DIGITAL MEDIA

ABC's iView

The ABC’s assault on digital innovation has gained pace with the launch this week of its free internet TV service ABC iView, which features the breadth of ABC TV’s broadcasting content across six online channels available to view via PC or TV.

ABC Director of Television Kim Dalton, said that iView presented the next phase of viewing for Australians, offering them ultimate control of their content and viewing patterns.

“The way Australians watch television is changing. People want to enjoy their favourite shows at a time and place convenient to them. The enormous success ABC TV has had in providing our content online through vodcasting, clearly shows that Australians love to watch television this way,” Dalton said.

He added than the service offered IPTV without having to compromise on the quality of the vision: “With five channels on offer and more in the pipeline, ABC TV continues to set the agenda for the media industry in Australia. With a particular emphasis and focus on Australian content. And as Australians spend more time on line and increasingly get some of their entertainment and information via broadband we want the ABC to be there with Australian made programs and the best of our overseas content. We are redefining television.”

The channels include: ABC CatchUp weekly programming from ABC1 and ABC2; ABC News; ABC Kazam! a children’s animation and drama channel; ABC Docs a selection of natural history programs, social documentaries and factual series; ABC Arts; and the ABC Shop a commercial venture which showcases previews for programs that can be rented or purchased as high-quality downloads from ABC Shop downloads.

The streaming video service platform was developed in-house by ABC Innovation and requires a high speed broadband connection such as ADSL2 or high speed cable services. iView uses a Flash-based player with an average episode churning through 5M per minute, with the ABC recommending bandwidth of at least 1.1Mbps for smooth playback.

Key to its adoption will be the integration of broadband plans that are unmetered or uncapped for downloads. ISP iiNet, which has championed VoD services across its ADSL 2+ network is the only carrier to come on board so far with uncapped data download plans.

The ABC is clearly following the lead of the success of its UK counterpart the BBC which was the last broadcaster to introduce a free “catch up” service, the iPlayer in December 2007. It followed on from Channel 4¹s 4oD in December 2006 and ITV.com in August 2007. In just six months the iPlayer has served 100 million videos. In June, Five TV re-launched its catch up service to combines free and paid programming.

It is understood that that the ABC is also closely watching the development of the Kangaroo platform in the UK which is a commercial venture between ITV, Channel 4 and BBC Worldwide that aims to pool together their respective back catalogues as a commercial download service. The project is slated to launch in 2009 but is currently subject to a review by the UK¹s Competition Commission.

For a detailed look at the “catch up” TV market get the July edition Digital Media out now

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