The TV industry in Australia is like a drunk snail on a freeway when it comes to making content available to download. But that might change soon, with a small startup called Juno Interactive hoping to bring common sense (plus lots of quality content) to the video on demand equation
Run by the former head of video for NineMSN and the head of media production at Yahoo!7, the upcoming service (codenamed Juno) is still in the early development stages. It should enter a closed beta in August before officially launching late this year or early 2011.
Details on exactly what content will be offered are still unknown, although Juno claim they’re in discussions with major and minor US, UK and Australian studios to offer their content on the service. They’ve also stated that you won’t need proprietary hardware for the service to work.
The founders, Jimmy Storrier and David Morrison, hope that the new service will counter the need for piracy in this country. Obviously a lot of it will depend on their business model, but we’ll have to wait and see exactly what that entails. In any case, more services are always better for competition.