The brains behind NBC’s wunderkind video site, George Kliavkoff, is leaving NBC at the end of ‘08. George came to NBC over two years ago as the companies chief digital officer and laid the groundwork for Hulu’s success. Under his watch, Hulu became a digital revenue cash cow for NBC and a legitimate alternative to YouTube for content providers. The site might not post as many page views as YouTube, but with Klavkoff’s guidance, it actually turns a profit which is something Google has been struggling to do after the $1.65 billion dollar purchase. 

Kliavkoff is excersing a contract clause that allows him to leave at the end of the year. 

“I believe in my heart that this is a best time to start, run, or invest in digital companies and I am very excited about moving on to my next challenge,” Kliavkoff wrote.

It’s hard to imagine another success like Hulu, but even if he turns out something half as good, it will be a hit.

Fire up iTunes and you’ll find, for the first time, TV shows from the four major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox) in HD. It’s still $2.99 per HD episode, and that includes a standard-def version of the TV show for your iPhone or iPod.

HD shows now include hits like Lost, CSI, 30 Rock and The Office.

But we all know The Shield is the best show on TV now, so whatever.

The real Office

Let’s all congratulate NBC for seemingly having figured out how to prevent its great content, like clips of Saturday Night Live, from appearing on the likes of YouTube and Dailymotion. Well done, chaps!

NBC told CNET that it’s gotten to the point that unauthorized video clips (like from the Olympics or The Office) are removed so quickly that there’s hardly a soul who sees them. NBC also says its own Web site and Hulu.com are now getting more traffic than ever.

As a closing note, I will be grabbing this week’s episode of The Office from BitTorrent. Not to be a jerk or anything, but because I can’t visit Hulu from Barcelona. You’ve made me a criminal, NBC!

Just in case you missed the brief announcement a couple days ago, HDTV shows are now on iTunes. Yup, and NBC is back giving away an episode of its best shows. All you need is iTunes 8.

• Battlestar Galactica
• The Office
• Lipstick Jungle
• Heroes
• In Plain Sight
• Monk
• Psych
• Life
• Eureka
• 30 Rock

via TUAW

NBC shows being on iTunes isn’t a case of NBC begging Apple to let it come back, but a case of Apple caving into some of NBC’s demands. Let’s all predict Apple’s imminent demise!

NBC left iTunes last year because Apple didn’t let it set its own prices for its content. That has now changed. NBC said that it’ll be selling certain, older TV shows for 99 cents a pop versus the “normal,” Apple-set price of $1.99. NBC is also toying with the idea of creating “best of” collections that it would sell at a price of its choosing. For example, maybe the five best episodes of The Office for $5 instead of $10.

Consumers, so far, actually come out on top in this arrangement.

As far as the bigger picture goes, this means that Apple doesn’t quite have the stranglehold over Hollywood that many have thought in the past. Though you wonder why NBC even bothered with going back to iTunes if it’s so confident in Hulu.

About damn time. ABC is the last major network to make the HD jump but the network is using the Democratic National Convention to premier their nightly news in high definition. Both ABC World News, as well as Nightline, premiers tonight in 720p high definition. Following the DNC, and the Republican Convention after that, World News is going to return to the NY studio which they will, of course, continue the HD tradition. That date, September 8th, also marks the date that 20/20 and Primetime debuts in high definition. Enjoy!

via B&C

NBC has turned to Denon with help on the audio control for this years Olympics. As it turns out, this is the fifth straight Olympic games that Denon has been involved with. The AV company suppled NBC with their top of the line gear for work in post-production. Denon’s flagship audio/video receiver, the AVR-5308, plus a DVD-1940 are installed in the Executive Board Room, while two AVR-2808 and two DVD-1940’s are elsewhere for NBC meetings. 

If you ask us, this says a good deal about Denon products – or Denon paid good coin to be at the games. Your guess.

There is a nausiating amount of ‘08 Olympic video coverage this year, and all we really want to watch is a little Table Tennis. There is so much video recording that for every 24 hour day, there is 212 hours being recorded onto massive media servers. Seagate hooked NBC up with 20 Omneon MediaDeck servers that hold a total of 500,000 gigabytes, or 500 terabytes, for the task. Plus, while the video is being recorded and stored in China, a second array in NYC is also storing the info. Crazy. 

So far the equipment seems to be doing the job as the HD video feeds have looked great and we haven’t seen, nor heard, of any picture issues.

[photo source: Flickr]

UPDATE: Brian from central NC has spotted a good amount of HD issues on his Time Warner hookup. Anyone else?

Just noticed this graphic as NBC took a commercial break during Olympic coverage. Can’t wait to watch the upcoming “SWIMMMING” events.

Nice work there, NBC. You’d fit right in here at CrunchGear. As we always say, “Proofreeeading, schmroofreedninng.”

The NFL will broadcast games online this fall, bucking its previous “the Internet is evil, sue, sue, sue!” methodology.

The NFL’s broadcast partner, NBC, will stream select games this season, streams that appear to be the real deal. That is, NBC will stream the very same TV feed that you’re used to watching, complete with John Madden’s insightful commentary. Boom, squiggly line, etc.

The new site will also try to get regular TV viewers in on the action by hosting exclusive content along the lines of, “Go to [Web site] to watch an exclusive interview with some guy tangentially related to the on-the-field action.”

Good for the NFL. Let that be a lesson to, say, the Barclays Premier League, which takes down YouTube clips at the drop of a hat.

