NBC is one of the holdouts from Apple’s plan to offer $0.99 rentals of individual TV show episodes to users of its streaming-only Apple TV. ABC and Fox were Apple’s original network partners, with NBC refusing to participate on the grounds that such a low price point would “devalue [their] content,” according to former NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker. Zucker has since left NBC, and there’s reason to believe NBC’s new owners might be more amenable to Apple’s rental scheme.

While the company wasn’t told specifically that it had to offer content at any particular price, Comcast could be eager to join Fox and ABC in an effort to show federal regulators it’s serious about not overstepping its tightly-defined boundaries.

Even if 99-cent NBC rentals don’t come to Apple TV, the deal struck between NBC and federal regulators carries a couple of conditions cord cutters will definitely benefit from. First, Comcast is forbidden from interfering with online video services using its broadband network, and it has to continue to offer Internet services outside of a cable TV bundle with broadband download speeds for around $50 a month.

Finally, Comcast isn’t able to pull NBC content from iTunes as easily as the network did in the past, when Apple wouldn’t agree to price increases for licensed shows. It’s not a guarantee you’ll always be able to get 30 Rock from the iTunes Store, but it’ll make Comcast think long and hard before attempting a similar stunt in the future.

As Ryan pointed out when the terms of the deal originally came to light, the deal isn’t quite as favorable to online video distributors as some would have you believe. But for companies like Apple that have an existing licensing relationship with NBC Universal, the terms are much more beneficial. And that’s good news for Apple customers, too.

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According to Zucker, speaking at a Goldman Sachs Investor conference (via AppleInsider), giving in to Apple’s request would be bad for NBC’s brand. “We do not think 99 cents is the right price point for our content,” he said. “We thought it would devalue our content.” More than giving it away for free while shilling for Bud Light and Pepsi? Really?

Still, it’s hard to fault NBC for playing coy initially. Though ABC and Fox have signed on with Apple’s plan, as mentioned, Fox has done so only temporarily. It told investors at the conference on Wednesday that the 99-cent price point was only a “short-term test” designed to gauge feasibility in the longer term.

This isn’t Apple’s first rodeo, though. NBC has played a similar tune in the past, when it pulled all of its content from the iTunes store in 2007 with little warning. It was attempting to use its position as a top mover of content in the iTunes marketplace to bully Apple into doubling the price of its individual episodes.

NBC eventually caved, signing back on to sell episodes at the regular price of $1.99 for SD and $2.99 for HD. Apple TV’s sales success will have a major impact in determining whether history repeats itself or not in this case. I’m betting it will.

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Not too long ago, Hulu came to Boxee, making it accessible via Apple TV, and all was right with the world. Then, a terrible thing happened, and NBC went to Hulu CEO Jason Kilar and said “No more!” and it was no more. Hulu support was removed from Boxee.

The only possible reason was NBC’s fear of losing control over its content. Heaven forbid a major network embraces and tries to work with the shifting paradigm in the delivery of televised content. Better to try to force people to stay married to their set-top boxes and cable subscriptions. Just conveniently forget that there are literally thousands of torrents out there if people get tired of depending on overpriced satellite and cable plans, NBC.

Okay, bottled up anger aside, Hulu is back on Boxee, at least in a work-around way that should get people their fix while the two companies hopefully work out the finer details of some kind of more official solution. Boxee’s latest update includes an App Store-type “App Box,” but more importantly, also the ability to read RSS feeds. The new RSS reader is perfectly set up to receive video RSS feeds, of which Hulu has many. Ipso facto, Hulu is back on Boxee.

While I appreciate what Boxee is doing, I really wish Apple and NBC would mark their success and work together to make it unnecessary. Apple should provide the functionality that Boxee does out of the box, and NBC and other networks should partner with them to make network content subscriptions a reality. Cut out the cable service providers altogether, offer iTunes’ Season Passes to all of your network content, and make more money by charging less. A lot of people I know either only have computers, or have computer-connected televisions these days, so it’d probably be more profitable than trying to force people to stick with obsolete methods of content distribution. In the meantime, thank goodness for Boxee.

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iTunes 8

Today Apple has released the next major version of iTunes, available view Software Update or the Apple website. The biggest new feature being added is called Genius (presumably named after yours truly). Genius allows you to create playlists at the click of a button. Just select a song, click the Genius button and iTunes creates a playlist of songs from your library that it thinks will go great together.

Where does iTunes get this sort of data? From the bagillion songs that have been purchased through the iTunes Store, of course! When you fire up iTunes 8 for the first time, you can opt-in to sending your data (completely anonymously) to Apple for them to add to their pool of data to help the community at large get better recommendations…the idea being that Genius will just get smarter and smarter as more data is uploaded.

In addition to creating playlists from your own library, Genius can suggest songs (conveniently from the iTunes Store) that you might like to have in your library. I’m afraid this feature will significantly increase the amount of music I buy.

Genius will also work offline as data is sent back to your computer when you create a Genius playlist.

I gave Genius a go and must say the playlists it created for me were pretty spot on as were the song suggestions in the iTunes store. Some of the newer music I’ve got (as in less than a week old) threw a message back saying it didn’t have enough data, but I presume that in the next few days as hundreds of thousands of people start using Genius, those sort of messages will become pretty rare.

Genius playlists, once created, can be saved and then “refreshed” later on to be updated based on new Genius data.

Also new in iTunes 8 is a grid view for your music. During today’s keynote, Jobs said the “old” way of browsing your music wasn’t efficient, so they created a new grid view for browsing your music. The grid view acts a lot like iPhoto in that if you group by something like “Artists”, where an artist might have multiple albums, you can scrub your cursor over the grouping and see all the albums in that group.

This wasn’t mentioned today, but iTunes 8 also has a new visualizer that has some pretty trippy stuff. The visualizer isn’t really my thing (honestly it gives me a headache), but if that’s your bag, you’ll probably love this.

HD TV Shows

Today Jobs also announced that the iTunes store will now start adding HD content for TV Shows. HD shows will be $2.99 while SD shows will stay $1.99. Quite a few of the more popular/newer shows are already available in the store in HD. Viewing the HD content requires an update to QuickTime 7.5.5 (available today as well).

NBC Returns!

Last August, NBC announced they wouldn’t be renewing their contract with Apple due to disagreements over DRM. It seems NBC and Apple are now playing nice again and the NBC lineup has returned with a number of their shows also available in HD.

Have you given any of these iTunes updates a try? What do you think of the new Genius feature?

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