Joost may be the biggest and best known service for providing video on demand, but the amount of challengers to its top dog crown is seemingly growing weekly. The latest contender is BBTV, a new service from Blinkx due to launch in the autumn.
BBTV, short for Broadband TV, will be a downloadable P2P client which enables it’s users to search for TV shows and movies. The idea and software will be nothing without content and so distribution deals are currently being worked out.
The ability to provide high profile quality TV will be key in this battle for the next generation of “on demand viewers”.
While Joost has had a head start in signing licensing deals with the big name media companies, there is a reluctance in general from the media industry to allow third parties to distribute content online. BBTV certainly has a big challenge ahead when it comes to content.
Higher Quality Video
BBTV is being touted as having higher quality video than it’s rivals, although a loss of speed and constant buffering usually comes hand in hand with that.
As seems to be the trend, Blinkx will be using adverts to make money from BBTV, with relevant ads to the clip you are currently watching being displayed alongside. This method has been compared to Google Adsense in it’s methods of delivering adverts.
The beta testing will be launched next month, and that should give us a better idea of whether BBTV is going to be a serious contender to Joost, BabelGum, WiTV and VeohTV or not.
