Alex Kidman01 May 2009, 9:37 PM
But first they'll demand some of your cold, hard cash upfront.
Many companies have tried video on demand in the Australian market – remember Reeltime.tv? – but few have succeeded to any appreciable extent. Hybrid Television, best known for being the official licensee of TiVo in Australia and New Zealand today became the latest company to try its hand at paid movie downloads.
Not surprisingly, you'll need to have an Australian TiVo PVR to take advantage of the service, which is being branded under the Blockbuster label. Hybrid television is claiming up to 100 titles available on a downloadable basis are available right now, with a varied pricing structure that fairly closely mirrors those offered by Telstra's BigPond Movies portal and Apple's iTunes Movie Store. Expect to pay $5.95 for a new release or $3.95 for older titles, with a 48 hour viewing period once first viewing is commenced.
One nice touch for Australian users is that movie downloads can be scheduled to begin at 2am, typically the start time for many ISP's “Off-Peak” download hours. To date, only Internode has offered TiVo traffic in a quota-free capacity. Movies are encoded in MPEG-4 format, and Hybrid claims they typically come in at around 1-2GB per title. All titles are in widescreen aspect ratio with 5.1 surround sound
Movies are available from G-MA15+ classifications, with a PIN to protect your account balance and the eyes of sensitive younger viewers. There's a warning on the TiVo site that MA15+ movies may contain “Adult themes, Coarse language, Violence, Sexual activity, Nudity and Drug use.” We can't help but feel that it's going to be a rather long movie if it's going to fit all of those specifications in, but we digress.
There's a minor sting in details when you do sign up, as you've got to commit $35 from a credit card as an initial payment figure. When this drops below $10, the default activity is to top the account up with a $25 auto-payment, although manual recharge options are also available.
TiVo's own figures do suggest some interest at the consumer level, with a claimed 73% of the installed TiVo userbase having downloaded a movie during the trial period, when a single movie per week was offered up for free. We've got to take those figures with a healthy dose of skepticism, however, as the key word there is “free”. Whether consumers will be willing to give Hybrid Television ongoing money will be the really interesting test.
It's been a busy time for TiVo owners, with Hybrid recently coming under fire for the cost of its home networking package – launched at $199, although currently available on “special” for $99 – as well as a $299 1TB “Expander Drive” launched on Tuesday that connects to the TiVo's SATA port and increases the recording capacity of the system up to a claimed 230 hours of high definition programming.