Digital video-on-demand and downloading services are not prominent in Australia due to the greed of movie studios, the head of the Video Ezy and BlockBuster video rental chains has said.
Paul Uniacke told News.com.au he believes greed is holding these companies back, after his companies backed off from a deal to deliver movie downloads over the internet via the TiVo set-top box.
It is understood the minimum guarantees the movie studios demanded from partners in the TiVo project, with regards to revenue, were too far in favour of the film industry.
“Studio greed is what’s holding back video-on-demand,” he said. “Movie studios are still as arrogant as the music moguls were before digital downloads and piracy destroyed them. The only thing that’s protecting the movie studios (from more widespread illegal downloading) now is file size.”
It comes as the head of Hulu.com’s international business operations division said Australia was a good target for the site, but is being held back by local industry practices.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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