services (like Unbox) offering music and video in Windows Media format. With the exception of the Zune, which uses a new proprietory Zune-only DRM, almost all non-Apple devices support Windows Media. And the devices are NOT tied to a specific service provider. Unfortunately there is no universal DRM scheme, although several lawsuits in Europe (against Apple and others) seek to change this.

By: awesomeblossom

awesomeblossom — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 02:02:17 +0000

[from tanster: please punctuate, spellcheck, and re-post. thanks!]

By: zurik

zurik — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 01:59:29 +0000

I have to disagree with Dementia AL that Apple’s dominance of the MP3 market is due to a superior product. The reason for it’s dominance is because it’s a vertically integrated package… If you buy the iPod, you’re going to use iTunes. Apple knows this and it was a very smart move. But I would bet that many of the people buying iPods don’t even know there are other products out there — they know iPod and thats what they buy. That doesn’t mean it’s a better product.