NBC Universal, a media and entertainment company that recently went head-to-head with Apple Inc. over an iTunes contract, announced on Wednesday that it will make episodes of its popular TV shows available for download on its Web site for one week after their original broadcast.
NBC’s free download service, called NBC Direct, will allow users to download shows such as "Heroes" and "The Office" episodes for free to computers running Microsoft Windows software for up to a week after the show has first aired on television.
NBC Direct will start in beta mode in October and will make episodes available for download from NBC.com (http://NBC.com) on Windows-based PCs. The downloaded file will be encrypted so that it can only be watched for seven days after the show airs on the network. A week after the episode's TV debut, the digital file will expire. TV commercials will come embedded with the shows and cannot be skipped.
"With the creation of this new service, we are acknowledging that now, more than ever, viewers want to be in control of how, when and where they consumer their favorite entertainment," said Vivi Zigler, Executive Vice President of NBC Digital Entertainment.
The shows that will become available at launch include "Heroes," "The Office," "Life," "Bionic Woman," "30 Rock," "Friday Night Lights," "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" and "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."
However, the new service has some limits, like downloads can only be watched for a week after the show airs on the network and the programs will only work on Windows-based PCs.
NBC is also planning on expanding its service. The Peacock Network says users will soon have a Macintosh version, and they will also be able to transfer the content from their PCs to a portable viewing device in near future.
NBC said its initiative would be expanded in coming months to let users subscribe to an entire season of a show and have content download automatically each week, similar to a TiVo Season Pass.
The service eventually will include DRM-protected episodes compatible with Macs and portable devices and the high-definition shows will ultimately be available through peer-to-peer technology, which will speed the download of larger files, NBC said.
The move from NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., comes days after it declined to renew its contract to sell TV shows on iTunes because of a dispute with Apple over pricing. The media conglomerate has pulled its new shows from iTunes early this month, three months ahead of the current contract that is due to expire in December.
In December, 2005, Apple Inc. and NBC Universal announced a tie up to present iTunes users with NBC shows on demand for a price of $1.99 per episode. But, NBC reportedly has started demanding additional money from Apple, forcing the iPod/Mac maker to charge more for downloads of its TV shows.
Apple, on the other hand, expressed their unwillingness to increase the price of NBC downloads. "We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase," said Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of iTunes, in a statement last month.
Apple, last month, accused NBC of demanding "more than double the wholesale price" for each of its TV episodes, which according to the computer maker would have increased the retail price of each download to $4.99, from the current $1.99 price.
However, NBC Universal, whose programming currently accounts for about 40% of all iTunes video downloads, argued over the way Apple characterized the situation.
"We never asked to double the wholesale price for our TV shows. In fact, our negotiations were centered on our request for flexibility in wholesale pricing, including the ability to package shows together in ways that could make our content even more attractive for consumers," Cory Shields, executive vice president of communications for NBC Universal, contended at the time.
NBC’s refusal to renew its agreement with iTunes to make its catalogue available over the store had come nearly two months after another media giant, the Universal Music Group, declined to renew its annual contract with the computer maker turned Internet jukebox powerhouse to sell music through its online iTunes Music Store.
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