Telewest To Offer TV Content Via Broadband
Telewest has become the latest media owner to jump onboard the web-TV bandwagon, unveiling a new service to provide broadband users with TV through their PC, following Sky’s announcement of a similar service earlier this week.
The cable firm’s new service is powered by technology company, Narrowstep, allowing high-quality TV content, via four traditional-style channels, to be accessed by customers through their home PC.
The new Blueyonder TV service, aggregating content from providers such as Flextech Television, high.tv and The Horror Channel, will stream a mix of entertainment, factual, lifestyle and sport-based programming around the clock.
The channels’ content is played out at speeds of up to 1.8Mbp/s, with the service automatically tailoring the speed of delivery to each viewer’s broadband connection. Viewing can be paused and a three-day programme guide provides an on-demand option, allowing users to select content from anywhere in the schedule.
Commenting on the new service, Eric Tveter, president and chief operating officer at Telewest Broadband, said: “Not only are we developing on-demand services for our digital TV platform, but we’re also able to exploit the potential for video content via the internet. Only recently has increasing broadband connection speeds and improvements in encoding technology allowed the continuous streaming of such high quality video.”
Telewest Broadband has over 750,000 broadband internet customers, two-thirds of whom subscribe to services of 1Mb and above. The service, currently at the trial stage, has around 25,000 regular users.
Earlier this week satellite broadcaster, BSkyB, announced that it would allow customers to download selected film and sports content via their broadband-equipped PC, putting the company in direct competition with on-demand services from HomeChoice and cable companies such as ntl and Telewest (see Sky To Provide Content Via Internet Downloads).
The new service is likely to build on the company’s embryonic Sky-By-Wire brand, currently employed to provide Sky’s sports and movie channels to HomeChoice customers via their broadband connection (see Sky Boosts Audience Reach With HomeChoice Deal).
Blueyonder TV: www.blueyonder.co.uk/tv Telewest: 0845 142 0000 www.telewest.co.uk