Italy’s Mediaset has said it will boost its pay-TV products with the launch of a new hybrid system of broadcast and broadband. Mediaset said the new product, called Premium Net TV, is based on a digital terrestrial decoder that can be used with a broadband connection. It will allow customers to get free access to […]
Amazon’s TV service has gone live to its ‘prime’ customers who pay $79 a year for free two-day shipping. They can now choose from 5,000 TV shows and movies such as to stream to PCs or connected devices. The move ramps up the battle with Netflix which has a subscriber base of 20 million. Amazon […]
Sky’s response to the BBC Trust on the syndication guidelines for BBC on-demand television content heavily criticises the decision to limit the content to BBC “aggregation products”, i.e. YouView / iPlayer. Sky says “[we] support the wide distribution of BBC public service content, including BBC on-demand content” but added “the fundamental principle of broad distribution […]
VOD operators must pay more to be regulated because the new co-regulatory body got its budgeting wrong. The Association for Television On-Demand (ATVOD) estimated running costs for its first year (2010-2011) would be £426,388, (€505,000) covered by charging fees to VOD operators. But now it says there is “uncertainty” over how many VOD operators will […]
On Demand Group, the global VOD aggregator and subsidiary of SeaChange, and Inview Technology (Inview), have announced an agreement to launch both transactional VOD and subscription VOD services on millions of connected TV sets in major European countries, starting in Italy in the second quarter of this year. Inview’s NEELiX platform is incorporated in millions […]
Portugal Telecom has launched pre-pay cards as a new way for subscribers of its Meo IPTV service to pay for VOD rentals. The cards are available to buy from Portugal Telecom’s website, its retail stores and authorised resellers, with values of €5 or €10, valid for a three-month period. Once purchased they can be loaded […]
Italian public broadcaster RAI has signed an agreement with Sony, the first of its type in Italy, for the deployment of Web content within the Bravia Internet Video platform. This will open the doors for the creation of the first Italian “Catch-up TV”, allowing viewers to view a selection of programmes available on RAI’s website […]
Users of the BBC’s iPlayer service are now able to search for shows from a range of other broadcasters and other on-demand content providers. Through metadata-sharing partnerships, users can now find programmes from ITV, Channel 4, S4C, Five, SeeSaw.com and new partner MSN Video Player, directly from the BBC iPlayer website. The initiative comes some […]
Professional video produced, published and hosted by US online-only media brands rose by 47.1 per cent in 2010 to 72.3 billion views, the highest annual growth rate seen since 2007, according to a report published by AccuStream Research. Growth in 2010 was driven in part by increased episodic TV viewing (over 10 billion total long-form […]
Redbox is preparing to challenge Netflix head-on, the kiosk DVD rental company has confirmed. Redbox President Mitch Lowe said his company’s forthcoming digital option will be a subscription-based Internet streaming service. A single monthly fee would allow users to access movies on multiple devices and access discs through kiosks.