NBC offers free, ad-supported TV show downloads

National Broadcasting Company (NBC) has announced that it will offer free, advertisement-supported downloads of its television shows from October 2007.

The NBC television network will launch a service called NBC Direct, which would give users the opportunity to download full episodes from a select set of shows.

However, the downloads will contain commercial breaks like when broadcasted on TV.

Also, the service will carry some restrictions. The videos can only be played back using NBC’s proprietary software on a Windows-based personal computer, and they become inactive a week after being downloaded.

Other similar free video-viewing services are typically offered via streaming media, and in most cases users do not get to watch entire episodes. Being
able to download the full program means that the quality would be better and can be viewed offline.

According to NBC, the company is working on a Macintosh version of the service, as well as an option to transfer the videos to portable media players. For now, only the date for the PC software has been set, which the network says will be available in October 2007.

NBC Direct will affect various players in the realm of Web video, including Apple, whose iTunes Music Store had been selling episodes of popular shows such as The Office and 30 Rock, which NBC now plans to make available for free.

Apple and NBC had come to loggerheads over the terms of an extended contract to keep those shows on the iTunes store. The current deal expires in December 2007. Apple has already said that the shows would not be available this fall after NBC tried to double the prices it was receiving for the
shows.

Until now users could download commercial-free television shows from iTunes, for $1.99, or watch streaming versions free with commercials on computers connected to the Web. With NBC Direct, NBC has now offered a third option, offering free downloads with commercials.

NBC is currently in a dispute with Apple over the pricing of iTunes downloads of its programs. More importantly, Apple has yet to figure out its approach to advertising, which is what brings in the revenues. In general, Apple has allowed iTunes to distribute free programs without advertisements, but has mainly focused on selling programs.

Apple has not released any services that allow programs to be viewed for a limited amount of time, but industry executives say that Apple is working on
a video rental service. The same technology could support limited-time, free programs as NBC is trying to show.

The launch of NBC Direct also raises the question if the NBC.com content will also appear on the video website Hulu.com, which is a joint venture between NBC and News Corp, that is meant to become an online destination for video downloads.