MTV Overdrive, Not On Mac
Have you noticed how often Bill G shows up on MTV? There had to be a reason – and I figured that out today when reading this post by Les Posen. Apparently, MTV’s new broadband only channel, Overdrive is going to work on Windows and IE exclusively.
It would not work on either Firefox/Mozilla browsers either. Well, clearly this ignored the Mac market, the one which has been the fastest to embrace legal digital music downloads, and other new services. MTV’s reasons are that Mac doesn’t have the latest WMP codec. Whatever! I wonder why MTV with all its resources could not come-up with a Mac-capable working. Given that the tiniest of tiny companies like Skype can do multi-platform releases.
Apple should come up with some way to help content providers like MTV, Comedy Central and others provide free content through iTunes. I do like the way the Overdrive player is setup – especially the playlist feature.
Who knows what Apple has up their sleeve? After selling 1m vids in 20 days, it’s obvious that people are willing to pay for video content.
Jacon -
“Apple should come up…” ?
Come again? Broadcaster, Quicktime, FCP… the tools are there. Free, even, most of the time. Why do you think more studios put out their previews in QT than in any other format?
jacob, i am not convinced how long this video sale madness would continue. apple people are too devoted and buy everything but it eventually tapers off at some point. i do agree, apple has to make things easier for content providers
What’s worse it that they’re practically teasing us Mac users with that sad face Mac icon.
Om,
“Eventually tapers off at some point”
Consider music. Apple sold 1M songs in one week. I remember peope speculated it was just “the crazy ones” who had bitten. Are you going to bet against experience?
Mind you, iTMS started with 200K songs. iTVS started with 2K videos.
Xavier, Those tools are great, but I’m talking specifically about iTunes. iTunes needs additional functionality to allow content providers to offer streaming video and playlists of content.
Om, I agree with Xavier, vid sales will only increase as much more content is put on iTunes.
If they are giving all this “wonderful” content away on-demand and free of charge, why is it necessary to prevent re-distribution. It would seem that if you are giving something away, you are not likely to lose anything by people sharing it. This is a prime case of digital RESTRICTIONS management. I say screw mtv and microsoft. If there is actually anything worthwile watching on here it will turn up on the net anyway, in a form in it which it can be watched by anyone.
Om – It gets worse before it gets better…. the Overdrive product is also used on VH1 and I would imagine on Comedy Central’s new piece as well. All part of the Viacom machine.
I can’t see WMV DRM enabeled content coming to the Mac anytime soon — at least not until ITMS and FairPlay gets licensed. For now, it’s all separate worlds.
Yeah MS has been working to gain this position for a long time, and invested mountains of money. It will perhaps barely work, poorly, in many months’ time when an upgrade for WMP for Mac is released. By that point they’ll probably be encouraging people to buy VPC with Windows Media Edition to run on their x86 Macs. Then they get to sell you a whole OS and don’t even have to maintain a port of WMP.
If you need DRM on content, there really aren’t many choices available right now. Apple refuses to license their technology, and everything else is Windows only – and you can be sure that Microsoft is in no hurry to add DRM support on the Mac platform. Apple is just as bad, as their closed DRM ensures they are the only ones who can deliver content to the the Mac. I wish it were as easy as blaming MTV. There are some serious platform strategies here that are getting in the way of what the consumers really need.
devin, good points your bring out. one thing to note – why are we forced to use a bad browser, in other words i.e. looking beyond that, itunes does work on windows and well it is restrictive but at least it works on most commonly used platforms.
Let Windows keep the crap. Simple as that.
I have noticed that MTV seems to go out of it’s way to NOT show Apple products. For instance… I read not too long ago that The Real World show uses Apple XSAN and FCP to do post on the show. During this season’s shows, the “7 people picked to live in a house” have to create a documentary film. For their post-production they are running Avid on PC’s.
Seems a little strange to me especially since the producers of the show were raving about Apple in the magazine article, but woon’t feature it in the show.
Does MTV have a no Macs on the air rule? Maybe that’s preposterous and I don’t watch enough MTV to see the times they do show Apple products, but it does seem a little fishy to me.
Windows Media, Real…. who needs ‘em? Even when I was a PC guy I preferred Quicktime, as I never had a problem with it.
Point One: I don’t blame MTV for going out of its way ‘not’ to show Apple products. Anyone who has had to deal directly with Apple knows they are very hard to deal with, and arrogant to the hilt.
Point Two: Still, it’s foolish for MTV (and VH1 and Comedy Central) to not have a Mac solution. I live in New York and work in the entertainment business. While most of the world may be on Windows computers, in New York’s entertainment community, the majority of people I deal with have Macs. Also, if MTV’s market is college kids, they should realize how huge a footprint Apple has with college kids. This move is not accidental, I’m sure Bill Gates and Sumner ‘Viacom’ Redstone have some back-room deal, there is no other reason for the no-Mac solution.
MTV could at least do what their partners at Comedy Central are doing and offer lower-resolution, non-DRMed streams for Mac and Unix users. OK, so it’s not the full resolution that Win/IE users get, but it’s at 320×240, which is quite watchable still…
But no. MTV just makes it completely inaccessible on any platform besides Windows. Same for VH1 and Nickelodeon. Urgh.
(Now that’s got me wondering whether Mac user Jon Stewart had anything to do with Comedy Central’s support for Macs…)
MTV Overdrive is now MAC compatible!!
http://www.mtv.com/ovedrive
[...] Om Malik’s Broadband Blog — » MTV Overdrive, Not On Mac Quote: Apparently, MTV’s new broadband only channel, Overdrive is going to work on Windows and IE exclusively. (tags: microsoft mtv overdrive) Posted: October 31, 2005 by Nathan Weinberg in: [...]