Despite some last minute setbacks that resulted in the launch date being pushed back, Quickflix has today launched its PC and Mac streaming service, allowing Australians to stream movies on the go.
Easier than ever to watch movies from home (Credit: Quickflix)
The service is now live on Quickflix’s website, with support for streaming of movies limited to Mac and Windows devices with an Internet connection speed of greater than 1Mbps.
For now, mobile devices remain unsupported by the service, although given the rapid growth and market potential it’s likely Quickflix will make moves to provide streaming on smartphones in the not to distant future.
As reported by The Australian earlier this month, Quickflix had initially hoped to launch the service last week but delayed it temporarily as it sought to increase the number of titles on offer.
As far as we can tell, right now there’s around 200 titles available for streaming online – in contrast, Telstra’s BigPond arm offers a collection of around 2,500 movies for streaming, while Apple’s iTunes Store had more than 5,000 at last count.
The company says it has used feedback from customers using the digital streaming platform on Bravia televisions that went live two weeks ago to improve the desktop service.
“With over two weeks of streaming data since our launch on Sony Bravia the early indications of usage are very encouraging with subscribers taking full advantage of our unlimited proposition,” Quickflix CEO Chris Taylor said in a statement this morning.
“This next phase of our digital roll out will provide an addressable market of millions of potential viewers. We are expanding our range of streaming titles and also boosting our online DVD rental business having recently tripled our library of DVD and Blu-ray discs.”
It seems the company is opting to go for a hybrid approach towards movie renting – it’ll continue to grow both its rapidly increasing digital and physical movie library.
Users will have the option to, when a movie is selected, stream it online if available or get it mailed out to them from the one screen, the company says.
The company will charge $14.99 per month for unlimited movie streaming online, or an additional $7 per month to those who opt to receive movies by mail but also wish to watch movies over the web.
In the past few months, Quickflix has struck an array of deals in Australia with Sony for the PlayStation 3 and Bravia television range, topping off a big year for the company including the appointment of a new CEO. It also won big, striking a deal with BigPond to encourage subscribers from its own movie-via-mail service that shutdown in September to join Quickflix.
