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Monday Feb 20, 2006
Race to broadband movie delivery hots up
One of the major battle grounds for big media companies in the next year or two is going to be around the delivery of movies, and other video-based content, over broadband internet connections.Once upon a time, the only way we got to watch movies at home was if a TV channel decided to show it or it was available in the local video store. DVD rentals (and sales) along with multi-channel TV opened this up a little, but up until now, the consumer on the couch's choices have always been limited by the whims of a TV scheduler or a film distributor.
Now this is about to change. The Holy Grail - for the viewer at least - is a system where he or she can download (super-quickly) any film or TV programme at any time they want, at an affordable price.
As broadband penetration increases and download speeds jump up, many internet users (especially younger people) have looked to peer-to-peer file-sharing as a way to get to this Promised Land faster. The advantage of this approach is the films and TV programmes are free to download. The downside is that the quality is sometimes dubious and there is a small risk that the copyright owners of this content may come after you.
The success of i-Tunes, Apple's music download service, proves that consumers are willing to pay a reasonable price for a professional service. This model - where you pay a small fee for access to a specific song - could well be transferred to video content.
In fact, Apple is already doing some of this through iTunes. Customers can download TV programmes and music videos to transfer to their iPods. But this is just one example of movements in this area.
Interestingly, internet giant AOL has started offering full feature-length films for download. (They only have about 100 available right now, but it's bound to grow). Elsewhere, Google Video offers low-quality downloads of American TV, Amazon are looking to launch a new download service in April, while a service called Vongo is taking on Apple with downloads of movies for portable players.
But the most interesting experiment comes locally through NTL. The UK cable company is trialing a service which uses BitTorrent - the software which enables all that illegal sharing of media - to allow it to legally distribute copyrighted material. The benefits for the customers in terms of speed and quality are potentially exciting. Watch this space.
Posted by Dom Waghorn ( 11:53 AM ) Link to this post Comments[0]
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