Thursday, October 13, 2005

ITunes and TV in Europe

Damn, the one feature of the new ITunes that I wanted was TV shows, and it doesn't seem to be enabled for Europe.

I had a suspicion that this might happen. When I installed ITunes 6 all I could find was Movie Trailers, Music Videos and Pixar, none of which I want to download. I guess the "broadcast" rights haven't been sorted out for Europe yet. The BBC says

Apple has also set up a deal with US television company ABC to let Americans purchase episodes of shows for $1.99. The shows will be available the day after broadcast. There was no information about when, or if, this service would come to Europe.

And of course the price of a Music Video in Europe is €€2.49 while in America its $1.99 so it is more expensive in Europe.

Update: I was in London over the weekend and called into the Apple store on Regent Street. A Shop assistant told me that there should be lots of content coming on line from the BBC, but that this will probably be limited to UK residents, who have to pay the BBC television license fee. The Republic of Ireland will probably be out of luck with that :-(. However he did say that he would expect other content to come available later but didnt know what or when that would be.

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