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Telecommunications Wireless movies from Unwired and ReelTime
Telecommunications Wireless movies from Unwired and ReelTime | Wireless movies from Unwired and ReelTime |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Tuesday, 06 June 2006 | |
  
See also: The deal will see the two companies share revenue from sales of the ReelTime service and work together on co-marketing and product pricing. More details on the packages for Unwired customers will be made available at its launch in October. ReelTime Managing Director, John Karantzis, said the company has been seeking to work with broadband providers who have the technology, and most importantly, the network capacity to enable smooth delivery of ReelTime. "Network speed is not the issue for IPTV via ReelTime's push system – it's all about having large amounts of low cost capacity – and this made Unwired a logical choice for us. It has a robust IP-based network, a growing customer base and most importantly large amounts of network capacity across Australia." Details of the ReelTime service were set out in its prospectus early this year. The service will be accessible via any broadband link via the ReelTime set top box (STB). This will be a customer-installable unit for either direct or WiFi connection to the broadband modem. It will contain up to 160 titles, selected by ReelTime, which will be 'trickle fed' by download during off peak periods, normally midnight to 6am. ReelTime will inform the customer via the STB interface that new content is available, and ready for purchase. Content will purchased on a pay per title basis, not on a monthly subscription basis. Customers will also be able to download content of their choice via the ReelTime website or the STB user interface, displayed on their TV screen. ReelTime intends to sell through ISPs but delivery is ISP independent: the ISP does not have to put in place any technical arrangements for content delivery. ReelTime offers both an integrated co-branded suite of services to larger ISPs or a fully managed ReelTime branded service to smaller ISPs "reducing their respective time to market, capital and operational costs, as well as providing necessary expertise." ReelTime intends to "support its channel partners, by offering the STB via retail channels, and presenting consumers with a preferred list of ISPs for connectivity." Allowing for standard retail sales margins, the company says the STB should sell at $650 to $700 (excl GST). It claims to have already been approached by several international manufacturers to ensure that their standard products, which encompass DVB-T tuners and PVRs are also 'ReelTime IPTV' ready. The company says it understands that these manufacturers will retail their products regardless of any arrangements with ReelTime thus also 'seeding' the potential ReelTime customer base. In April ReelTime named US company Skystream as the supplier of the key technology to enable it to 'push' video content to customers via IP unicast networks (eg DSL, DSL2+, fibre), IP multicast networks (eg DSL2+, fibre, HFC, satellite), DVB networks (eg DVB-H) to set top box and PCs, and future IP or DVB capable devices. Skystream claims that its zBand VoD software platform is used in 32 satellite, over-the-air datacast and DVB broadcast deployments worldwide as "the end-to-end system that ingests, packages, schedules and delivers movies and video content". ReelTime said it chose zBand "because of its solid reliability, proven in numerous deployments, which lets us light up our service much faster without technical risk so that we can concentrate on managing the business and marketing the service". |
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