The Downloadable Television space is heating up. PeerImpact, a service of New York based Wurld Media, announced today that it has signed deals with three major TV and movie studios to offer episodes of popular television programs for download through its peer-to-peer client. The company is adding titles from Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Bros. libraries to its offerings that already included shows from NBC Universal. The company highlighted The Loop, Firefly, The Dukes Of Hazzard and Babylon Five as shows that will be available. Warner Bros. made a deal earlier this week as well with Guba to provide video on demand.
Downloads will only be viewable for a 24-hour viewing period and prices will start at 99 cents per episode. The studios have framed the agreements as a step towards further delegitimizing piracy, but the DRM wrapped around the downloads make that debatable. Perhaps most important is the juxtaposition of three major media company names and phrase P2P. That will be great for legitimization of the medium.
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Nice to see yet another company start this up, which is good so we can see lower prices
Yeah, I agree. We need to see saturation in this market. But I really think the right price point is…zero. These companies are ultimately competing with tivo and media centers.
They aren’t going to have any success whatsoever if they use the limited viewing period scam. People just won’t stand for it - come on, do you think that iTunes would have been any where near as successful if Apple had set up a 24 hour listening period system? Bah.
I could have sworn that I recently read in the WSj that NBC had also inked a deal with YouTube to show clips and such on YouTube.
I checked out PeerImpact a while back - it’s a P2P system plus an affiliate scheme - you get paid when your friends buy music from you. The industry loves it, but I’m not sure how it’s going down with users (it’s darned hard to find stats on these things). My hunch is that it won’t be all that huge - it’s like Grouper (originally a download) vs YouTube (web-based).
I think this competes with Video stores and eventualy Netflix once the Studios warm up to the idea of offering movie downloads .This is where the 24 Hour limit is coming from and the Pay Per View deals the cable and satelite networks .Its a start anyway .
I agree with Micheal TV shows should be Ad supported and with a client like Peer Impact that uses Geo Location as one of its netwoking features it would be possible to target advertising effectivly .Download to Own should be for seasons and the usage rules need to be lightened up but remeber this is a whole New World for the Studios ….
One of the features of Peer Impact that you did not point out is that they give uploaders a system credit for re-distibuting content and they already have a established p2p network with music and games for sale .
I don’t really want another closed p2p network…. And another… And another..
It’s a new world, can we get it right from the beginning?
And is this for international users?
PeerImpact says they want to be international at one point and will get those rights sorted out later - right now its US only.
The right price point is cheap, with fast downloads and no goofy, proprietary P2P or DRM.
I love this, and I hope that more studios do this. I don’t mind paying for it, as long as it is: inexpensive, without advertising, and available in a format such as DivX at a decent resolution.
Movies *are* different than songs. Most people listen to songs over and over but few watch a movie more than once or twice, which explains why the studios are so keen on pushing a rental/subscription model. The rental/subscription model has been wildly successful for movies already (think NetFlix -> Blockbuster) but there has never been a widely successful music rental market that I’m aware of, largely because of the difference in the way the media are consumed.