Hollywood studios join the streaming media parade
By Tim Conneally | Published January 29, 2009, 5:23 PM
Studio 3 Networks, a joint venture of three major production groups, revealed today that Epix -- the name for which it had filed multiple trademark applications in early December, will be a streaming on demand Web service.
Originally thought to be a premium television channel and companion on demand service, Studio 3 president Mark Greenberg said yesterday that it will actually be the other way around: a Web service with a cable channel planned for the future. Studio 3 is a joint venture of Viacom and Paramount Pictures, MGM Studios and United Artists, and Lionsgate Films.
Because of the parties involved, the joint venture will have exclusive access to the full content plus bonus footage, outtakes, and commentary tracks for such films as Iron Man and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The service will launch with 15,000 movies, and original content from Viacom television properties on-demand.
Just another thing to confuse the average consumer. Why not integrate your content with Hulu, which is already out and up and running. Another website just makes it confusing to people, where it should just be one location to get all your content. Not one location for this group of content, another for this, and so on. This is why Apple has been so successful. Every person that uses Itunes, knows they just go to the Apple Marketplace to get Movies.
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|Remember Sony needs to make their own website for their less than average movies. Too bad Paramount decided (probably at great expense to Sony(Which again opened the coffers) to bring an actual Studio into the scene.
Too bad Paramount will be pulling the popular vote in and I bet Sony will most likely make some money off Paramounts bad judgement in this case.
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|Streaming Media, Flash Disc Movies ( http://www.businesswire....8005478&newsLang=en ) this is the future! Blue Ray 3 more years tops
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|Nonsense.
There will be a market for both those who prefer the convenience of downloadable content, as well as a market for those who prefer hard copy media - regardless of platform.
And this will persist despite the distribution companies' desire to move to get out of the supply chain management and distribution of real product.
The fanboy rhetoric gets a bit old, don't you think?
(...And to think that just last year after CES the concensus was that the network would never support online deliverables. LOL!)
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|Yeah, I think streaming is a lot more convenient. An example would be Netflix were you pay as low as $8.99 for unlimited streaming access (even HD).
Their catalog is kind of low (especially for HD), but I think once they get everything converted to streaming, it would be very nice to just stream any movie I want in HD without having to mess with blu-ray. I wouldn't have to wait 3 days for the disc to arrive in the mail, or pay about $20 for the disc at the store.
Whenever I want to watch a movie (normally at night when all the stores are closed), I can just browse all the movies online, watch the trailer, read reviews, look at the top 50, and if I like it, add it to my queue and hit play on my 360.
I wouldn't have to invest any money on an expensive blu-ray player and disc's. I could just pay $8.99/month and see any movie I want in HD (some movies for now).
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|Id go here to that website for the streaming video as opposed to the Sony alternative which I bet has less features, less of an archive of movies and less than average setup.
All they ahve to do is make it affordable and easier to access and they are FTW. Or even sign with M$ for the 360 and they're golden.
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