March 28, 2012

Mad Men on Sky Atlantic and US iTunes, but not UK...

Sad to see that Virgin Media customers still don't have Sky Atlantic in time for the new seasons of Mad Men or Game of Thrones. What's odd though is that the former isn't in the UK iTunes store either, whereas in the US store it appeared the day after broadcast.
Surely Sky aren't so petty as to block the sale of the AMC show from legitimate purchase by those without a dish? And they wonder why people download illegally.
(Incidentally, viewing figures for last night's premiere of the much hyped season five notched up fewer than 100k viewers on Sky Atlantic. The previous season, shown on BBC4, attracted 355k viewers for the season opener.)

9 comments:

Laze said...

I've just downloaded iTunes for the first time ever solely to download Mad Men Season 5 legitimately. But you're right - only available in the US! Surely there has to be a way to legally get hold of the new series without subscribing to Sky?!?!?

Jon Dunlop said...

Wouldn't surprise me if they've blocked it. They've done the same with Glee.

Unknown said...

I believe it's possible to jump through the myriad of hoops required to set up a US iTunes account and then buy US iTunes cards to fill up your account with dollars.

Or of course, you could download it from other sources with no hoops required.

It's really no wonder piracy is rife with practices like this going on. Media companies - either make content available everywhere to everyone for a fair price, as music is now, or people will go elsewhere and you'll get nothing.

Nialli said...

I'm watching Mad Men s.5 via a US iTunes account. It cost me $31.99 (£21.38) for the HD season pass. In the UK store Mad Men season 4 in HD retails for £28.99 and there's no sign of season 5.
Personally I don't like using "alternative means" to obtain US programming - as Jerry Seinfeld once lamented, "I don't wanna be a pirate!" - but the media companies deny the content to those willing to pay so what do they expect? I watched Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire thanks to friends who have Sky Atlantic and recorded it for me, and have "legitimised" that viewing by buying the box sets of both once available, but I will be in the minority. I'm not taking a moral high ground though and think that the media companies (Sky, HBO, AMC et al) encourage piracy with their draconian content strategy. Did they learn nothing from the music industry's collapse??

Acons said...

How do you download from US site?

Nialli said...

Acons: I have a US iTunes account for my work as I work for a US media company.
If you ever want to set one up though, all you need is an iTunes gift voucher from the US. If you search for "us itunes vouchers" there are a number of sites that offer them to UK customers, but I can't vouch for them as I haven't used them myself

Nick Smale said...

As a big fan of The Wire, I was very keen to see David Simon's new series Treme. But frustratingly, I'm a Virgin media customer, and Virgin don't carry Sky Atlantic. Oh, well, I thought, I'll just have to wait for the DVD...

But then, miracle, I discovered Treme on the iTunes store. I bought the series link, and week by week a new episode magically appeared on my computer.

For the first month.

And then after the first month the episodes stopped appearing. I went to the iTunes store, and discovered that not only were there no new episodes of Treme, but the four I already had were also now missing.

I emailed Apple, who gave me the non-explanation that "the season has been removed from iTunes Store for content issue". But they refunded my money. A year on, Treme is still not on sale on iTunes.

What's going on? I don't know, but all the big Sky Atlantic shows, Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, etc, seem to be missing too. I can't help but think it's a deliberate Sky policy to keep their shows exclusive.

Laze said...

I have finally done as others have suggested and created a US iTunes account and obtained a US voucher from eBay. I now at last have a legit copy of Mad Men Season 5.

Google 'setting up a us itunes account' to find out how to do this yourself. It's not that tricky. The voucher I bought off eBay was e-mailed to me so all in all pretty quick to get going and bypass Sky tyranny.

theml said...

There is a blog about how to take advantage of US iTunes prices and extra content at www.itunes-shop.co.uk
Well worth it I reckon.