Popular CBS TV shows now on iTunes

Stuart Corner
Saturday, 10 June 2006 02:51

Your IT - Home IT

CBS has become the latest US TV broadcaster to make its prime time TV shows available for download via Apple's iTunes: it will offer episodes of the popular NUMB3RS, NCIS and CSI programs (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: Miami and CSI: NY) from the just completed 2005/6 season available and new episodes on the day following first broadcast, all for $US1.99 per episode.
CBS is a relative latecomer to the iTunes party: all the other major US networks - NBC, ABC, and Fox - already offer shows via iTunes. Earlier this year CBS Sports made the 2006 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament available on iTunes, and CBS' Showtime division offered its 'Sleeper Cell' and 'Weed' series available over iTunes.

The addition of CBS to its portfolio brings the total of TV programmes available over iTunes to 100 and Apple claims that over 30 million videos have been sold through the service. They can be viewed on video iPods or on a Mac or PC running iTunes software.

Australian users should not expect a local version of the service anytime soon. Much to the chagrin of Australian iPod users it was many months after Apple launched its music download service in the US, and other countries, that it became available in Australia. This despite the fact that Australia has long been one of Apple's most successful markets outside the US.

Furthermore Apple would find significant practical difficulties in delivering the service to Australian users where most 'broadband' connections are a mere 256kbps on the downstream and restricted to a few hundred or megabytes download per month before expensive metering or speed throttling kicks in.