Panasonic has just signed to deliver Hollywood movies in Europe to its Viera TV sets which have its Viera Cast internet connectivity. The fimls are from Acetrax, a Swiss firm operating in Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, the UK and Switzerland.
Viera Cast was launched in Europe in May 2009 and is available on most new Panasonic’s TVs as well as its 2010 line-up of Blu-ray disk players and it already offers content from YouTube, Eurosport, ZDF and other sites in Europe as well as supporting video and voice calls with Skype.
Acetrax claims this is the first time that such a service has been launched in Europe, where films can be purchased, not just rented, but this deal shows just how far behind we are in Europe and if you go to the Acetrax web site, even though it has been trying to get its hands on content for years, it only has a handful of new movies and while the rest of its catalog may be famous, there are certainly more classics than Blockbusters.
So when they tell us that users can either rent or buy the films to see on the TV screen at prices for rental between £1.49 to £3.49, and that purchases are £10.99, there is little attraction to take more than the odd movie, once or twice a month ‘ a little like going to the dusty corner shop for old video rentals. In the US, with Netflix online, there is a real sense of seeing blockbuster movies just a few months after theatrical release.
At launch Acetrax says it has 2000 movies available, but the majority of the rights it has are those which have been sold to TV stations after theatrical launch and then expired 5 or ten years later.
Acetrax says it will make a widget for the service which will be available in September as a software download to recent Viera Cast TVs. The Acetrax films come from Paramount, Warner Brothers, Universal, Momentum, Diva, Film Is Now, Eagle Rock and Charly Films and they are only offered in SD and oddly they streamed using the VC1 Microsoft codec.
The films are international, multi-language and can also be seen on a PC, on some mobiles and portable devices and on Blu-ray players. Acetrax has cut similar deals with Samsung internet connected TVs in other parts of Europe.