BT is readying to launch on July 31 a PC-based video-to-own download service offering its broadband subscribers movies and TV programmes sourced from NBC Universal - and with the promise of making new Universal titles available online on the same day as their UK-released DVDs.
The BT Vision store (http://www.bt.com/btvision) will provide downloadable content in two formats - one suitable for computer playback, the other for portable devices (using, we believe, Microsoft WMV files in each case).
In addition, and this is the unusual part, the service also mails out the related DVDs in the post. The initial range is said to include films such as Inside Man, King Kong, Jarhead and American Dreamz.
Come the autumn and BT will follow up with a video-on-demand service using a Philips set-top box with PVR functionality. The box is said to hold up to 80 hours of video-on-demand programming and will, we understand, also be able to record digital terrestrial TV via a built-in Freeview TV tuner that needs to be fed from a conventional aerial.
What's not clear, though, is quite how the Philips box receives its paid-for programmes from BT. Our assumption is that this is directly over the phone line and not via a PC but may signal a very large increase to broadband download speeds is on the cards.
We'd also assume that BT must be planning content deals with other movie studios and TV channels, since it will want to offer the widest possible choice. At the moment, though, the telecomms giant is talking only about the NBC Universal agreement.
The BT Vision home page says that the services will be "available first to all new and existing BT Broadband customers", implying, if not promising, that others will be able to get a slice of the action at some time. However, we strongly doubt that subscribers to other broadband or telephone services will be eligible.
The general trend is for companies to package online and downloadable TV programming and movies only with some other service, with the aim, as soon as possible, to get people to sign up for broadband, landline phone and TV - and, in some case, mobile phone services, too.
As a prime example, Sky recently announced the coming of a "free" broadband service for all of its satellite TV subscribers and the introduction next year of low-cost landline calls. For details, check out this HEXUS.headline, 'Free' broadband for 'all' Sky-TV subscribers.
To balance the books, the Sky offering depends on its being able to get its own gear into BT exchanges to cut the cost of providing broadband-related and telephone services.
This local-loop unbundling is what makes possible the massive changes we're seeing with internet, telephone and video services. And it suggests to us that there's no good reason for the BT Vision service to be offered to any broadband subscribers or telephone users apart from BT's own.
Further, LLU probably also means that it's simply impossible to offer BT Vision to anyone who's switched completely away from BT - except if they come back.
Indeed, we see what BT is doing as being a fightback against local-loop unbundling and the growth of competition to its own phone and broadband services, and that's exemplified by its promise (which we suspect may turn out to slightly hollow) that there will be no mandatory monthly subscriptions.
The BT Vision home page gives a taster of what else it will be offering to keep existing customers and tempt others to join. In one teasing line it says, "In the future you'll be able to use instant messaging, chat and video telephony all through your TV."
This is something that has been talked about for a while and the functionality is being co-developed with Microsoft and Alcatel and was one of the things demonstrated at Microsoft's Life Squared event earlier in the year.
In another beguiling line, BT reckons that, "You'll be able to control your BT Vision service via the internet whenever you're online". This, we assume, means it will be possible to use the net to programme recordings that you forgot to set while at home - or only learned about after you've left.
And that, of course, is something that owners of Sky+ and Sky HD PVR's can already do on a chargeable basis via mobile phones and being told they will be able to do free over the internet from later in the summer. See this HEXUS.headline, Sky+ offers remote recording via mobile or web.
Thoughts on BT Vision, and the general direction that broadband, telephones and TV are going? We'd be keen to hear them in this thread in the HEXUS.community.
HEXUS.links
HEXUS.community :: discussion thread about this article
HEXUS.headline - 'Free' broadband for 'all' Sky-TV subscribers
HEXUS.headline - Sky+ offers remote recording via mobile or web
HEXUS.headline - Microsoft's Life Squared
BT Vision Store - home page