Genuinely funny, last night’s episode of The Office (Hulu link) showcased the gravity of the situation between Apple and NBC. The long and short of it is, Michael wanted to create a mix CD using “M3Ps” for the office’s new human resources guy, who’s actually a girl; Michael falls in love with her immediately, or “love at first see with my ears.” Rather than download the songs from iTunes (or BitTorrent), he used AmazonMP3!

The humanity!

via The Apple Blog

NBC is giving away free episodes of hit shows on the iPhone (and Touch). All you have to do is go to NBC.com on an iPhone and you will get the invite to watch full episodes.

This doesn’t make sense to me. Yesterday, we find out that they will sell their shows on the Zune for the same price as Apple.  Then, they turn around and give it away for free to iPhone users. If NBC was trying to stick it to Apple this seems counterproductive. But wait…there’s more.

People are saying that the quality of the video is almost unwatchable.
Apparently the iPhone froze twice while trying to watch one episode. Is NBC trying to use the Trojan horse method to slap Apple again? Sabotaging the platform would be a great way to do that.

People may think that it’s the iPhone’s fault for the poor quality, but it’s really that NBC used the crappy 3gp codec. Since this is an iPhone-only feature on their site; you would think they would use a native iPhone codec.

I guess we will have to wait and see what happens next. I wonder if this will make Steve rethink his decision to not embrace the Mobile Flash player.

Cesar over at Zune Insider is clearing things up regarding the piracy countermeasures and he’s saying MS has no plans to filter content on the Zune. Don’t you to toy with my affections, Cesar.

We have no plans or commitments to implement any new type of content filtering in the Zune devices as part of our content distribution deal with NBC.

We think some folks in the industry were expressing hopes for how the entire industry, not just Microsoft, would come to look at content distribution, and some speculation has ensued. Again, no plans are in place toward this end.

NBC’s president of digital distribution, J. B. Perrette, explained in an interview the various reasons they recently chose to go with Zune for the distribution of their shows online. Perrette says that first of all, they liked that Microsoft was more flexible with the pricing. I can see that, I think Apple’s a little stiff on that front. But NBC’s other beef with Apple was the company’s refusal to build DRM into their iPods to protect NBC’s stuff. I thought Apple was in the right there.

But Microsoft is willing to work with NBC to create “filtering technology that allows for playback of legitimately purchased content versus non-legitimately purchased content.” And how, pray tell, will this mystery chip/program/rightware determine what is non-legitimately purchased? It seems that there is plenty of legal content on the net that is technically indistinguishable from illegal content. I can think of no way to pull this off without restricting fair use. Perrette says “In the short term, this will not win us a lot of friends.” Yes, and in the long term, it will lose you customers. Without friends or customers, NBC is going to be pretty lonely.

Update: This was pretty much wishful thinking on NBC’s part.

Devin already gave us most of the details of Microsoft’s new Zune Marketplace yesterday, but with today’s official announcement comes additional information.

First, lots of folks, including the AP, are making a big deal about the presence of NBC content on the new Marketplace. You may remember that NBC and Apple went their separate ways last year when Apple refused to cede to NBC’s demands to offer more flexible pricing for TV shows. Microsoft says that such a pricing scheme is “within the scope” of their agreement, but no details are set in stone thus far.

Second, there’s now a few prices to report. Users can download most TV shows from the Zune Marketplace for $1.99 each, which is the same as the price on iTunes. Shows include “South Park,” “Battlestar Galactica” and “The Office.”

So yeah, a big deal if you’re a Zune user—I actually saw someone using a Zune about a month ago on the subway—or desperately need to see “The Office” on-the-go without resorting to ThePirateBay or anything like that.

Zune Marketplace

Jason Kilar, the CEO of NBC’s web-TV site Hulu, has suggested at NAB that Hulu may be on its way to other net-enabled gadgets. He says they’re “ripe for the Hulu experience,” whatever that is. Sounds like a psychedelic rock band from Japan: The Hulu Experience presents OTOFOKASURENZU. Moving on: Kilar also talked about picking up cult hits like Felicity and Arrested Development, where he wanted Hulu to be the easiest, best, and most legal way to watch the show instead of going to YouTube or the Pirate Bay.

That won’t be a problem for me, though, since I have all of Felicity on Laserdisc. You can borrow it if you want.

Pity the media conglomerate that tries to enforce copyright by demanding the modification of an extremely popular and user-friendly piece of hardware. NBC’s Chief Digital Officer George Kliavkoff says they’re wary of releasing its TV shows on iTunes due to the large amount of pirated content on iPods. And since people use iTunes to put stuff on their iPod, maybe pretty please could Apple place some antipiracy measures?

Imagine putting a band-aid on something, and stuck to the band-aid is a shotgun pointed at your foot. That’s what NBC is suggesting be done. I’ve already dabbled in alternatives to iTunes – they’re mostly limited or inadequate on OSX, unfortunately, but it’s as easy as YamiPod, Songbird or several other options if someone did in fact decide that iTunes was getting a little too restrictive. If it were to be reported that Apple was instituting anti-piracy features in addition to the iTunes DRM so many people chafe under, people might start jumping ship real quick. Especially if it was clear that they had capitulated under pressure from NBC and might make further compromises.

He also had this little gem to say regarding iTunes sales:

The music industry guys would have something to say about how the pricing has affected their product over the last few years.

Wow. The customers would have something to say too, George, about how the music industry has affected the product over the last few years.