Telstra is set to expand their booming BigPond IPTV service to a new generation of Samsung TVs with the service now clocking up over 30,000 movie downloads a week for the national carrier. LG launched the same service three months ago.Next week Samsung will launch a new application that gives owner of a Samsung IP enabled TV, access to new content streams from Telstra claims company officials at the Korean owned company who have struggled to get the TV sales they expected after being the first company to launch 3D enabled TV’s earlier this year.
According to Ben Kinealy the head of IPTV at Telstra, their new service which was launched in August is now growing at 20% a week with over 95,000 T Box installed in Australia.
“We are booming. We are exceeding our targets and the expansion of the service to Samsung will further expand the way in which consumers can access Telstra content”.
He added” The new application that we will launch with Samsung is already available on an LG TV and this coupled with what we are delivering via our T Box offering will allow us to expand our content offering even further”.
The new Telstra, IPTV technology introduced to the Samsung enabled TVs automatically adjusts to what speeds a household is able to access, this allows for “fast start times” and reduces the cost of downloads.
Consumers will have access to Live TV channels as well as BigPond Movies said a Samsung executive.
Recently Telstra, cut a deal with Widevine whose technology allows the Australian carrier to deliver content to LG and Samsung TV’s at a quality comparable to broadcast television.
The Widevine adaptive bit-rate system is able to identify the appropriate video quality to stream based on the bandwidth available at the destination device.
“It will ensure that customers watching BigPond TV on a Samsung TV will enjoy the same high-quality experience as consumers get from traditional broadcast TV,” said Kinealy.
Telstra is among the first carriers in the world to offer this technology.
Samsung who is having to follow LG in the IPTV market is expected to release new IP e3nabled TV’s at the CES Show in Las Vegas in January 2011.
According to several sources, Telstra is close to securing a deal with several Hollywood studio’s to get access to first run movies. The move will see the communication Company offering new movies in Australia weeks after they have been released from Cinema viewing.
