{"id":68128,"date":"2014-09-10T14:31:05","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T12:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=68128"},"modified":"2014-09-10T16:46:18","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T14:46:18","slug":"vidi-promises-local-streaming-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/media\/68128\/vidi-promises-local-streaming-content\/","title":{"rendered":"Vidi promises local streaming content"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Times Media Group has launched a subscription video service in South Africa called <a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/109606-vidi-streaming-service-launches-at-r149-a-month.html\">Vidi<\/a>, at a price of R149 per month.<\/p>\n<p>Vidi also has a video on-demand (VOD) section for newer releases, where it charges between R15 and R27 to rent a movie.<\/p>\n<p>At the service&#8217;s launch on Wednesday (10 September), the group said that 21 series are already available, or a total of 69 seasons, or 1,325 episodes.<\/p>\n<p>Asked why the content selection is so limited, Vidi said that content is very expensive and represents the biggest barrier to entry for services like it.<\/p>\n<p>The group says it plans to grow its\u00a0TV catalogue by about 200 hours monthly, or an average of five series.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Original content<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Original and local content will also be added to the service as part of a second phase.<\/p>\n<p>Times media said it aims to produce its own content through its own production company, in time. &#8220;Local content is definitely a focus,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n<p>Times Media MD of broadcast and content Andrew Gill told BusinessTech that the group has not set any take-up targets, as it believes that that market is strong enough to make it a commercial success in the short term.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not going to require a miracle,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Subscription vs box office<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Just-off-circuit movies are not available as part of the subscription service, and when asked why that was, spokespeople from Vidi explained that there are two post-cinema release windows: transactional VOD (TVOD), and subscription VOD (SVOD).<\/p>\n<p>Services like Netflix only play in the SVOD space, while iTunes and BoxOffice are TVOD players.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s worth noting that iTunes does offer a back catalogue of video content, but not on a subscription basis.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Broadband requirements<\/h3>\n<p>Video streams from Vidi automatically scale according to the connection speed available, to a minimum of standard definition (SD).<\/p>\n<p>A minimum connection of 1 Megabit per second (Mbps) is required for the SD stream, Vidi said.<\/p>\n<p>Vidi offers content in full HD (1920 x 1080) where the studios have made it available at that resolution. To stream full HD content, Vidi said you would need about a 4Mbps connection.<\/p>\n<p>In terms of data costs, a standard length movie, depending on the quality it\u2019s streaming in, will eat between 1 Gigabyte (GB) and 2GB, Vidi said.<\/p>\n<p>A 44 minute episode of a TV show will use anything between 500\u2013700MB.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Reporting with MyBroadband<\/h3>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More on Vidi<\/h3>\n<p><a title=\"R149 a month video streaming service launched in SA\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/media\/68058\/r149-a-month-video-streaming-service-launched-in-sa\/\"><strong>R149 a month video streaming service launched in SA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Vidi on-demand movies, series promises big names\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/media\/67206\/vidi-on-demand-movies-series-promises-big-names\/\"><strong>Vidi on-demand movies, series promises big names<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/telecommunications\/66832\/times-media-to-launch-video-on-demand\/\"><strong>Times Media to launch VOD service, Vidi<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"MTN a step closer to streaming video\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/general\/66994\/mtn-a-step-closer-to-streaming-video\/\"><strong>MTN a step closer to streaming\u00a0video<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Times Media Group has detailed the current service offering of its just-launched subscription video service, Vidi, pointing to more local shows in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":68148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5554],"tags":[25,5706,8686],"class_list":["post-68128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-active","tag-times-media","tag-vidi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68128"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68156,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68128\/revisions\/68156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}