virgin media

Because the [itvt] editorial team is busy working on The TV of Tomorrow Show (March 3rd-4th in San Francisco) and on our new EBIF Intensive event (March 5th in San Francisco), we will be covering most stories in summary/round-up form over the next few weeks. Here is a round-up of the latest VOD news:

UK cable operator, Virgin Media, and Universal Pictures announced Monday that the latter's subscription-based movies-on-demand service, PictureBox, will launch next month on Virgin Media's VOD platform. Priced at £5 per month, the service will offer 28 films--including recent releases and library titles--at any one time, with seven new titles added to its line-up every Friday. According to the companies, most of the films will be available in HD and many will not yet have been made available on free-to-air television in the UK.

UK cable operator, Virgin Media, has for the first time premiered a TV series on its video-on-demand platform. Starting June 1st, the company is making all 13 episodes of "jPod"--a comedy-drama based on the coming-of-age novel of the same name by Douglas Coupland and acquired from UK distributor, Fireworks International--available in its VOD service's premium TV Choice area for two months, and is also making the first four episodes available in the service's free area, Virgin Central, throughout June.

UK cable operator, Virgin Media, said Monday that ITV Player, the catch-up service originally launched on the Web by UK commercial terrestrial broadcaster, ITV (note: ITV is an acronym for Independent Television Network), generated over 4 million on-demand views in the first full month after its launch on Virgin's VOD platform. According to Virgin Media, the most popular ITV Player shows on its platform in March were "Coronation Street," "Emmerdale," "The Jeremy Kyle Show," "Dancing on Ice" and "Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway." "We are really excited by the early success of ITV Player on Virgin Media's TV platform," Ben McOwen Wilson, ITV's director of online, said in a prepared statement.

UK cable operator, Virgin Media, has begun offering the recently launched HDTV version of the BBC's BBC iPlayer catch-up TV service (note: for more on the HD BBCi Player, see the article posted on itvt.com April 16th) on its VOD platform to the approximately 520,000 Virgin customers equipped with the company's V+ HD set-top box. HD programming currently available through the service includes "Robin Hood," "Friday Night with Jonathan Ross" and "Later...with Jools Holland"; HD programming slated to be available through the service in the near future includes two "Doctor Who" specials and the shows "Dragon's Den" and "Kerwhizz."

VOD technology provider, SeaChange International, said Wednesday that its content-services subsidiary, On Demand Group (ODG), has signed a new four-year contract to provide content management services for UK cable operator Virgin Media's VOD service. ODG has been providing content management services--including rights management, editorial service management, promo production, encoding, metadata generation and content preparation--for the service since the latter's launch in February, 2007. The company says that its VZ VOD Content Management System, combined with SeaChange's TV Business System VOD marketing platform, provides a "seamless" workflow for the management of Virgin's VOD offering.

UK cable operator, Virgin Media, announced Wednesday the findings of the first-ever trial of dynamic advertising on its VOD platform. The three-month trial saw ads from various brands (including Kelloggs, Lurpak, O2, John Frieda, COI Army, Alberto, General Motors, Royal Mail, Littlewoods, Bodyform, John Lewis, Warner Bros. and Anchor) inserted around selected on-demand programs from Virgin Media TV, Channel 4 and Warner TV, and delivered to 100,000 homes across north London.

--Company Taps Perform to Bring On-Demand Video to its Sports Portal

UK cable operator, Virgin Media, says that its VOD platform has
enjoyed a "massive increase" in viewing over the course of the year,
growing from 34 million views in January to 45 million views in
August (i.e. 33%). The company claims that the service generated 314
million views over the eight-month period, and that 50% of its 3.5
million customers are now watching on-demand programming on a
regular basis. It says that the service's success has been driven by
multiple new on-demand programming partnerships and by the launch
of the BBC's popular iPlayer service. "We are clearly on the precipice