Seeing Starz: New Wrinkles in Download Service

Starz Encore beefed up its online movie service, bringing the number of titles on offer to around 150 at any given time, up from 100. An all-you-can-eat, $12.95/month SVOD offering, Starz! Ticket on Real Movies has spruced up title accessibility, introducing a progressive download function that allows subs to begin viewing a movie after 15 mins of content has been downloaded to the hard drive. – At least 1 Starz exec’s not losing sleep over the much-rumored Netflix/TiVo partnership. "The rights to deliver content electronically to cable and the Internet on a subscription basis are exclusive to us," svp of advanced services Bob Greene says. "Any new participant would have to negotiate content arrangements like anyone else." While Netflix is also a subscription service, its present studio deals are of the hard goods variety; porting content electronically on an unlimited sub basis won’t be in the cards thanks to Starz’ (and HBO’s and Showtime’s) studio contracts. "They could get PPV rights if they wanted, like Movielink, but our subscription model is clearly superior to PPV," Greene says, adding SVOD does 8 times the business of PPV on cable, thanks to the predictability of cost.