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Vongo does IPTV

May 11, 2006

I’ve written previously about how people watch movies and television programs on their computer, and about a few cool tools that might lead the way in helping us move away from television. But as clear as the path seems, there was no visible commercial effort to for movies what iTunes has done for music, and i’ve always assumed it had to do with bandwith costs at a massive scales.

But I recently saw an ad for Starz’s new online movie on-demand service called Vongo. This service works on a subcription basis and for $10 a month you can watch as many movies as you like (given that the connection is fast). This service reminds me of Napster’s attempt to create a subcription based music store. Sadly Napster has not had very good success, even while providing a massive collection. More recently, Napster changed their service a bit and are now providing lower quality streams of their entire music collection in order to attract more people to it. We’ll see how it turns out for Napster, but we’ll see how subcription works for movies. Actually, depending on the success of Napster I wonder if Vongo will ever move to a similar strategy and provide low quality feeds for their movies.

The current reception of Vongo has been fair, though some people complain that videos are not accessible in iPods. This might seem minor detail at first, but I think it’s a fairly risky move. The people who are attracted to services of this sort like new and cool technology, and also have extra income are the types of people who have iPods. Maybe Vongo is trying to see the big picture and move in directly into homes, but that seems unlikely to happen. The iPod people are a good base to test technology with, and if you get cozy with them, mainstream success is near.

But sadly this is that this is so far a Windows only client, which is a massive market, but the trends are currently being set Mac users. Mac users are not even allowed to browse the contents of the website! To do so you must download User Agent Switcher for Firefox, and change your user agent to “Netscape 4.8 Windows XP”.

I would like to see this sort of technology to catch on and wish them success, but they might be making a mistake by not targetting a very influential audience.

4 Comments
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ben vershbow, May 11, 2006

Warner Bros. just signed a deal with BitTorrent to set up an online movie retail service (NYT). This would be more in the iTunes pay-per-download vein than Vongo, which is more an on demand service. Jumping on bit torrent is a great idea, though from what I gather, the prices will be a little too high for this to catch on big. They also load files with some annoying DRM.

I download “24″ from illegal bit torrent sites each week. If Fox were to offer a service with fast bit rates, where files automatically started downloading the second the show aired for something like 50 cents per episode, I would use it in a heartbeat. I might even do it for 99 cents an episode. Downloading movies can be a hassle. I think the same logic that made iTunes a success could work here: quality stuff, fast, and at reasonable prices is a better than scouring the net for free shit. And with big video files, bit torrent is clearly the solution. But they’ll probably screw it up.

Baratunde, May 11, 2006

I can’t agree more about the Mac comment, especially for companies doing things with MEDIA. I mean, HELLO??? iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto.

Apple computers ARE media.

When companies like TiVo and Vongo consistently dis the Mac platform, they’re missing out on valuable feedback from UI and design-conscious consumers. They’re also leaving a bigger opening for Apple itself to come in, DEFINE the user experience and perhaps dominate the market.

A friend recently sent me a link to check out Vongo, and I couldn’t because I’m on a Mac, so honestly, I don’t care what the pricing, features, catalog are. This product doesn’t exist.

Same with sites that don’t play well with Firefox.

Now if only I could find a phone company that WASN’T dumping all my info illegally to the NSA…

Eddie, May 12, 2006

Ben,

I agree completely. The costs of downloads can be cut down dramatically if content was distributed with bittorrent. The problem is that you have to wait for the entire file to download before you watch the movie. Serial downloads allow you to watch the movie while it downloads.

Baratunde,

I am glad you agree with my comment about Apple. By the way, use the trick I mentioned to report to websites you use “Netscape 4.8 Windows XP”! The website does not offer much by itself, but I hate the idea of being blocked from a website. So I bypass it even if it’s not for any good reason…

Steve, May 31, 2006

Vongo is a low quality service. And you can do what Vongo does for free…since all they are doing is repurposing their Starz content and selling it over the web. They add a few concerts and charge DVD rental prices for low quality content and then brand it. For anyone seriously thinking of using online video they need high-res content, ease of use, ease of portability and much better rights to view content on different devices. Something to actually make the experience fun and not cumbersome. Vongo is doing nothing really innovative or creative. Why waste your time. It would be much funner to do it yourself with a good video card or HD capture card or DVR connected to your laptop. Even a Sling box. All of which can be used to copy broadcast content and encode it and share it…for PERSONAL use…legally. Skip Vongo altogether and save your money. Wait until a real service comes out that allows you to download, copy, burn, and port the movies.

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