Foxtel in partnership with Telstra who own 50% of the pay TV operator is set to launch a new IPTV service that will see content including Foxtel programs streamed to a home PC or mobile phone.
Foxtel in partnership with Telstra who own 50% of the pay TV operator is set to launch a new IPTV service that will see content including Foxtel programs streamed to a home PC or mobile phone.
The new service which is being driven by David Moffatt the Group Managing Director, Telstra Consumer Marketing & Channels and a Foxtel board member is expected to be launched early next year as part of Telstra’s roll out of 100Mbs broadband in Melbourne which will to be available by Xmas or early in 21010 according to Telstra.
Foxtel who are in a head to head battle with Free to Air TV stations who next month will launch Freeview which is a new service that will deliver additional HD TV channels, is set to launch an additional 20 channels of content this Septemeber that will bring their total channel offering to over 170.
What is not known is how Foxtel and Telstra will charge for the new service. One concept being discussed is a flat fee similar to Foxtel’s HD content offering.
A Foxtel executive involved in the project said that “A great deal of work is being done to deliver content to multiple channels. We don’t want to give too much away but some big content deals are being lined up”.
In a dig at Foxtel and Telstra David Gyngell, the CEO of Channel Nine said in an interview with the Financial Review that the free to air TV stations are the biggest creators of content and “that you can count on two hands the amount of local content that Foxtel create”.
He claims that the trick for the FTA networks is finding new ways to distribute the content that they own and have the rights to.
One option open to both the free to air networks and Foxtel is to create widget channels with TV manufacturers that are made available via electronic program guides built into TV sets purchased from retailers.
Currently TV manufacturers are reluctant to adopt PC or IP based technology a move that Intel is keen to pursue. They believe that the PC technology is not mature and could well crash or freeze like Windows/Intel based PC’s.
