YouTube, the Google owned video-sharing website, will now be offering movies to rent. Initially, only five films will be available, and these are only to users in the US. These movies are from the 2009 and 2010 Sundance Film Festival and 4 out of 5 of the films will cost $3.99, around £2.50. After this initial launch, YouTube is expected to get some bigger Hollywood names on board who will be happy to offer their movies to a wider audience.
YouTube does have a major competitor in Hulu, which is a joint venture between NBC, Universal, Fox and ABC and offers TV and films from the major US studios. Currently, Hulu only offers content in the US, but was expected to make a launch in the UK in September 2009. They couldn’t get a major UK TV broadcaster on board in time, so this was delayed. With 4oD and Five on demand now available from YouTube in the UK, Hulu will definitely have to compete hard in the UK, and bringing TV and movie content from its parent companies may help it do so.
The longer users in the UK have to wait for viable services to be available, the more they will turn to alternative ways to get the content they want, such as P2P and file sharing websites. Some services are starting to appear, if you have the right equipment to get them. Sony launched the European PS3 video store in November 2009, which offers over 2000 films for rent or purchase with prices from $1.99 or around £1.75.

©2012 MoneyBlog. All Rights Reserved.

The Joint Select Committee on Human Rights has raised concerns over the technical measures that are intended to be implemented, stating that the Digital Economy Bill could breach human rights of internet users. According to the bill, users who fall foul of the “three-strikes rule” for illegal file sharing could either be disconnected or have their speed severely limited.
Andrew Dismore MP, (Chairman) Joint Committee on Human Rights stated, “The concern we have with this Bill is that it lacks detail. It has been difficult, even in the narrow area we have focussed on, to get a clear picture of the scope and impact of the provisions.”
The committee is seeking further information on the way these technical measures to limit usage of users will be used.
Readers may remember that similar concerns were raised in France where the French Constitutional Council blocked the HADOPI law which was being pushed through by President Sarkozy and backed by the entertainment industry. Concerns there were that it would block the right for people to exercise freedom of expression and communication, part of the founding principles of a democracy.
The government should be ready for a fight about this, as the changes being proposed are a drastic change in how things have worked so far on the Internet. A blanket right for government to rewrite copyright law on a whim has drawn serious concern from many large voices including the likes of Google and Yahoo. Any changes that are to be implemented need to be well defined, clear and concise, the detail which so far seems to be distinctly lacking from the Digital Economy Bill.

©2012 MoneyBlog. All Rights Reserved.

The BBC Trust gave Project Canvas a provisional green light in December, to go ahead with the BBC’s involvement following a lengthy consultation period. Given their industry involvement to date, the digital TV Group (DTG), which is made up of over 140 trade organizations including broadcasters, hardware manufacturers and platform operators, has raised concerns about Canvas’s plans and intentions. The DTG is working with members toward a ‘Connected TV’ standard which has similar goals as Canvas to create an internet-connected television service which will become available within their ‘D-Book 7’ specification.
A spokesman for DTG stated, “Many DTG Members have expressed concern that, while the DTG Membership have demonstrated a willingness to develop a Connected TV specification through the normal DTG process, the proposed Canvas [joint venture] members appear to have not fully engaged with industry.”
“A significant number of DTG Members fear that the published Trust Provisional Conclusions making only a ‘best endeavours’ requirement on the Canvas JV to engage with industry to achieve consensus is insufficient and unlikely to deliver an industry agreed specification.
“Many DTG Members believe that it would be a great shame if this were allowed to happen and a major departure from the processes that have delivered the successful platform that Freeview is today.”
The DTG is obviously going off of their experience so far with dealing with the Project Canvas team, but it should be noted that on the Canvas website it does state they intend to work with the DTG and to the Connected TV standard.
“As part of its submission to the BBC Trust, the BBC asked for permission to develop the technical specification for devices in conjunction with the industry. The BBC Trust granted permission for the partners to begin this work with standards body the Digital Television Group (DTG) in July 2009. “The DTG’s work to establish a standard for ‘connected TV devices’ will be published as an industry standard (DBook 7) in early 2010. “All ‘Canvas compliant’ devices will meet this standard.”

