BT Vision Launches Monday; Deal With Warner Bros & EMI; Expects 2-3 Million Users

BT Vision, the much-hyped IPTV service from UK giant BT, will launch tomorrow, and has done deals with film studio Warner Brothers and record label EMI, reports Telegraph. Warner will offer its catalog of movies while EMI will allow music videos from its artists.
In addition to the Warner and EMI deals, BT has a raft of sports, drama, children’s and music programming producers for its on-demand service, including Channel 4, Disney, Dreamworks, BBC Worldwide, Paramount, Warner Music, National Geographic Channel, Hit Entertainment, Momentum, Sony BMG and Turner Broadcasting. Over 200 near-live FA premiership football matches will be available from next August.
Informitv: The BT service is less ambitious than that of its German counterpart Deutsche Telekom, which delivers live television, including HD channels, over very high-speed broadband connections being rolled out in ten major cities. BT Vision will instead rely on existing digital television channels broadcast over the air, which are still only available to three-quarters of homes in the country. The main reason is that the BT network is currently incapable of carrying the multicast services necessary for live channels. However, the company is investing billions in building a next-generation network that will enable such services in the future, including high-definition video.
Way too much hype for now…for somemore underlying challenges the company is facing in this post we did last week.
Updated: AFX reports that BT Group expects to sign on between 2-3 mln users to its new service over the medium term…Vodafone customers will also be offered a version of the BT Vision service when the mobile phone group launches its broadband offering in partnership with BT next year.

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