I have precious little time to blog because I leave on Friday and there's a lot to do before then. Luckily, something pissed me off badly enough that I at least had a topic for today's entry.
It all started when I saw that My Boys: The Complete First Season is finally coming to DVD in March. This is a very good thing, because I love the show, and am glad that I'll finally be able to sit down and watch everything from start to finish. For some reason, TBS busted the season in half, inserting an agonizing SEVEN MONTHS between episodes 13 and 14 (maybe it was a partial initial order or something?). It really killed the momentum of the show, and it will be nice to see everything put back together again...
Awww... P.J. is almost painfully cute on that DVD cover.
Anyway, I mentioned this to a friend of mine who also likes the show, and she told me that I didn't have to wait for the DVD... I could go to the TBS.com website and watch the show online! Sweet! So off I went, only to see this...
I am so sick of this bullshit.
There is no reason to keep clinging to Windows Media crap when there are alternatives available that allow non-Windows sufferers to enjoy media content as well. Most every other television network uses Flash (available for Windows, Mac, and Unix) or some kind of custom cross-platform solution (ABC's media player comes to mind). Why is TBS so stupid about how they serve their media? I decided to poke around a bit and found this...
What a load of shit.
"...despite its lack of support on Mac systems, Windows Media Player is more widely used than other platforms like Quicktime and Flash Video for distributing protected content."
This is so laughable as to be stupid. Windows Media Player is more widely used alright... but ONLY ON WINDOWS PCs. Don't make this about "DRM" or "media player popularity" because this only makes you look like idiots. The truth is that you have abandoned your non-Windows viewers, and it's as simple as that. There are alternatives available, but you choose to be lazy idiots who would rather blame Microsoft than finding something that works.
But the best part is the closing...
"Again, we apologize for the inconvenience associated with using Windows Media DRM and hope you will continue watching TBS."
Yes, that's right... keep passing the blame to Microsoft instead of blaming yourself for not using a better solution.
So long as moronic crap like this keeps going on, I find myself wondering why I don't just download everything I like off of BitTorrent when it airs and archive it. I mean, what other choice is TBS giving me here? I guess I wait until March.
And now I'm off to buy episodes of Burn Notice from the iTunes Music Store so I have something to watch on the flight. It's nice to know that some networks understand how to serve their customers without being complete dumbasses.
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I just heard on a podcast that Netflix over the internet doesn’t work on a Mac either. Since my family is slowly slipping to the Apple-side, I find the lack of cross-platform support appalling. Just get rid of DRM. It causes nothing but trouble.
Almost painfully cute? No, no, no. She is painfully cute.
And I blogged about this one some time ago. Back in, I think, season 1a (I think of them as 1a and 1b because of the split, which I also hated).
I noticed the other day that Burn Notice was on the iTunes store. Sweet, isn’t it? And you get your Fi!
I’m with you on this. Since Apple is gaining market share exponentially, you think they would accommodate Macs now. Imagine the audience that they are losing just for this, becuase we all know how diehard mac fans are.
I am a mac fan; I just can’t use them for work.
I hate bittorrent. It’s sooooo slow to download stuff…
I feel for you, but I am equally pissed that I can’t buy the new Nike running software because it is only available for iPod, that I can’t buy any cool speakers for my mp3 player because they are all made for iPod, and that half the videos I want to download online are Quicktime which doesn’t work on my pc.
I guess the best solution would be if everyone offered fair shares of everything to all platforms. But that’s pretty much a pipedream, eh?
Yeah, it would be nice… but the difference here is that the web is designed to be platform independent. You want to support the most people possible, including Macs and Unix, because they’re all accessing your site.
Devices that are built to take specific advantage of iPod functionality, on the other hand, are a whole other ball-game. Most MP3 devices wouldn’t be able to work with the Nike Running System (for example) because they’re designed just to play music, or don’t have a port capable of interaction with other devices.
If I remember right, hasn’t QuickTime been around longer than Windows Media Player? I’ve been using QuickTime since 1992, right after it first came out. And I hate the blame game, too. TBS should have just been honest and said “there are more Windows users than Mac users and that’s who we are supporting.” Netflix is doing the same thing, wrapping their streaming videos in Windows DRM instead of using QuickTime.
Maybe one of these days, these broadcast companies will all offer cross-platform support.
Calm yourself down there, little Missy. There are plenty of Apple products that require me to do funky things in order to use them, see them, tell ’em to go to hell. I guarantee that it’s a two-way street. And still, i struggle through some Mac blogs….with extra steps, passwords, extra key strokes. (Are you hating me yet?….Ready for me to sit in First Class next to you all of the way to Europe yet????) We would have fun, I just know it….I want to send you huge giant greetings for a fantastic trip. I’m 100% totally unabashedly jealous.
I’ll try to cut and paste your comments and send them to tBS. They could use a wake-up call on this issue.
Love “My Boys.” And I love the original shows on TBS and USA. Wish more great original stuff would show up on major networks. Most of it is all so derivative.
My first reaction to this is, “People actually watch TBS’ original shows??”
I had a comment, but Lewis called you “little Missy” and now I’m silenced by my giggles.
They had this Windows only nonsense on the BBC iPlayer too and then they got smart. Thank God.
Have you tried spoofing the IE on Windows user agent? Basically it fools websites into thinking that you are using a different browser or OS. This can be done through the debug menu in Safari. To enable the Debug menu, type:
defaults write com.apple.safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
in Terminal and restart Safari. If you don’t use Safari, I’m sure there is a way to do user agent spoofing.
Even IN windows it probably still won’t play… uhg.