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 […]
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 […]
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.
Online video viewing data for January showed a 45 per cent increase in time spent on video in the US, and underscored that Netflix’s streaming video service continues to build momentum. Netflix has become the only paid video service to be a top 10 video site on the Internet when looking at total number of […]
Lionsgate, the film entertainment studio, Studiocanal and Miramax have entered into a worldwide home entertainment distribution deal. Under the long-term deal, Lionsgate and Studiocanal will distribute more than 550 titles from the Miramax film library via DVD, Blu-ray, EST and Internet VOD, in addition to cable VOD internationally. Lionsgate will partner with leading international distributor […]
MTV has launched a dedicated UK VOD portal, MTV OD, costing £1 (€1.16) a day or £2 a week with payment options coming via SMS, PayPal and debit card. In the US, viewers can catch up with full MTV episodes on MTV.com for free. At the Digital Content Monetisation conference, MTV Networks International’s digital SVP […]
White-label video management and publishing company thePlatform has been selected by New Zealand pay-TV operator SKY Television to provide the back-end video management for the iSKY online TV service. The iSKY service is currently available to SKY subscribers and provides the opportunity to view their favourite programmes and movies on their computers. John Fellet, CEO […]
Consumer expenditure on entertainment content is expected to have reached close to $320 billion worldwide last year, with online and mobile media segments experiencing the largest percentage growth. Research carried out by Futuresource Consulting indicates that consumer expenditure on online entertainment grew by around 23 per cent, while expenditure on mobile media grew by more […]
Netflix is the content business’s friend. That was the message from the company’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos, speaking at NATPE. He characterised Netflix’s relationship with studios as “very strong,” and Sarandos acknowledged there is “a lot of anxiety” about the dramatic shifts in customer demand for more on-demand viewing and the question of how […]