Video on demand has been tried by the Australian market by many companies, usually without a great degree of success. Hybrid, the official licensee of TiVo for Australia and New Zealand is now the latest in a line of companies to experiment with paid movie downloads.
You need an Australian TiVo PVR to benefit from this service. Hybrid says they have up to 100 titles available for download. The pricing structure is varied but similar to Apple’s iTunes and Bigponds Movies portal. For a new title you will pay $5.95, possibly and for an old movie $3.95.
You can view the movie for 48 hours after the viewing is begun. So far quota free movie downloads have been offered only by internode. The format of movies is usually MPEG-4 and the size is between one and two gigabytes per title.
There are movies with classifications and protected viewing for young viewers. Based on TiVo’s figures there is a fair degree of consumer interest in this offering.
