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View Full Version : Major Studio Movies Available Through Movielink


Jason Eaton
10-26-2006, 02:00 AM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.akimbo.com/press_rel_102506-movielink.html' target='_blank'>http://www.akimbo.com/press_rel_102506-movielink.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Akimbo™, the first and largest Internet video-on-demand service for the television, announced today that through their relationship with Movielink®, hit movies from some of the top motion picture studios such as Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Bros., will be offered through the Akimbo Player via the Movielink service. Movielink has programmed its video-on-demand (VOD) service specifically for the Akimbo Player, highlighting a variety of popular movies currently available for VOD such as “V for Vendetta,” Inside Man,” “Aeon Flux” and “Hannibal” as well as family films like “Curious George.” A touch to the RCA Akimbo Player remote control makes hundreds of movies in every genre available for rent at reasonable prices, ranging from $.99 to $4.99."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/akimbo.jpg" /><br /> <br />Not sure how I feel about this. When looking at what my cable company provides through its services with video on demand I somehow think Akimbo has either missed the boat or definitely has a very large uphill battle in front of it. While the services do have some difference in how they operate and their flexibility for the end user, I don't feel enough of a draw from the Akimbo features that I would want to pony up almost two hundred dollars (USD) for the experience. What about you?

Damion Chaplin
10-26-2006, 02:32 AM
My big gripe with these internet movie services is that they never make it easy for you to find out what resolution and bitrate they're talking about. Are the movies at least DVD resolution?

My big gripe with my current on-demand service (via my cable company) is the cruddy resolution and bitrate they feed it to me at. I doubt they even make it to the SDTV-quality level.

And as for Akimbo... If I had the slightest clue about gripe #1, I might begin to form an opinion. Until then, pass. My cable's OD system is about all the lameness I can deal with.

Feed me HD-DVD resolution though and I'll give you my card number right now. :)

Felix Torres
10-26-2006, 01:53 PM
As long as you're asking, I'd say Akimbo strikes me as being more of a feature or service than a product, pretty much like TiVo ad WebTV.
And both "features" have been able to drag modest volumes of dedicated hardware from customers that prefer a dedicated-box solution.
Unlike TiVo, however, Akimbo sells the service unbundled so you can use it with a PC.
I would hope their next step is to try to get their client onto the next-gen gaming consoles (PS3, XBOX).

On the product itself, I understand the quality is DVD-level and the $10 a month subscription would be a tempting buy if the library is big enough. I tend to see this as a first step in a long road to where we want to be.

First, we need to see better bandwidth on our broadband connections. Then we need for the studios to realize that subscription-based streams is a more secure channel than discrete DRM'ed downloads and that they should be pricing streams accordingly. The big value here, of course, is in the older content since new stuff is readily available. Older content does nobody any good just sitting in vaults so the studios should focus on getting it out and this type of system is very low-cost on a per-viewing basis once you hit critical mass to cover the fixed costs of the servers.

It'll be a while but hopefully some day relatively soon we'll be able to dialup any movie or TV show ever and watch it at will at a reasonable price. Soon. Real soon. Annnyyyy day now...
(Just not holdig my breath.) :wink: