Skip to main content

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.
Labels:

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
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Growing List of Australian Startups

Today I'm publishing the list of Australian Startups that have surfaced on the global map in the last 3-5 years and got coverage on our Startups Portal . This is an ongoing endeavour to learn more about new technology-based startups in IT (Enterprise, Product, Open source, SAAS, eCommerce, Web 2.0/3.0), Telecom (Mobile, OSS/BSS), Media (News, Social Networking), Marketing/Branding, Green Tech (Sustainability, Carbon trading), R&D. The following list will be updated regularly as we learn more about startups and cover it here. If you know any new venture or startup which we should know then please feel free to contact us . Let us look at the list now: Adimade Agents of Cha nge Ankoder ApartmentReviews AppleBox Australiaforum BeamMe.Info Booktagger Boozle Brownbook Buzka Cinergix Clickfind Clivir Coastal Watch Community Enabler Confer Debenu Docoloco Etradesman Flogd FreeConnect Front Foo
6 comments
Read more

99designs - Connecting Designers from Around the World

Today we showcase an exciting and successful venture co-founded by, Mark Harbottle in 2008 from Melbourne, Australia, 99designs - it connects thousands of designers from around the world with clients who need design tasks completed fast, and without the usual high cost and limited choices you get from most traditional design firms. In a recent email-based interview with Mark, he gave insights into his venture and how he is progressing with it. This is what he has to say: • Please tell us about yourself, your background and interests? I’m 34 years old. I have a degree in computer systems engineering. I started my wo rking life as a programmer, but I eventually found I was much better at online marketing, which back in 1995 was an area not many people had explored. I’ve worked with pure internet businesses for 13 years now. The first 4 years after I graduated I worked with one of Australia’s first internet companies, and the last 9 have been spent working on my own businesses. I started
Post a Comment
Read more

Ankoder - More Than A Online Video Platform

Today we explore an exciting venture in the Online Video Platform, Ankoder (pronounced encoder). It was founded in 2006 by Rex Chung from Sydney, Australia. In a recent email-based interview with Rex Chung, he gave insights into his venture and how he is progressing with it. This is what he has to say: • Please tell us about your venture/company? We're more than just a white-label video platform. We provide a flexible API that allows developers to easily integrate videos on their site while keeping full control of the videos and encoding options. • Who are the people behind this and how it started? Ankoder is a product of RoRCraft, which was founded by Rex Chung in 2006. We started this project in-house in house since late 2007. We got this idea from thinking about how can we capitalise on the power of cloud computing. We've designed our application to automatically scale using Amazon's EC2 so that we can guarantee the videos don't need to wait in a queue, and we open
2 comments
Read more