First they killed the radio star, now this. A friend of mine emailed me earlier in the week to tell me that his sister’s sitcom was premiering on MTV’s mtvU Über, a site targeted squarely at the college demographic. He mentioned having some problems accessing the site on his Mac, but I thought I’d give it a try anyway.
So I followed his directions, and sure enough, up popped the following message:
Detecting OS…Well, fortunately, how many college students could possibly be using Macs? You know, I expect this kind of treatment from staid old-money folks like the networks, but MTV? The cultural barometer of hip—wait, wait…I’m sorry, I forgot what year it was.
We’re Sorry!
In order to offer a broad selection of full-length music videos on-demand and free of charge, mtvU Über uses Windows Digital Rights Management (DRM) to protect videos from unauthorized re-distribution.
Unfortunately, Microsoft’s Windows Media Player Plug-in for Macintosh does not support Windows DRM.
Man, where’s France when you need them?
Maybe they tried to use Apple DRM but Apple would not license it? Then they wouldn't be leaving out non-PC users, just non-iPod users.