Internet TV – the (legal?) show everyone’s watching

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Thursday, 22 May 2008

Page 3 of 4 Channel 9, through its website NineMSN, also offers a range of short video clips, while also offering free downloads of full TV shows – through a special media player – of its own locally produced hits Canal Road and Sea Patrol II. Madmen and McLeod’s Daughters can be purchased, but none of its international hits seem to be available. Update: Interestingly, since publishing this article, I've discovered that Canal Road and Sea Patrol II are able to be 'shared' with your friends and even legally uploaded to BitTorrent sharing sites, according to the Catch Up TV website, but must be played through the Hiro Media Player, although they also state the shows can be watched online or offline. A proviso states the shows are only available to viewers in Australia and New Zealand, but whether this means someone in the US, UK or elsewhere in the world can download the shows from BitTorrent networks and play them through the freely downloadable Hiro Player and actually watch them outside of Australia or New Zealand is unknown. Each episode is around 800MB in size. Channel 10 has a range of video clips from its news service, its morning show and seemingly only one full episode an actual TV show to watch on its site: the, er… ultra compelling “Bondi Rescue” program, of which the only compelling episode seems to be the 10th one from Season 3. Update: Damian Smith, GM Digital Media, Network TEN has written in to the comments section on page four with the following information: "Hi Alex: enjoyed the article. There are quite a few other shows that we at TEN are offering in full episode form on our sites. If you go to ten.com.au and look at "catch up TV", you'll see 3 right now: Neighbours, Good News Week and How to Look Good Naked. You can also get full episodes of Big Brother (as a paid subscriber). Full versions of Meet the Press, and most of the Before the Game AFL show are also available. During their "season" runs, we've had full episodes of US programs Supernatural, Back to You and Womens Murder Club. We hope to have more shows in free, full episode mode before the end of the year." Thanks to Damian for taking the time to write in, a longer reply is on page four. The original article continues: Multicultural commercial broadcaster SBS also has a video player page with a relatively small range of clips with most lasting from 30 seconds anywhere up to around 5 minutes, depending on the show they’ve been excerpted from. Australia’s dominant telco and ISP, Telstra BigPond, also offers a range of free and paid video content, from its free BigPond Sports Weekend TV show, a BigPond Video channel offering previews and other free content, through to its paid TV show and movie downloads service, BigPond Movies. TPG, a competing ISP to Telstra, also offers paid IPTV programming to its customers after a free trial, and I'm sure other ISPs have some video programming too, you'll have to go to your ISP's home page to find out.   So, there are a range of legitimate TV shows, movies and clips to watch from actual television broadcasters and ISPs on the Internet in Australia, not including the wealth of content available from YouTube and other sites online – it’s clearly not all pirate TV content we’re all said to be downloading. Now, let’s get onto that “one digital media box” Cisco has been talking about. It says the survey “introduces [consumers to the idea of] the concept of their storing digital media and content at a centralized service (without considering price)”. Here, we’re told that 89% had “at least some level of interest”. It’s hardly a ringing endorsement, this “some level of interest” business when “price is not considered”, but as with all surveys, you need to dig a bit further to see what the claimed results point to. The survey notes that: “the strongest opportunity exists among those consumers who are 'very' or 'extremely interested', representing 54 per cent of the combined Australia and New Zealand audience.” How much are Aussies and Kiwis prepared to pay for such a “service offering” on a monthly basis? $12, apparently. Yet the survey then goes on to say that “when consumers were then asked their interest levels at varying monthly price points ($5, $10, $15 and $20), even price points in line with their expectations, interest levels declined.” I’m not quite sure what to make of that. They’re willing to pay $12 per month if asked what they were personally prepared to pay, but if given prices ranging from $5 to $20, “interest levels decline”. Maybe I’m not reading it right as it seems a bit contradictory, so you, dear reader, can come to your own conclusions. But Les Williamson, the vice president of Cisco Australia and New Zealand, is sure the entire survey shows that Internet video access is booming, saying: "The simple fact is the network is rapidly becoming the platform not only for businesses that want to increase efficiency and productivity, but also for consumers who are changing the way they interact with each other and a whole range of their favourite content." Williamson continues: "The Connected Consumer survey is another point of confirmation to show that broadband consumers are using the Internet to access video information in ever-increasing numbers, and it is up to Australian and New Zealand media and service providers to adapt to that change." Please read on to page 4 for the final series of stats. << First page <   1 2 3 4 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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