News

NBC Experiments with Free TV Shows on iPhone

Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 1:45 PM - by

NBC has made two of its popular shows available, 30 Rock and The Office, available, for free, on the Apple iPhone and iPod touch. The streams are commercial free.

The URL is <http://m.nbc.com/iphone/fullepisodes.shtml> and it won't work with Safari on the Mac side or even MarketCircle's iPhoney.


NBC's TV shows have been pulled from iTunes over pricing disputes, but NBC appears to be willing to try this experiment with the iPhone and iPod touch. With the data rate involved, it's definitely an Wi-Fi option only. Don't try it with EDGE.

Also, since the videos are streamed, they can't be stored on the iPhone, giving NBC the instant DRM it wants. It's not yet clear what the future of this project is, but NBC will certainly be watching the numbers for now.

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A guest said: (hide)

Thu May 08, 2008 2:56 pm

I gladly paid for 'The Office" when it was on iTunes. I haven't seen an episode since NBC dropped iTunes, not as a boycott, I'm not home at night for network TV.

Streaming isn't an option either, just doesn't work well on the commute to work.

Eureka and Psych were 2 of my other downloads, I have found great alternatives though in The Closer, Dexter, and Grace. To be honest, I just realized I don't miss those old shows at all anymore.

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deasys said:

member since 08 Apr 2003 with 243 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Thu May 08, 2008 4:44 pm

Quote
it won't work with Safari

Then it won't work on the iPhone/iPod touch--Safari is the only browser available on those devices.

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j.martellaro said:

member since 07 Dec 2006 with 76 posts, TMO Staff, send him a message or view his profile

Thu May 08, 2008 5:18 pm

Each hardware, OS, and browser combination is rolled into what's called the HTTP Agent ID. The Web host can check this string to see if the user is on Safari + Mac or Safari + iPhone.

Try this page:

http://www.micro-sys.dk/services/http-user-agent/

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A guest said: (hide)

Thu May 08, 2008 8:10 pm

They could at least sync the audio and there are commercials at the end of each part.

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A guest said: (hide)

Thu May 08, 2008 8:21 pm

DRM what DRM? Follow the link using safari I guess any other browser might work too. click on your show. Hover over the episode you want and it will give you the full URL for the episode file in .3gp format. This is the tricky part: write down the address, open a new safari window type in the address. You'll get a blank screen with the Quicktime logo. From the Window menu open the downloads window. Drag the url from the address bar into the Downloads window, and the episode starts downloading. No DRM, No encryption. average file size is about 13 MB. crappy size, crappy video quality, but no DRM no encryption.

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