Million dollar deal, no… no… million dollar question!
Some time back we were telling you about NBC pulling out of Apple iTunes. Read post NBC and Apple tussle: Pricing, piracy or both? April 18, 2008.  Now NBC has struck a deal with Microsoft to air its television shows through the Zune media player. So, what is better with Zune than itunes. Pricing? Seems an unlikely possibility. Piracy protection? Maybe … or wait maybe not! So, why am I confused? I have every reason to be!
According to NBC Universal ‘s president of the digital distribution J.B.Perette, they wanted to create a technology that could allow legally purchased content to be playes and at the same time disallowing the pirated contents. This was already in the domain of softwares that Google and Microsoft were trying to build.  So maybe this is the reason for the deal with Microsoft Zune deal. But wait… Right here are the various statements from Microsoft:
 ”Microsoft has no plans or commitments to implement content filtering features in the Zune family of devices as part of our content distribution deal with NBC.”
“In the long term, the consumer wants there to be quality premium-produced content, and in order for that to continue to be a viable business, there needs to be significant protection around it.”
“I don’t think they are wrong, but we are not going to characterize those discussions. We have agreed to work with NBC across a range of topics, and protection of copyrighted material is certainly one of them.”
Well, this does not make much sense to me. I still wonder what drew NBC to Microsoft? Million dollar question maybe!
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