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BiBC presents video download service

3 August 2005 10:29 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 11 comments

The British Internet Broadcasting Company (BiBC) is launching a new service for video downloads which it hopes will mimic the success iTunes and music have. The service will allow customers to download videos of VHS quality. Currently it is only live comedy and live music videos. Due to the major studio's fear of piracy, there are no feature films on offer at this time. "Film producers have been a bit reticent," admitted BiBC's founder, Paul Hague.

"But this is about proving and showing there is a market. I am fairly confident once that they've seen this, they'll come on board," he told BBC News. The aim right now is to have some movies available for purchase by the end of the year, which will be just a trial period for the service. Analysts are not too impressed however with the service so far, mainly due to the lack of major content. "Content is absolutely key," said Jupiter Research analyst Mark Mulligan. "It doesn't seem to have that much secured at the moment."

Another main reason for Hollywood not to jump into a movie download business like the music industry has, is that they don't want to undermine DVD sales of movies. Also when you assess damage done by piracy, the movie industry has been nowhere near as damaged as the music industry; so you could say the music industry jumped into the legal music downloading business because it had no other choice.

Rental systems currently exist for movie downloads but they only allow users to watch the content, they don't allow it to be stored. BiBC's Boxoffice365 would allow users to download copy protected files (of course) and keep them, watching whenever they want as many times as they want. Customers can also transfer the video to one portable video device. In the near future, there will be many more services like this. Even Sony has told details of its planned "iTunes for films" service which will originally launch offering 500 Sony movies.

Source:
BBC News

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iTunes launches in Japan (4 August 2005)

Sony is planning a movie download service (3 April 2005)

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Discuss this article!
bugzy113 (Member) 3 August 2005 10:43
if sony jumps on this it could turn into something big. . . [ + quote]
Sir-Age (Member) 3 August 2005 11:02
" if sony jumps on this it could turn into something big. . ." Like BetaMax and Minidiscs. [ + quote]
Pop_Smith (Senior Member) 3 August 2005 11:32
VHS quality = NO sales IMHO. If they were XviD quality then would would get sales (maybe). Peace, Pop Smith [ + quote]
Lethal_B (Moderator) 3 August 2005 12:00
exactly. why pay for a vhs shyt video which is some live broadcast when u can dload ur fav 700 mB AVI film in near dvd quality do the math ppz l8az [ + quote]
bugzy113 (Member) 3 August 2005 13:45
who said n e thing of sony having vhs quality? It said: "Even Sony has told details of its planned "iTunes for films" service which will originally launch offering 500 Sony movies." it didn't say they too were going that rout. . . I doubt they would use low quality stuff n e way. . . [ + quote]
Rosco404 (Inactive) 4 August 2005 1:29
Quote: who said n e thing of sony having vhs quality? No one did? The article says that the "BiBC" will release there releases in VHS quality... [ + quote]
Mik3h (AfterDawn Addict) 4 August 2005 3:22
As long as people know they can get it for free, there will be more people downloading, and less people buying. VHS is a thing of the past, the sooner people can realise this, then the more up-to-date we can get. You guys have a good point, quality is the 2nd most important factor of a movie you have to consider. If I decided to pay for my movies, I sure as hell wouldn't purchase VHS quality.. -Mike [ + quote]
borhan9 (AfterDawn Addict) 4 August 2005 5:34
I Still think its worth waiting and gettin the DVD and makin a backup etc... keeps the quality [ + quote]
Rosco404 (Inactive) 4 August 2005 6:13
I agree... I would rather get the DVD aswell... smoke me a kipper i'll be back for breakfast [ + quote]
paul_j (Inactive) 7 August 2005 2:50
Hi, I currently work for BiBC an I thought I'd put a few notes up in response to some of your posts. We do currently offer video download in VHS quality - this is for purely technical reasons: the higher the quality, the larger the download size. We could offer - at least - full dvd quality (we generally work with broadcast-quality source, directly from the content-owner) but we need to strike a balance between download size, quality and the speed of broadband connection currently available. As infrastructure becomes able to support larger downloads faster, of course we'll increase the quality - thats one of our primary aims, but we'll take note of your comments :-) As for the content, there's a fairly limited selection up there at the moment, but we are daily preparing new releases - we have around 1000 hours in the pipeline, and we're growing this daily, - and have deals with several vendors who offer content that is available exclusively from our site, BoxOffice365: keep any eye on the site, and take a look at our VideoWall Newsletter, when it becomes available in a few days time. [ + quote]
Mik3h (AfterDawn Addict) 12 August 2005 13:01
Why not just encode it in XviD or DivX into a 700mb file and stick with that? Users with a slow connection (dial up etc.) should be encouraged to upgrade, the internet is hardly dial-up friendly anymore. Maybe if they used BitTorrent and had a really high number of seeds, they could get downloads done on a 512kbps connection done within 3 hours. People are used to waiting on downloads. -Mike The Seeding Saviours {SS} V5 PS2 w/ Swap Magic 3.6 + Slide Tool Ritek G05 DVDs LG ROM/RAM/-R/+R/RW/ DVD Burner 2 HDDs - 30gb + 160gb 2mb Connection BitLord v1.1 [ + quote]