Three major motion picture studios, Lionsgate, Paramount, and MGM have jointly announced the launch of Epix, an HD online streaming service and HD TV station that will allow users to watch the studio’s films, for free, in HD.
This may sound similar to Hulu except there is no advertising, and you won’t see any charges. The service is bundled directly into cable subscriptions, and the movies will air before they even hit DVD, like a standard televsion PPV.
Emil Rensing, chief digital office at Epix, says the movies will also be available online in full 720p streaming, at EpixHD.com.
Arstechnica elaborates and says “the video is offered through Flash and is multi-bitrate enabled; the player checks the available bandwidth every ten seconds to see if a larger or smaller stream is required. Epix currently creates six different encodings of each film which range from full HD support all the way down to 500Kbps (cell phone quality). In our own test preview of Iron Man, video was the best we have ever seen in a mainstream streaming service.”
The only catch is that EpixHD.com will only be available to users who are subscribers to cable company’s internet and TV services. Chances are you already are though.
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It’s no secret that the big Hollywood studios haven’t exactly been eager to back online video distribution. In fact their unwillingness to assume any risk in such ventures has arguably slowed the entire market more than any other force. That’s why it’s so surprising to see a company owned by several studios announcing a new service that will combine television and internet-based video on demand.
Studio 3 Networks is jointly owned by MGM, Lionsgate Entertainment, and Paramount’s parent company Viacom. So far their epix premium TV channel apparently has no deals in place with cable or satellite TV services yet. What they do have is exclusive access to theatrical movies from Paramount, Paramount Vantage, MTV Films, Nickelodeon Movies, MGM, United Artists, and Lionsgate released from the beginning of 2009 on. In addition they’ll have use of many catalog titles from each of those studios.
Perhaps inspired by the huge success of Netflix in delivering internet video as only part of their offering. They plan to launch the TV service near the end of this year, but will apparently be online video on demand as early as May.
“With epix, we are creating an entirely new category of entertainment service for consumers that is unlike anything that currently exists,” said Mark Greenberg, President of Studio 3 Networks. “epix is the first brand to hold exclusive exhibition rights to movie content that can be delivered anywhere, anytime. The name epix embodies the depth and breadth of entertainment content this brand will deliver and also captures the uniquely personal way that consumers will be interacting with great Hollywood movie content and original programming.”
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According to a few reports and earnings from UK based ISPs, there has been a sharp increase in bandwidth costs thanks to the BBC iPlayer.
The BBC announced that in its first month of operation, January 2008, 2.2 million people watched at least one program using the service which led to almost a tripling in streaming costs for at least one ISP, PlusNet.
The actual cost per user per month for PlusNet rose from 6.1p to 18.3p, meaning the internet TV service is costing the ISP a hefty sum.
Ashley Highfield however, the BBC’s director of future media and technology, has said that the iPlayer has “negligible impact on the UK internet infrastructure”.