©2012 MoneyBlog. All Rights Reserved.

SeeSaw, the service that stemmed from the original work on Project Kangaroo, has last week launched a beta of their TV on demand service. This is an invite only system with the fortunate people who signed up early being able to access the available content. The beta is reported to be full, but numbers will be re-evaluated and possibly more people added.
So what are users seeing? SeeSaw signed a deal with Channel 4 and Five to air certain programmes that include Skins, Grand Designs and Peep Show from 4, and Neighbours, The Gadget Show and Home and Away from 5, but it does not cover the whole catalogue of shows that are available via 4oD or five on demand. Some BBC content will be available including Doctor Who. SeeSaw also approached production companies directly which has got it the rights to Footballer’s Wives and The Apprentice as well as 50 made for TV movies from a US company, RHI Entertainment. Sport is expected on the cards, with plans to show content from the 2010 World Cup and also the 2012 Olympics.
The full service is expected to be available from March with over 3,000 hours of content. How this will go down in the ever-competitive on-demand television market will be interesting to see. A lot of the content will be available for free elsewhere such as on 4oD’s website, or via YouTube, but if they can bring in good content, and get the user-interface right, it could sway people to SeeSaw.

©2012 MoneyBlog. All Rights Reserved.

There has been considerable discussion over the Digital Economy Bill currently passing through the Committee Stage at the House of Lords. The bill is to help foster digital innovation and protect the rights of the content creators. Copyright infringement, such as the transfer of files to other people over the internet without the permission of the copyright holder is one of the issues.
TalkTalk has been one of the most vocal voices against the plan for not protecting the copyright, not because copyright shouldn’t be protected but because of the impact the plans may have. Their latest release warns that ‘Robin Hood’ developers will neuter the bill with new applications and tools. This is something that is almost inevitable – as in the digital world there is nothing like a challenge such as breaking some encryption or building an ability to hide data from others.
The Digital Economy Bill has focused on P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing technology which no doubt is responsible for a significant amount of unlawful activity, but it fails to address the key issue; namely that technical measures are unlikely to have any long term impact on the amount of illegal file sharing. Innovative programmers will develop better technology which can combined the use of encryption, proxies and distributed routing of traffic through multiple jurisdictions to make the identification of content (as perfectly legal or unlawful) as well as those engaging in unlawful copying of content an expensive, if not technically almost impossible task.
We may end up with a bill that increases costs for the music industry and service providers, which all of course filter down to consumers. It is quite possible the bill will end up being obsolete within a matter of months, or indeed we may find reports that copyright infringement has dropped, when in fact it has simply become much harder to detect.

©2012 MoneyBlog. All Rights Reserved.

BT is hoping a decision from Ofcom will force Sky to reduce the cost of their premium content such as Sky Sports and Sky Movies when sold to other providers on a wholesale basis. Now, these channels are only available via a Sky or Virgin subscription package, and are quite costly. Virgin is thought to actually lose money on them with the current costs at an average of £20.72.

Ofcom’s board will be meeting soon to discuss the price Sky can sell these channels and a report is expected at the end of March with the decision. BT is hoping the price will fall and they will be able to sell Sky Sports at a price in the “mid teens”, which would be a big discount compared to the £25.50 for Sky Sports now, or £34.50 for all 4 Sky Sports channels.

Any price reduction would be good for BT as they are now allowed to marked bundled packages to customers as a triple play service. Being able to offer premium content, such as Premiership Football from the Sky Sports channels would help them increase their BT Vision customers from about 436,000 up into the millions they desire.

Gavin Patterson, Chief Executive at BT retail said: “We are looking at a range of scenarios at the moment. I wouldn’t want to give too much away but suffice to say we want to make it very attractive to customers. At the moment, if you are an avid sports fan you can really only buy sports on the so-called buy-through-model – you effectively have to buy basic programming and then premium sports on top. That isn’t good for customers; it doesn’t give them choice. We believe that many of our customers really want access to premium sports but they don’t necessarily want all the basic channels you have to get there.”

Sky is planning to fight any decision that will go against them, with talk of legal action if they are forced to reduce wholesale prices.

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