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

[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.