Video Ezy on track for in-store VOD
By Bill Dawes on 18 April 2008


Video Ezy has moved one step closer to its promise of in-store digital downloads.


The rental giant has spent the past two years planning its in-store service that will deliver latest release movies able to be downloaded for playback on a dedicated in-home set top box.

This week Video Ezy announced it has signed a crucial contract for the software platform that will form the heart of the "Video Ezy Electronic Video Rental service."

Irish company DigiSoft.tv has been signed to supply the IPTV delivery platform and set top box middleware that will form the heart of the service.

While Australia's broadband woes are frustrating the general take-up of IPTV in Australia, Video Ezy believes it has an opportunity to succeed with a middle road that limits the digital delivery to its more than 1000 stores across Australia and new Zealand.

That means you will still need to make the trip up the road to your local Video Ezy or Blockbuster store to pick up a few movies (Video Ezy bought the Blockbuster chain in 2007). At the store you will look up movies on a kiosk screen then download them to portable storage.

According to Digisoft, this will be either a "branded USB or iPOD type storage system". The movies will be over 1GB each in standard definition, so it looks like Video Ezy will offer a range of different options for storage capacity.

You will need to purchase a dedicated set top box to watch them when you get home, although the whole process will have the advantage of removing the horrors of late fees, as you only need to activate and pay for a movie when you choose to watch it.

So there are swings and roundabouts. You need to add up the amount you spend each year on late fees and figure out if that covers the cost of the Video Ezy hardware, which has been reported to cost around $A550.

Details of the service are still sketchy, and it does not look like Video Ezy will have it available in "early 2008" as they promised last year. Local executives could not be reached for comment.

However the Digisoft announcement shows that the project is still on track. Announcing the deal at a broadcasting industry conference in Las Vegas, Video Ezy MD Paul Uniacke said, "Video Ezy primary objective has always been to give our customers a service that is dynamic and innovative with a focus on quality and value for money for excellence in home entertainment. The Electronic Video Rental service provides our customers with a new compelling and dynamic content delivery platform that offers them a truly flexible rental model,"

"The set top box solution from Digisoft provides our customers with a range of feature rich applications combined with support for the latest high definition technology TV viewing and gives us the flexibility to adopt new advanced online delivery models in the future," he concluded.

http://www.cnet.com.au/dvdpvr/0,239035801,339288272,00.htm


C.M

So I guess the format is download your movie, take it home, plug it into the box (@ 550 a pop) , watch it, take it back when you want, erase and download another?

Call me old fashioned but I still like my glossy covers, and a collection sitting in my racks. (dvd or blu ray)

I don’t really understand the point to this. Alright, you don’t have to worry about late fees or make a return trip to the store but these slight advantages seems to be offset by the requirement of a $550 set top box. $550 covers a lot of late fees and with no late fee online services seemly becoming more popular a $550 initial outlay seems ever more ridiculous.

They don’t really seem to have a market in mind either, at $550 you can count out most casual movie watchers, leaving you with serious movie buffs. But then the service is, at least initially, limited to ~1GB SD movies, meaning the quality will probably be lower than DVD, are movie buffs really going to pick this over increasingly available BR discs?

I would think not. Looking at the general public, everyone has a dvd player, so why pay an extra 550 when you dont have to.

If your paying out this amount you may as well get a BD player.

The 1 Gig SD movie would need to be highly compressed for it to be accommodated on such a small drive so artifacts might likely be a factor on big screens.

I understood the download bit rate was 95Mbits/S so the download time is very fast at 84.2 seconds.

C.M

There are many people out there that have an old CRT as their TV screen ( I have ), it might work in well with this lower resolution screen.

As to $550 for a card reader/player, I think that is a bit much if it is to compete against a typical DVD player.

$250 would be much more attractive in pricing.

C.M

yes, the high costs involved mean the same problem Blu ray currently has with gaining mass market appeal.

SD DVD still is a fair bit ahead and not much is catching it at the moment. Hell, my last 6 disc purchases were SD DVD and im a HDM convert.

Or

for you $500 clams, get network media player, and download the 1 gig movies, either pay, or get them free ( ), also rip your DVD collection, play your entire music collection in lossless look at your digital photos, watch your home movies .......

Or get a PS3 or X box and do all this and have BD (HD DVD xbox) and DVD's and games

and when you down load, legal or illegal you can keep the movie if you wish


sure you need to factor in a broadband plan, but most already have one, and it only costs around $25 per month to upgrade to ADSL2+ and 20 to 40 gig


no driving to the video shop (no parking costs or perhaps just in my area) , get the movie when it is late, when you have been drinking



hmmmmm ?



some reading on other developments




http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-sony...,1,152898.story

http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/14/news/compa...sion=2008041416

Driving to the video store, selecting a video and driving back takes me around 25 minutes.

