Back at the beginning of May, the UK’s Channel 4 began offering Lost from its broadband site for audiences in the UK. Channel 4 made a deal with Disney/ABC earlier in the year. After this successful offering, Channel 4 is making plans to expand its video broadband services. As part of this plan Channel 4 aims to offer films and older television series this fall.
The film download site will have thousands of movies and will use the FilmFour name. The FilmFour download service would carry a more varied movie content than the art-house style movies that FilmFour is commonly known. The service will have stiff competition not only from international services like Apple’s iTunes but from the increase presence of video download services in the UK by BBC and BSkyB. The video on demand market is growing rapidly in the UK. Channel 4 has plans to expand further into offering television and music, as well.
Channel 4’s video site was discussed in an article from The Guardian online. In this article both Channel 4 and the video on demand market of the UK were discussed.
"Terrestrial broadcasters historically haven't been great at riding into new trends quickly enough. Our perspective is to correct that with [video-on-demand]," said Mr Henwood. "Contrast it with pay-TV, where all terrestrials were late to the party and suffered."The more video download services, the better in my opinion. More of these services may cause more global access to video downloads. The US and the UK have a pretty large presence of legal video download services but the rest of the world is often cut out.
The company's television extension includes "catch up" programming - opportunities to see recent shows from Channel 4, E4 and More 4 - and paid-for downloads from the archive. Consumer prices will cover renting as well as buying programmes.
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