TEXTLESS MATERIAL

[prog]

I experimentally bought an episode of Battlestar from iTunes last night. It was a nice experience, other than the long download time - it took about as long to obtain as the length of the show itself. The video quality was fine, though, better than the miniseries rips I got offa BitTorrent. I played it on my TV and to my eye it was as good as a cable broadcast. Or at least a cable broadcast saved to TiVo and then replayed.

Curiously, after the show ends and the credits are done, there's a minute of black screen followed by the mysterious title TEXTLESS MATERIAL. The next few minutes contain a silent reprise of all the episode's video sequences that contained title overlays, except with the titles removed. So the whole opening-credits sequence is there - with no credits - and then several snippets of scenes that contained either further credits or narrative titles (the datelines & timestamps that sometimes appear with a computery noise during establishing shots), now denuded.

What was that doing there? I can't imagine that it was included for the benefit of iTunes customers. It must have served some other purpose on the source medium, and whoever created the iTunes export was too lazy to crop it. Interesting.

Update Yes, I know about Google. I knew one of you pugnosed wiseniks would call me on it. Tpppth. Last time I think out loud

Comments

[xach.livejournal.com]

Google has a lot of useful answers.

[prog.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it does.

[gemini6ice.livejournal.com]

All I found was "Don't divide by x: it could be zero." Somehow this answer seems irrelevant to the issue at hand.

[gemini6ice.livejournal.com]

I don't like the idea of being charged for shows that would be free to watch on a physical TV. I don't understand why the networks don't simply release their shows for us online with the commercials included.

[prog.livejournal.com]

The first thing I think of is that it would be hard to enforce actually watching the commercials.

I'm sure they're trying to figure out a way anyway.

At any rate, the counterargument is that it's like buying a fraction of a DVD this way, in the same way that buying one song from iTunes is like getting a piece of a CD. (Except that you don't yet a nice box, or extra features, or commentary, and you have to burn it yourself if you want it on hard media. And high-quality video takes up a lot of space on your hard drive until you do burn it somewhere.)

(Side argument: shows that are spearheading the online-sales experiment, like BSG and Lost, ease the lack of DVD commentary by providing free podcasts from the producers that are released in time with the shows...)

[gemini6ice.livejournal.com]

It doesn't seem that it would be that hard to have segments of video that tell the player to disallow any fast-forwarding or rewinding. Well, once you put together a format that has that capability anyway. Since Apple has its hands all over the m4v format, there wouldn't be much compatibility issue if they added that capability.

I can see that counterargument, but if I like a show enough to keep it, I'm willing to go ahead and purchase the full DVD: a commercially printed disc is way nicer than a DVD-R with the sharpied words, "LOST 2x01-2x05." And if I'm going to lay down the money for the full dvd box set later on, it seems like a waste to pay per episode now.

They should develop some subscirption service where you can pre-order (and pay for) the box set, but go ahead and download the episodes until the final dvds are released.

[prog.livejournal.com]

That's not a terrible idea.

I'm certainly more of a fan of the way things are going than the way things are.

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

"free" to watch on a physical tv if you pay the monthly cable fee that allows you to get the programming you want. That's not really free.

Me, I watch very little tv programming. So little that paying for cable every month isn't worth it to me. Now, I actually haven't looked into it, so I don't know how much episodes through iTunes cost, but for someone like me who only occasionally happens upon something I want to watch, and would sometimes prefer not to wait for it to be available on DVD (which I might rent or purchase), being able to purchase as a download closer in time to the air date, seems like a good thing.

[gemini6ice.livejournal.com]

For the cable networks, yes. But NBC, ABC and their ilk count in the "free" block. I realize that BSG, the show at hand, is on sci-fi and therefore a show one must pay a cable bill to see normally.

I'd rather see the episode before I decide if I want to keep it. If it's something I'd watch only once (*cough* Jericho), then it's not worth my money.

I also watch very little tv programming. In fact, Heroes, Jericho, and Dexter are the first TV series I've watched in almost three years. I own no TV, so I have to get all my episodes from online. Heroes and Dexter are worth their prices, but I am going to buy the DVDs when they come out, so I would be ripped off if I bought the episodes twice. Jericho... well, considering the quality of writing on the show, the price in the itunes store is a rip-off. I'd pay fifty cents to a dollar to watch them.

To be honest, I download rips of the episodes by torrent right now. I would prefer to watch them in some manner that the networks could track for the purposes of ratings though, if possible. And I would like to support them by having the ads in the episodes. I kind of wish that the rippers wouldn't cut the ads. NBC releases the episodes in streaming flash video on their site, but not until the day after it airs. I can't wait that long for my Heroes fix, and streaming video almost always condemns me to buffering hell.

[lediva.livejournal.com]

So... what _is_ it?