After too long listening to people hyping up online movie downloads in Australia as if high-definition on-demand first-release movies-to-your-living-room were just around the corner, it was a refreshing surprise to read Stephen Langsford from Quickflix, who was quoted saying something much more sensible and realistic in industry email newsletter, Computer Daily News (CDN.)
To protect its subscriptions (its sole revenue source) CDN is only available via email, and only via paid subscription, so as much as I'd like to, I can't point you to a URL, but here's how Stephen was quoted in the article:
Pre-Murdoch, Quickflix said it would launch a download and streaming offering in "the coming months". However, CEO Stephen Langsford now says it won't launch movie downloads until it's sure of demand and service quality. He says the lack of content coming from film studios, slow broadband speeds and low consumer acceptance will slow take-up of video-on-demand for at least the next five years.
That's the most sense I've heard from anybody else in a long time, and admirable candour from the founder of Australia's only alternative to the appallingly bad Telstra BigPond Movies. I'd say five years is about right, and in the meantime, broader content choices, low cost and being able to watch them on your living room plasma screen makes offline DVD rental a way better proposition than online movie downloads.
Disclaimer: I own shares in Quickflix.
