The latest Australian IPTV entrant, EzyFlix.tv, is attempting to straddle both the video-on-demand streaming space à la Quickflix and the iTunes download-to-own territory. CEO Craig White is banking on consumers' need to 'own' media as a key selling point.
While cloud-based streaming services may have fuzzied up traditional notions of content ownership – some users have begun to move away from 'music collections' like iTunes to paying a monthly subscription fee for services like Spotify – White believes the desire to own is as strong as ever.
"The ownership market is twice the size of the rental market," he told AdNews. "There's a billion-dollar market for packaged media – every teenage girl probably has a copy of Twilight. The reality is consumers want to own."
White believes the idea of subscribing to services in general "is not something [Australian] consumers rush for". "It's kind of obvious if you look at the level of penetration [of Foxtel]. I guess the anti-siphoning laws have favoured Australian consumers and the free-to-air networks – Australians just aren't used to ponying up a subscription."
White admitted that might change as the entry point lowers and the service improves, but "for the time being, pay-per-view services are better than locking someone into a contract". But the key for EzyFlix, he said, was that the download-to-own space, largely dominated by iTunes, was missing an entire half of the market: Android.
"[The IPTV] market is not crowded at all. It's not even day one. You line up all the services available, which ones offer download-to-own, which offer offline playback, which also play on Android devices? You cross off all those requirements and we're the only one."
While there has been some criticism of EzyFlix's digital rights management – currently users cannot copy files from one device to another, each instance must be re-downloaded – White said his hands were tied "for the time being" due to the studios being naturally cautious of their files being illegally shared, but that things were "happening behind closed doors" that would hopefully improve the service.
And on the issue of piracy, White said he hoped services like EzyFlix would help stem the tide. "The key driver of piracy is availability of content. The more legitimate services there are that offer convenience, availability, good value and a good experience, the less people we'll see going to piracy."
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