MobiTV Now Letting People Store TV Offline On Their Phone To Watch Whenever They Want
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MobiTV has fixed a digital rights management issue that was prohibiting it from offering users the ability to store content on their phone and then play it offline or on other devices. In doing so, MobiTV says there’s now a host of new business models to offer consumers, including subscriptions, rental, content metering, and sharing of content across multiple devices and platforms.
“It was imperative for us, as multi-screen distribution becomes core to our business, to create a solution that allows for consumption of content on multiple screens and platforms, whether someone is on a plane or sitting in front of their home television,” said Cedric Fernandes, MobiTV’s VP of Technology.
No word on when customers will have these options. UPDATE: MobiTV got back to us to say that commercial availability is planned to begin in early Q2 with deployments across multiple carriers and device platforms. The launch comes just in time, if not a little late. There are tons of options for watching video on mobile phones today, ranging from free YouTube clips to even more professional content, like CBS (NYSE: CBS) Mobile’s TV.com app, which streams full episodes from many of its properties, including CW, Showtime and CNet. Likewise, Qualcomm’s FLO TV subsidiary offers broadcast TV on limited phones on both AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon’s networks.
MobiTV currently provides subscriptions for $9.99 a month for several mobile applications that include more than 35 channels like NBC, FOX News, ESPN (NYSE: DIS) Mobile TV and Comedy Central Channel. It TV app is also sold and distributed through multiple U.S. carriers, including Verizon Wireless and Sprint (NYSE: S). It did not say how pricing might change with download and play-back features.
MobiTV said one of the major stumbling blocks to supporting multiple devices and multiple platforms was the requirement to support several types of DRM, which would be complex and expensive. To eliminate this, MobiTV said it worked closely with its content partners to create one solution that spans multiple devices.
Posted In: Media & Publishing, TV, VOD, Mobile, mobitv
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