Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 20 June 2008 13:10
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
With the future of DVD clearly headed for the downloaded dustbin of
history, the EzyDVD online DVD store clearly hopes moving into movie
downloads will secure its long term profitability. Is success assured
or is the download business not that “Ezy” after all?
After the failure of Reeltime.TV, one of the first legal movie download businesses in Australia, the only real game in town was
BigPond Movies.
But the cavalry of “alternate choice” has now appeared in the form of a new service called “
EzyDownload”. It comes from “Australia’s largest online DVD store”,
EzyDVD, who plan to start its legal download-to-rent service in September – and the first movie download-to-own service in Australia, too.
The service has been in active development since February 2008, with the acquisition of Reeltime’s assets, key technical staff and its CEO, Andrew Wilshire, who now becomes the CEO of EzyDownload.
EzyDVD aren’t just an online store, however – they’ve got 68 brick and mortar stores around Australia too, and they’ve posted a 25% growth rate in sales over the last 12 months.
But with downloading the obvious future, that even a Blu-ray owning Blind Freddy could see, the move to online downloads seems to be a solid step in the right direction.
The big competitor that EzyDownloads has in its crosshairs is Telstra’s BigPond Movies. It certainly does the job today, offering movies you can download to rent, but not onwn, but as always, pricing could be better for a download that can’t be burned to DVD.
But unless you’re a Telstra BigPond customer where the downloading isn’t taken off your monthly download cap/limit, the hundreds of megabytes to download content via other ISPs is simply too great a cost to bear when existing plans for most are far too small already.
EzyDVD’s founder, Jim Zavos explained in a statement that, “EzyDVD is building a one-stop, online entertainment portal in EzyDownload, with content from major Hollywood studios, independents and music companies, offering legal download-to-rent and download-to-own options.”
Zavos continued: “EzyDownload’s content will be extensive including latest releases and classic movies, TV shows, music concerts, sports, documentaries and special interest programs. And we will be the only Australian movie download company offering a DTO service.”
Continued on page 2.
