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Last month virgin announced that along with a new wave of effort to interfere with piracy, they were launching a new music service with Universal Music at the helm allowing a DRM-free music download service. This week, Virgin has announced that they are teaming up with Universal again to bring their PictureBox service to 3.6 million UK customers.
The PictureBox service will be available to all customers but will cost an additional £5 a month over the usual monthly prices. It’s already been available for customers of TopUp TV and BT Vision for a while, and will offer customers about 28 films to watch a month, with seven new films up every Friday. The good news for fans of high quality content is that the vast majority of these films will be in HD.
And if you’re worried that the only films on the service will be years old, recent titles include “The Bourne Ultimatum” and “Hot Fuzz” – ok, not exactly brand new, but not old either. The library also offers up some classic viewing such as “Scarface” and “ET” in case you haven’t got much of your own DVD collection.
Virgin’s executive director of content acquisition Katharine Burns said: “Our customers love movies-on-demand and they’re watching millions of films every year. The addition of PictureBox means Virgin Media is the perfect choice for film fans, with a fantastic HD line-up and even more films to choose from, all at great value for money.”
We can only welcome more services that offer good quality films either online or otherwise. It seems like at least Universal are catching on to the idea that people will quite happily play for content they would otherwise download – providing the price is fair and the DRM doesn’t make them feel like they are already criminals.
Belinda Menendez, present of the television branch of Universal said: “This agreement is a significant step in the growth of the PictureBox brand, which will now be available to Virgin Media’s 3.6 million TV customers in the UK.”
This follows recent news from the Digital Progress Report that more people than ever are turning to the type of on-demand technology offered by PictureBox and its rivals, with take-up of TV and broadband TV services increasing by nearly a million people in the last quarter.
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