Having just purchased and watched seasons 1 and 2 of The Tudors from iTunes (I missed them on Showtime), I was searching the net for other peoples thoughts on the quality of these TV shows. One review I came across was from AllForces.com, concering iTunes quality vs Bit Torrent. Since their blog post in 2005, Apple seems to have upped the standard of their TV show offerings.

I’m be the first to admit that I’m an Apple fan, with my Mac laptop the primary downloader of these TV Shows, syncing to my iPhone and also viewing the shows via front row on my Mac Mini. It’s the viewing of these on the Mac Mini I will review.

For the review I was watching iTunes video files using the following:

• 2009 Model Mac Mini
• Sony KDL-46W4500 1080p LCD Television
• DVI to HDMI connection from Mac to TV, set at 720p resolution
• Apples Front Row for playback, with the TV Shows sourced on a remote Mac Laptop over 54g WiFi

DRM

One of the things All Forces addressed was the DRM vs Bit Torrent downloads. Apple has come a long way since 2005 with their music, having the majority of the catalogue as “iTunes Plus”. This has their musical offerings in 256Kbps DRM free AAC audio. It’s an advancement since 2005, even though others offer better music quality.

There are still DRM restrictions in place for video, and I don’t see this abating any time soon. The TV and Movie industry is a lot less lenient to the removal of Digital Rights Management, and with Blu-ray winning the HD wars we wont see DRM removed from video any time soon.

Video Quality

One of the key points in the review by All Forces in 2005 was the low resolution of the iTunes video files. Quality of the TV episodes have increased since 2005, and Apple seem to be on a winner with H264 encoding. The files for The Tudors video files are 640×360 H264 encoded MPEG4 files, with an average size of 600MBytes per episode.

Pricing

In 2011 I also use an Apple TV. Pricing is a MAJOR sticking point with people using iTunes for TV Shows. In Australia they sell at AUD$2.99, only in standard definition, and only via the iTunes Store. In the US one can purchase HD versions for the same price or SD versions for USD$1.99. It’s ridiculous. You can’t even watch TV shows in Australia on Apple TV. Why?!

Conclusion

The quality of the iTunes show, as seen with The Tudors Season 1 is great. Apple have come a long way over the last 4 years to be able to offer all major TV shows as electronic downloads. Ease of access, and a decent price point makes it viable for consumers to use Apple as their source of entertainment. However, the disparate pricing across markets and the lack of HD shows in some countries is the final blocker to making iTunes your first and only stop for watching TV shows.

As regular readers of my blog will know, I’m a fan of metal, progressive rock and a bit of eighties rock. The other day I had the chance to speak to the lead singer of Asbestos Garage, a Melbourne based band. Neon Kessler told me of their aspirations to bring glam rock back to Melbourne, and not one of mega-concerts – but something you can enjoy at your local pub. With the up-coming Def Leppard concert in Melbourne this appears to be the right time to do so.

The band is currently promoting their fantastic T-Shirts to raise the funds to go on tour possibly some time in the near future. I personally will be buying the black design.

I’m looking forward to hearing their 2007 promo/demo track “The Will To Breathe“, which can hopefully be released on an independent label soon. Neon advised it is planned as their opening track on their EP “Fire Proof Rock“.

If by chance a music label reads this you can contact the band on the email neon at asbestos garage dot com.

When Bigpond started offering music sales a few years ago I was an early adopter and purchased music from their offerings. However it soon became obvious that the windows media DRM was a difficult beast to deal with. Windows users know only too well the pain of having to rebuild/reinstall a bloated operating system; the licensing for the Bigpond music files where often lost if you rebuilt windows and did NOT backup your DRM licences.

So I took the lesser of two evils and signed up to the Apple iTunes Music Store (iTMS), where although under a DRM system the licencing was more relaxed (5 Computers, unlimited iPods, burn to CD). Apple, specifically Steve Jobs, wrote about the restrictiveness that is Digital Rights Management, and soon thereafter started offering MP3 downloads. It took the music studios to start understanding the whole premise that DRM was not where the future lay.

Fast forward to August 2008, and today Telstra’s Now We Are Talking site has announced that MP3s are now on offer from Bigpond Music. Not only are they now DRM free, but they encode at a minimum of 256Kbps and up to 320Kbps for their audio tracks. For the end user this means close to if not indistinguishable from CD audio quality. The procrastinators I know who have shunned digital music no longer have an excuse to legally purchase their music.

Pricing is the same as the iTMS being AUD$1.69 per track and a similar price for albums. Downloads for Bigpond internet customers are also uncharged for data usage. A double bonus for some.

While I think purchasing music in this fashion is a good thing for the end user; if you care about the artists you should consider Magnatune. You wont find the latest top 10 tracks there but you will find fantastic music where the artist gets a large amount of the purchase price. They also allow you to pay an amount you choose for an album, or sign up for monthly unlimited downloads and streaming.

You can start purchasing MP3 music from Bigpond Music right away. Although it is not the entire catalogue for now, this is a correct step for Telstra in the right direction. Music sales figures do not lie!

For a review of the evening in Melbourne, synultima has a blow by blow review over @ last.fm

On a side note, some bloke taped a bootleg copy of the 9th Feb show – you can get it while you can, but I can’t condone that.

These ones where taken with a better camera, so they came out pretty decent for being 5 meters from the stage!

The setlist was great, and it was well worth getting Gold floor tickets. As for Acer Arena, they banned all bags and drinks being bought in (including water!) unlike Melbourne. That was annoying as I had to run back to the cloakroom to get my earplugs (33dB reduction!).
The crowd in Sydney were good but not quite into it as Melbourne. All in all it was a good night and these guys still give top notch performances.

Either way, I will be at the Sydney event on 9th Feb as well, so look out for some better pics.

I had only just got around to reporting the issue, but iTMS staff rejected the issue due to the timeliness of my report – about 3 months after the purchase. I wrote back advising that this was a “premium cost” iTunes Plus track, and there is still an issue with the track they are selling, no matter the time frame. The response:

Apple takes the quality of the items offered on the iTunes Store seriously and will investigate the issue with this item, but please keep in mind that the iTunes Store does not own the content that we sell and does not have the right to alter the files, even to repair them. The most we can do is contact the content owner and request a repaired replacement, so I can’t say when or if the issue will be resolved. Please try again in a few weeks.

This equates to the fact that they can’t fix the song they are selling. They did give me a song credit, with the advice:

I have also issued a replacement song credit to your account … Please note that song credits are not able to be used for purchasing songs that are listed as Album Only.

And wouldn’t you know it! The bad song is Album only, so IF they fix it, i would have to buy the track again.

Time to look elsewhere? Amazon is not an option as it is US only. A big Duh to the other major online emusic retailers.

I got myself some Iron Maiden tickets for their Somewhere back in time 2008 tour. The latest news about the Aussie events is that the Melbourne and Sydney concerts sold out in Record time.

Sydney’s Acer Arena sold out within 25 minutes of going on sale and Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena sold out within 15 minutes, leading to promoter Paul Dainty immediately putting on sale second shows in both cities and commenting; “Sales for the tour have been phenomenal with over 40,000 tickets being sold in the first hour.

As I am a Fan Club member, I was lucky enough to get 5 Gold Floor tickets in presale for close friends and I

I’m gonna make a whole week of it, and am dusting off my old records, I mean tapes, no CDs from the shelf – aaah syncing all my maiden mp3s to my ipod in preparation for this once in a lifetime event. They wont be coming back anytime soon after, and then they will probably retire.

It’s not till Feb 2008, but I will be in Melbourne and Sydney so I will be sure to write about it when the time comes.