Access to Hollywood studios spurs Melita’s choice of VOD partner

Melita’s decision to partner the On Demand Group for its video-on demand service, earmarked for commercial launch later this summer, was spurred by the group’s access to Hollywood studios Paramount, HBO, and Sony, Melita chief operations officer Ludolf Rasterhoff told The Times Business.

“Video on-demand is about having a strong library with great content. ODG are leaders in their field and have pioneered the video on-demand launch in the UK with Virgin Media,” Mr Rasterhoff explained. “The German cable operator Kabel Deutschland is also among ODG clients. On Demand Group forms part of a global player SeaChange which is listed on the NASDAQ and which is also able to provide an end-to-end video-on-demand solution. In the UK alone, ODG has over 2.5 million customers for VOD services.”

Mr Rasterhoff said Melita’s main objective remained to understand customer demands and to identify solutions to meet them. TV viewing trends, he added, have changed dramatically and will continue to evolve. Subscribers wanted more control over what they watched and when to watch it. Melita has invested over €3 million in television services and products over the past year, he pointed out.

The new service, which will be launched in beta test version on Wednesday, will allow customers to choose from thousands of hours of content, including blockbuster movies and series like Dexter and Californication. It will be available nationwide and will be accessible by customers having an interactive set top box as part of Melita’s entertainment bundle which inclues Fibre Power 25 megabits per second and the TV service with an interactive box.

In its initial stages, the service will be made available for free to customers with an interactive HD netbox. The first few weeks will allow Melita to react to customer feedback and resolve any teething troubles. Features and functionalities will be added to the service – beta users will notice these as their software is automatically updated periodically in this phase – and content will also be increased.

When the commercial roll-out takes place later in the summer, content will see a further, substantive boost, and customer viewership trends and feedback will allow Melita to “improve the content selection and other areas such as user interface”.

Melita is to continue to focus on content and TV over the internet in its bid to maintain its position in a market that is constantly seeing major investment.

“First by providing more entertainment for our customers, within their reach, whatever they want, whenever they want,” Mr Rasterhoff explained. “The second is watching TV over the internet. We have already bundled TV with internet packages as part of our ‘Entertainment Pack’ with at least 25 Megabits or more. Customers are increasingly watching TV over the internet and, of course, having ultra-fast broadband speeds provides for an excellent viewing experience, without buffering.

“We feel it is important to look beyond the TV market in isolation. The world has moved very fast towards more and more convergence of different technologies. We have already seen this happening in voice, video and internet TV.”

He added all technologies were delivering content to devices and this was contributing to changing TV viewing habits and content consumption.

Fibre power – Melita was the first on the local market to launch ultra-fast broadband speeds reaching up to 100 megabits per second nationwide – is the beginning of “more exciting developments yet to come”.

Mr Rasterhoff emphasised it was an enabler, a medium to deliver more.