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ABC TV - Adapting to Digital Revolution in a Flat World

Australia's free to air broadcaster ABC TV has launched its internet TV service, ABC iView. ABC iView is a streaming video service which provides full-screen, high-resolution video designed to run on computers with a high speed broadband connection (like ADSL2). Users can watch the six channels - news, documentaries, kids, shopping & others, or create their own by selecting individual programs and adding them to a playlist. All the channels are free and it is developed in-house by ABC Innovation. It is available on all major platforms like Mac, Linux & Windows (PC). It's not available on a mobile device yet, but content can be downloaded and watched on other devices. It's restricted to viewer's in Australia, due to programming rights management, which prevent them from making this content available in markets other than Australia.

ISP iinet is offering its customers unmetered viewing of iView. The ABC is in negotiation with other ISPs to offer ABC iView unmetered to its customers, especially those which are worried about their download quota limit.

This is a great news for consumers which are now spending more time on internet/net instead of watching TV for entertainment. Kudo's should go to Dan Fill, head of multi-platform at the ABC & his team for evolving their platform in a rapidly changing world. It will be interesting to see how other players respond to this, especially SBS.

For those who are interested in exploring the future trends of Media, then check out the Media report published by Ross Dawson. It explains how this sector is evolving and looks like ABC is on the right track.
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Comments

Suhit Anantula said…
Vishal:

How is iiNet providing this unmetered? is it because the content is local?

How does this work here?
August 5, 2008 at 4:13 PM
Renu Sharma said…
Suhit,

No content is not _local_ in that sense. But what ISP's do is they mirror a copy normally of the content on their server's which becomes local access to the respective customer. In this case not sure how they are going to do it but some mechanism like that will be what they might be delivering.
August 5, 2008 at 4:34 PM
Suhit Anantula said…
I meant local is Australia or ISP's servers. Ok, Content storing is one way...it will be interesting to see how the ABC thing is happening.

Especially since they want to persuade other ISP's to do the same.
August 5, 2008 at 4:43 PM
Renu Sharma said…
Yeah, It will be interesting how they do it. In their faq it says they are talking to others as well. This is a shift they have to have.
August 5, 2008 at 4:44 PM
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