Mar 08
Apple today made some changes to the iTunes store. They introduced a “multi-pass” system to pre-purchase upcoming episodes of daily TV shows a month in advance. The new system will automatically download new shows as they are aired. The shows downloaded still have the same FairPlay DRM, so they’ll never ‘expire’ to play. For example you can buy 16 new episodes for one month at $9.99, which is quite a large discount. It’s currently US-only, but hopefully the rumors of the video store spreading to other countries will turn out to be true. Apple is also expected to add some new functionality to podcasts, mainly allowing users to purchase special podcasts or subscribe to them by in sets of a week or month.
May 28th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
I purchased a show with the muli-pass system. Right now the system is supposed to send you an e-mail which then would allow the subscriber to download the video.
However, there is a problem with the system that seems to be the same problem experienced by some users of pre-purchased CD’s. The new episodes are released, but those with a pass cannot download the episode until they recieve an e-mail and apple is slow to deliver the e-mail. Sometimes the process takes days after the individual episodes are released. Even with the “check for purchases” section under the advanced tab seems to be broken with reguards to the video store.
This new service seems to have delivery problems. Multipass subscribers are perhaps the service’s most loyal customers, but are penialzed by apples shoddy back end. Hopefully apple will work on this problem and start to give multipass subscribers the service they deserve.