DSA Online | New Media Updates

I’ve been watching Breaking Bad consistently on AMC every Sunday. It’s rare that I’d actually make the effort to be home at the same time every week, but Sunday is my ‘re-coop’ night, and Breaking Bad is just that good.

But I’ve hit a snag, I went on vacation and missed 2 episodes. So now I’m faced with a decision: should I download the 2 episodes I missed, watch them and then happily continue to watch the show every Sunday night; or should I just stop watching the show for now? I certainly don’t want to pay $6.00 for the downloads, on top of the costs of my cable service. Which leaves me the option of BitTorrents.

Many TV networks are wrestling with the problem of losing TV viewership to BitTorrent downloaders. The network shows are still popular, but viewers are frequently choosing to download the show rather than watch it on TV. If the people choosing this method are anything like me, the main reason for this would be that we are no longer an audience that is willing to be in the same place in the same time every week. I’m rarely home during primetime, a condition that is prevalent among my social circles. So we (the royal ‘we’) turn to other means to obtain the shows we want to see.

But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. What exactly is the deal with these ‘BitTorrents’? To stay broad and simple (because I don’t fully understand the mechanics myself), let me put it like this:

Somewhere, someone has a show, or a song, or a program on their computer, and I want it. BitTorrents is essentially a method of taking pieces of those files and downloading them to my computer. But it doesn’t have to all come from one person, if 100 people all have the files I want, I can take little pieces of it from each of them. As each piece gets added to my computer, it can be made available to other users too. So essentially, torrents are just a collection of people sharing little bits of files. Websites like The Pirate Bay and Mininova are much like search engines that allows all these users to congregate and find each other. The sites don’t contain any files, they just allow users to find the files they want.

A few tidbits about BitTorrents:

• It’s estimated that 1.9 million copies of the Prison Break finale were downloaded last week. Fox had decided not to air the finale, choosing to release it as a DVD later this month. Clearly, audiences were not willing to wait. Breaking Bad was second for downloads with an estimated 380,000. (torrentfreak)
• Recently, Neilsen had attempted to measure BitTorrent traffic in Australia, which has resulted in some questionable results. Neilsen reported 1,049,000 visits to major BitTorrent sites in April, whereas 1 of these portals, Mininova, reports 6,268,969 Aussie visits during the same period. (torrentfreak)
• American BitTorrent site Vuze recently put out a report indicating that users of their service “buy 34% more movie tickets, purchase 34% more DVDs and rent 24% more movies than the average Internet user.” They also tend to be owners of more high-end media consumption technology. (Vuze).
• iTunes has sold over 200 Million TV episode downloads, and over 6 billion song downloads. (Wikipedia)

As mentioned above, The Prison Break finale had almost 2 million downloads. As it hasn’t officially aired no authorized copies are available. However, the previous episodes are available through several channels. Through iTunes, each episode can be bought for $3.50, or the whole season can be purchased for $60. The show can also be streamed on the global website at no charge in small chunks, but not in high-def. So, aside from watching the show on television, I have the option of paying for commercial-free quality, or getting lower quality chunks mixed with ads for free. However, if you want high-quality and don’t want to pay, you can probably find the file torrents with little effort.

So why do so many people pay for downloads, and why don’t more people do it? To answer these questions, I’m going to speculate a bit.

Why pay for downloads at all? Because we trust iTunes, and we’re confident that we’re going to get a quality product with little risk. 6 Billion song downloads show that consumers are willing to pay for quality – if the price is right.

Why don’t more people pay for TV downloads? Because the price isn’t right. Unlike occasionally buying songs at a buck a pop, consistently buying TV episodes adds up quickly. I would suggest that many people view the internet the same way they do when it comes to consuming TV shows. Users pay for a monthly subscription and don’t feel that they should have to pay extra for shows.

The extra cost stings a little more when one considers that the downloaded digital copy often costs more than buying a hard copy. As of writing this, iTunes is sell the 4^th season of Prison Break for $59.99, where as buying a DVD box set of the same episodes will only cost $51.99. Though the online community has demonstrated that they are willing to consume items online, it’s hard to imagine that anyone is willing to pay more to receive less. Nothing creates a Robin Hood mentality towards pirating faster than net-savvy consumers feeling that they are being gouged. Given that BitTorrent downloaders are already spending more on media then the rest of the public, it’s not hard to see why. Adding up the costs of my high-def cable, high-speed internet, high-def TV, TV box-sets, DVD rentals, theatre tickets, X-Box 360, HDMI Cables, etc. and even I get the feeling that I’m already paying enough to consume media. Maybe I’ve earned a few freebies? Those free BitTorrents are starting to look more and more appealing.

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