Following a fortnight in which Australia was identified as the country most prolific at pirating Season 4 of Game of Thrones, with pay-TV platform Foxtel publicly defending its exclusivity and pricing strategy, the fantasy drama also
Barry Diller, the main backer of Internet TV streaming service Aereo, has described its chances of a successful outcome in its forthcoming Supreme Court copyright case as “50-50” and suggested that failure would likely see the end of the service. Interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter, Diller confirmed he would be in attendance at the hearing […]
The head of Irish video rental chain Xtra-vision and entertainment retailer HMV has revealed ambitions to take on the likes of Sky and Netflix with a new Irish video-on-demand service set for launch this summer. The groups’ Chief Executive Gerry Butler confirmed that discussions have taken place with movie studios over exclusive rights to them […]
Figures from MediaBug – Decipher’s bi-annual media consumption tracker – have shown strong growth in Netflix membership over the past six months, with an increase from 10 per cent to 14 per cent of UK online users now with a subscription. This is in contrast to the newly rebranded Amazon Prime Instant Video,
A new report from research consultancy IDATE looking at OTT distribution strategies suggests that OTT-specific services present opportunities for premium content rights holders to add value to content that has little or no exposure on television, to generate additional revenue, and to put pressure on traditional distributors and thus ‘raise the stakes’. In a blog […]
Streaming platform Roku has analysed aggregated Roku Search on-device results from last few months, with findings indicating that Roku customers agree that it’s the golden age of TV with television series dominating the top 25 searched titles. Downton Abbey takes the number one spot among most-watched TV series. The top list includes a mix of […]
BBC Three will for the first time make all episodes of a new series available on BBC iPlayer ahead of its linear transmission. All six episodes of Jonah From Tonga, the new series from Chris Lilley – the writer and star of Summer Heights High and Ja’mie: Private School Girl – will be made available […]
Amazon has boosted its exclusive rights portfolio by acquiring rights to to the new animated Batman series – Beware the Batman. The 26 episode show is available in the UK for the first time via Amazon’s Prime Instant Video streaming service. The deal with Warner Bros International Television Distribution sees Amazon continue to invest heavily […]
Comcast customers in the US are seeing a significant boost in streaming video speed after a deal between Netflix and the broadband provider. The news emerged as Netflix revealed its Netflix ISP Speed Index for March 2014. “This month’s rankings are a great illustration of how performance can improve when ISPs work to connect directly […]
Quickflix, the Australia and NZ online streaming service, experienced a strong March quarter of growth increasing its base of paying customers by 16,000 or 16 per cent to 118,557. Total active customers (paying customers plus introductory trialists who have registered with a valid credit card) increased by 13 per cent to 137,059. Organic growth through […]