Will You Pay $7.99 Monthly for TV Eps on Your BlackBerry?
Will you pay $7.99 a month to watch TV episodes on your BlackBerry? That’s the question QuickPlay is asking…and to which they’re hoping you’ll say yes. Today they introduced PrimeTime2Go for the BlackBerry Bold and Curve 8900: that means AT&T and T-Mobile customers only: Verizon & Sprint folks need not apply. The application arrives in the new BlackBerry App World store next month as a subscription service; $8 a month gets you the privilege of full-length episodes from NBC, CBS, MTV and The CW, for starters. At first, I thought this was a streaming service, but after re-reading the press release, it appears that content is downloaded to your device for playback. You can, for example, watch one show and download another in the background. Content is delivered over WiFi, which is great for the speed requirements of these downloads, but not every BlackBerry offers this feature — yet another reason to get upset when carriers have WiFi removed from a handset.
The only shows mentioned so far include NBC’s “The Office,” CBS’s “CSI,” MTV’s “The Hills,” a part of MTV Networks, and The CW’s “90210,” so come May, we’ll have to see what your $7.99 a month gets you. I don’t have a BlackBerry, but if I did, I’d probably opt for a streaming solution like a SlingBox or Orb over this one. Still, there’s something to be said for the convenience of content downloads on demand, so PrimeTime2Go just might have legs.
The jury is still out for sure, but there is an interesting trend developing here. Carriers have traditionally wanted to curb these types of third-party offerings any way they can so they can offer their own services for revenue gains. Granted, the PrimeTime2Go service doesn’t use the carrier’s pipes, so there isn’t a whole lot they can do here. Now that the BlackBerry App World store has arrived, the floodgates might be opening up to more external services like this. I think they can fight this only for so long before realizing that consumers want freedom of choice in their services. The traditional walled gardens are slowly crumbling.
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Do they include a headset that makes it look like I have a 52″ Kuros Plasma screen six feet in front of my eyes?
Talks are underway to add that option, I’m sure. Unofficially, I hear that adds $999 to the monthly fee and the solution in mind includes a custom cart: there’s a seat in the middle and a stand for a full sized HD set on the front end. ;)
That sounds perfect. ;) I’m sure Kevin you can get a preview of this at the CTIA in Las Vegas. :)
8 bucks wow……just throw three small commercials in the show and charge…nothing. I sit through the commercials when i watch hulu with out a complaint. the big wigs have no clue on this stuff. i stream my sling to my phone for the total cost of 0 per month.