My ADSL2+ connection is a little slower.

By about a week.

Then get a new ADSL2+ plan, you should be able start watching SD movies on ADSL2+ such as the 1.2gig ones under discussion within about 4min (about 15min for apple style fake HD), with the various systems avalable or about to be launched the system allow you to start watching as soon as enough of the movie has downloaded.

Unless you are talking about bittorrent, then yes that takes ages, but then you are not paying much either

Not to mention one of the advantages of downloading stuff (for me at least) is that I don’t have to spend that half an hour going to the store. I can just select a movie or two, have them download while I do other things or while I am sleeping and they are then ready to go when I want them. Even on a slow connection, lets say 1000 kbps it should only take 3-4 hours to download a 1GB movie. On an 8000+ kbps ADSL 2 plan you should be watching the movie well before you get back from the video store as long as the service is decent.

Seems doomed to be a niche flash in the pan. Big $$$ investments needed for 1Gb movies (a FTA broadcast SD movie is 6Gb and DVDs are 5Gb - 2hrs) and all this just to avoid late fees?

Regards

Peter Gillespie

What he said



seeing as +1 is now banned

What is meant by 'activate and pay when you choose to watch'? Are you only able to view the movie once? If I hire a movie now it can be played as many times as the family wants within the rental period.

I would think the download would be 'date stamped' and within that period you could view the video as much as you like.

It makes no sense to restrict the consumer's right of use especially when that use is predetermined.

C.M

Encoding will not be mpeg2 more likely divx which sounds about right for the circa 1gb for sd

There is no benefit in this IMO as it still costs $550 start v $50 and even my newbie sis inlaw can use dvdshrink to copy the dvd and keep it forever eliminating late fees by watching it constantly during the rental period.

Proprietary box is BS, surely the DRM standards in place are sufficient to play on a ps3/xbox/wii without having yet another box in the cabinet.

Once they get rid of the STB then maybe it's a winner.

lol it would be funny if Blockbuster implemented a similar yet different system such the set top boxes were incompatible.
The you'd have to buy two set top boxes or get locked into one Video rental system.

ok so i guess it wouldn't be that funny.

Didn't Video Ezy buy out Blockbuster? If so, the same STB would be used across the board.

Personally, I don't think a less than DVD quality download is what the public wants, especially with a proprietary STB costing $550 as part of the privilege.

A true 1080p HD download would certainly arouse interest, but it would be a couple of years off before the pricing of cards would be within reach of most consumers. It would also need to be storable on a hard drive (with the Date stamp intact) to allow consumers the right to own the download or use it as a rental. The movie player could then be a software player on the PC, this would be just one way of getting quick adoption, hardware versions would follow a little later. Of course pre-ordering /pre-loading is the answer when it comes to download-able rentals, at least as a time saver.

But as a 1 Gig DVD download, I would think that would have a limited appeal against an established format like DVD.


C.M

Streaming of live TV on portable phones and mini TVs was selling at Bic Camera stores in Tokyo last month, some looked as big as a portable DVD player and might have actually been both (didn't look that close). The picture quality was watchable, and if a Network in the UK played out such stuff I would probaly watch it on the move. My old Sony Watchman 2.2" LCD (FDL-E22U) ate batteries very quickly!

Don't think I would pay big bucks for downloads as such, what with already shelling out for an ipod touch and loading stuff onto it myself.

With $79 you can go to EB Games and get a reco XBOX 1 and for another $50 you can get it chipped and have XBMC loaded. Now u are set to be connedted to the net and download divx movies. If you get a component cable for another $25 your new purchase will upscale the divx to 1080i. Thats not to mention the other things it will do like net radio, games. It will even play DVDs.

So for $150 odd clams you are watching the latest movies in upscaled HD. Sure beats $550...

tsd

Just to add to the above the Ps3 does this too, also I dont need to go anywhere to get a SD divx
If I like it Ill buy the BR of it when it gets released.

i think they should name this ..................PORTA-BLU

[possibly because its full of crap]

What about the increasing number of people, myself included, who only have access to wireless broadband. At the current prices and download limits, it wont work.

Exactly right and exactly what I've said a few times as well.

With our present BB system it's not going to be feasible.

Agreed ... it seems as if us early adopters have given it the thumbs down. Joe Average is not going to go for this !
Someone needs to tell whoever is planning for this new method that it isnt going to pay !

Whats Big Brother got to do with it kazz.

I have a radical idea. Buy a reasonable DVD player for $250 and buy $10 DVD's. Why all the fuss?