Bandwidth Insufficient for HD

LOVEFiLM to Add Movie Streaming to Wii, Xbox 360, CEO Says

November 12, 2010 by Jeff Berman|Top News

U.K.-based rental company LOVEFiLM plans to roll out streaming service to the Wii and Xbox 360 as soon as possible, CEO Simon Calver told us at the Digital Hollywood conference in New York Wednesday. That was the day its streaming service launched on the PS3 in the U.K. He didn’t elaborate on plans for the other consoles.

The PS3 movie and TV show streaming service will roll out to LOVEFiLM’s other European markets also, Calver said, without saying when. The company rents DVDs by mail in the U.K., Germany, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, he said. The company “will look at new markets in the future but we have no specific plans at present,” he said. LOVEFiLM said it has more than 1.4 million members. LOVEFiLM will offer movies and TV shows only in SD now, but Calver said the quality is higher than usual for SD. The bandwidth available from ISPs is preventing the company from offering streams in HD, he said.

The addition of LOVEFiLM streaming on the PS3 was made possible through a long-term deal with U.K. company Pushbutton, which is developing services for digital platforms that “will be rolled out onto multiple devices,” the companies said. That will let LOVEFiLM “rapidly develop the service’s multi-country, multi-territory and multi-product deployment,” it said. LOVEFiLM will “further develop its interactive content applications, user interfaces and service guides to be playable on many new devices across new territories ensuring the largest possible audience for future use,” it said. Pushbutton said it had also collaborated with the BBC, BSkyB, Disney, the National Geographic Channel, Turner, Virgin Media and Sony rival Microsoft.

LOVEFiLM started in March offering its streaming service through Sony Bravia TVs and Blu-ray devices, also by means of the Pushbutton deal. “Thousands” of LOVEFiLM’s movies and TV programs are available to view online through the Sony connected devices and other products, including Samsung TVs, LOVEFiLM said.

Digital Hollywood Notebook…

TV manufacturers “may have shot themselves in the foot” by backing active-shutter 3D systems instead of polarized passive ones, said Char Beales, CEO of the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM). Consumers “are smart” and “see through” the strategy that TV makers have opted for, which has made 3D TVs less costly than they might have been but moved the extra cost of manufacturing to the price of the glasses, she said. That’s one reason why many consumers are taking a “wait and see” attitude, she said. Active-shutter glasses cost much more than passive glasses like the ones used by RealD at movie theaters. There’s also little compatibility among the different active-shutter systems used by each TV manufacturer. Beales referred to the findings of a recent study by CTAM and Nielsen that found many consumers liked 3D TVs but are holding off on making a purchase due to their high cost. The cost was cited by 68 percent of the 425 people polled as the reason they won’t buy a 3D TV yet, she said. Fifty-seven percent cited having to wear glasses, and 44 percent said there wasn’t enough 3D programming. Seventy-seven percent of consumers polled perceived 3D TV viewing to be better suited to special events, such as movies or sports events, than to everyday viewing, she said. Bryan Burns, ESPN vice president of strategic business planning and development, warned that without the right programming, 3D “might turn into a bust.” But he again cited findings of a recent study that found TV viewers preferred the World Cup in 3D to 2D (CED Nov 5 p1), and he stressed that ESPN remains bullish on 3D.

SoliDDD CEO Neal Weinstock demonstrated glasses-free autostereoscopic 3D that he said will initially be used just for commercial signage, probably for the first two years. He predicted the technology will later be used for TVs. The company said the quality of its 3D image “is a revolutionary improvement over previous no-glasses technologies” and it uses “the fundamental equations of physics and optics, together with advanced optical design methods.” Weinstock demonstrated only a static image. But the company said “the visualization methods developed by SoliDDD are equally applicable for both static and dynamic moving images.” SoliDDD “is creating a wide-ranging set of 3D technologies, from capture to display, that will be on the market in early 2011,” it said.

Although a growing number of TV viewers are “cutting the cord” of cable and satellite services to get their programs via Hulu and other alternate methods, “not a lot” of consumers have indicated they plan to follow suit, said Jim Funk, Roku vice president of development. He predicted that in 10 years, the business model for movie and TV content distribution will look significantly different from today’s. The number of consumers cutting the cord “will continue to increase,” predicted Bradford Auerbach, Hewlett-Packard’s vice president of digital entertainment services. But he said the vast majority of TV viewers will continue to receive their TV content via cable and satellite companies. Only about 2 percent of viewers have cut the cord, said Rory Altman, a director at management consulting group Altman Vilandrie & Co., who moderated a panel on content and new technologies. Content subscription services will continue to grow, Funk predicted. LOVEFiLM CEO Simon Calver predicted that subscription services will be victorious over the ad-supported business model. A challenge facing the likes of NBC and other networks and studios will be how to sustain the strength of their brand as more content becomes consumed via alternate channels including Hulu and iTunes, said Funk. Content providers need to make their content readily available, because if they don’t, viewers will turn to piracy, Calver said. Another “challenge,” he said, is for companies to develop new search technologies. Kids won’t want to use the search methods their parents do, he said. Roku is looking to get its technology embedded in TVs, but Funk said “we'll still have a set-top box” around in a few years for his company’s system. He predicted that the biggest losers in content distribution in a few years will be small, cable-only networks, which “may be squeezed” out of the picture, and multichannel distributors.