This really isn’t the most brilliant concept around. In fact, I’m sure others have already been over this. But I was doing some thinking over what I think IPTV (or Internet TV-OnDemand, or whatever you’d like to call it) should be, specifically in the realm of iTunes, and here’s what I came up with.

There doesn’t seem to be much benefit to private citizens using services such as cable or satellite television these days. About the only benefit to having hundreds of channels, each with 24 hours of daily programming, is you never know what you’ll want to watch. But the truth is, most people know exactly what they want to watch, and they watch it with regularity.

The success of products such as TiVo shows us that people are very willing to limit what they watch to only programs that they decide upon (schedule) and not be a slave to the date and time that the program airs. As such, I would say the average human being consumes around 10-20 hours of weekly television on average. And at that, they tend to watch the same shows each week.

So this is what my version of television heaven would be, and the technology exists today.

First, let’s talk cost. I am going to use iTunes for much of this because it’s a system I know very well. But it could easily be anyone’s system doing this. iTunes generally charges $1.99 for an episode of whatever TV show. They also will usually have season passes, where you can buy the entire season up-front and iTunes will automatically download new episodes as they are added to the ITMS. This is great, but probably too expensive. First of all, there is still a lot of free TV out there, coming over the air waves. I would wager the cost of the shows offsets the advertising. As well, there are no television episode rentals, which I think that renting TV shows makes more sense than even renting movies.

So, here’s step one. Make TV shows available for rental on iTunes for, say, $1 each. Give us a few weeks or a month from the time of download to watch the show before the DRM deletes it. Then, allow episodes to be purchased for $2 each, with a $1 discount for those that already rented it. Season Passes should be priced accordingly, say $0.95 for rental and $1.95 for purchase. By this I mean, let’s say a season has 20 episodes. It should cost $19 up front to rent each episode as they become available, and $39 to purchase the season. Even cheaper would be better.

The next step is the clever part. One thing I miss by TiVo’ing shows is other shows that might have been on that I missed. Like, say I’m watching an episode of “Two and a Half Men” and a commercial comes on stating who David Letterman’s guests will be. Well, if I get the “I’d like to see that” vibe, guess what. It’s too late. That episode of Letterman is in the past and I missed it. Likewise, with purchased TV shows, there aren’t any ads for other shows. The best way to learn about certain episodes or even new series is from the ads in existing shows. So, iTunes should employ an Amazon-like matching algorithm. As such, let’s say that a fair percentage of people who watch “Two and a Half Men” also enjoy “The Big Bang Theory”. So, there should be mini ads for “The Big Bang Theory” interspersed within the “2.5 Men” season. They would appear as free downloads that would automatically download for Season Pass holders. Then there should be some simple way of getting from the ad minisode to purchase either the episode or the show that’s being advertised. This would be a great way for studios to introduce shows that viewers might not know about, and thus increase revenues.

Step three is a bit controversial. I think that at some point the shows should be made available for free, but be ad-supported. Like, say a paid subscriber can get his show automatically on the date of release, but then non-subscribers should have to download the shows manually, and they can get a free, ad-supported version the following week. Or maybe 2 weeks later. So, people will have to pay to get the shows earlier.

Moving on, it should also be possible to purchase DRM-free formats at some point. I would like to see full-DVD ISO files available at the close of each season, so that people can purchase them and burn them to DVD for their own use. Or perhaps, people could purchase subsidized DVD sets at the close of each season. After all, those that paid to watch the season should be favored for purchase of the DVDs. Or perhaps Season Pass purchasers can pay $5 to unlock all of the shows in that season so that they can burn them to DVDs. In the end, I just would like to have the option to ensure that I can watch my purchased content at any time in the future, and as we’ve seen, DRM is the antithesis of that way of thinking.

Many of you are thinking, “what about sports?” Well, sports is a different animal. It mostly needs to be seen live. For that, services such as cable or satellite TV will still be a good option. Perhaps internet streaming could come to the point of viability here too. I just know that I wouldn’t care because I prefer going to a sports bar to watch games. It’s a far better experience, to me.

So there it is. What do you think? How would you like to see TV distributed online? How would you adjust my plan?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 4:06 pm and is filed under TV, TiVo, iTunes.