Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Sure, most of us do prefer 'free' to 'pay' as
a general principle. But an surprising (to me, at least) number of
people buy TV shows on DVD after they have screened on free-to-air, so
clearly there is a market for clean - in the sense of being unsullied
by advertising - video content.
Ad-supported shows clearly have a place, and Joost is lining up to tap
the market for premium content paid for by advertisers. While that
on-demand model may work in some markets (those where all-you-can-eat
Internet plans are the order of the day), it is less attractive for
users whose ISPs only offer capped plans with an additional off-peak
data allowance. For them, an asynchronous 'download then watch later'
model makes much more sense.
The real problem is producers' continued insistence on doing business
on a country-by-country basis. As long as that happens, there will be a
strong incentive to download unauthorised copies of TV shows and movies
via BitTorrent or other peer-to-peer protocols. But where people can
find ways of getting access to paid download services such as iTunes
from other territories, they will - amazing as it may seem - pay a
couple of dollars to watch the latest episode of their favourite shows
instead of using BitTorrent.
And any technical problems regarding watching downloaded or streamed
content on a TV rather than a computer apply equally whether the
material is paid for, free, or ad-supported. Products such as the Apple
TV and media players from D-Link and other manufacturers help, as does
the arrival of small, quiet computers that can find a place in the
living room next to (or in place of) the DVD player and set top box.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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