I apparently missed this news back in December. I have been re-watching seasons 1-3 of Battlestar Galactica in anticipation of the fourth and final season. I went to iTunes to sign up for the season pass of downloads… and it’s gone. Apparently NBC wanted $4.99 per episode and Apple said no. In fact, Apple said more than no, cutting NBC off prior to the start of the Fall season rather than waiting for the contract to end in December. Charging $4.99 per episode works out to $100 per season of BSG. Who would pay that? That’s criminal! The six-disc DVD is $45 and the HD-DVD is $100. NBC thinks we will pay inflated HD prices for regular low-fi content? Seriously?

Sadly, I was ramping up to cut off our cable service this month. But with Heroes, BSG, the Office and other favorites permanently off iTunes, it will be a little harder for me to pull this off. We will be relying heavily on Netflix, but then we must wait until the end of the season to start watching.

Also on the horizon is Xbox Live, which is building up a fairly substantial digital media library of their own. Serving up affordable hi-def digital content on a device that is already plugged into my TV is a pretty compelling business model. Their TV collection is quite limited for now, but it keeps growing every time I check back. As I have said before, Xbox Live is the future of Microsoft.

Here’s an update (4/7/2008):

NBC apparently has licensed BSG through Amazon’s Unbox service. That is great news if you are a PC user, but people on Macs are SOL – there’s no Mac version of their rights management software.

Interestingly, the Amazon price is $1.89 per episode – $0.10 cheaper than the original price on iTunes. Does that mean NBC is loosing money? Or is Amazon loosing money? Or is Amazon realizing some cost savings somehow? Regardless, it’s a far cry from the greedy $4.99 NBC wanted from Apple. Take this as a valuable lesson, NBC – don’t kill the golden goose.

another update (6/2/2008):

Fancast also offers free episodes of BSG, and their player is Flash-based so it works on Mac (and it looks decent full-screen). Yay! The only downside is that they are a couple weeks behind. I guess that’s a small price to pay to keep free content free.

hopefully a final update (9/13/2008):

NBC has returned to their senses and is back on iTunes. Hi-def versions of their shows are available for $2.99 (just like everyone else’s).