Microsofts expanded video service not intended to rival UK broadcasters VOD offerings

By Emma Barnett, Technology and Digital Media Correspondent 700PM GMT 10 Mar 2010

MSN Video offers 1,000 hours of calm that includes both prolonged form and short form material. Photo Microsoft

The make use of initial launched in beta 7 months ago, with 300 hours from the BBC repository and vital eccentric association All3Media obliged for shows such as Peep Show and Derren Brown Mind Control.

It has right away come out of the contrast proviso and incorporated all of the short form calm that was was formerly sparse opposite MSN, Microsofts portal, such as song videos and movie trailers. There is additionally one some-more prolonged form calm accessible after the signing of multiform new deals with alternative vital prolongation companies together with Endemol obliged for calm similar to Big Brother, RDF writer of Wife Swap and Shed Media that produces shows such Supernanny.

Now everyone"s personification catch-up BBC archived shows done accessible around Blinkbox Microsofts MSN Video site goes live Microsoft launches MSN Video, the initial web TV make use of Five signs up to Project Canvas broadband radio try

The player, that goes live on Wednesday Mar 10, is free to make use of and upheld by advertising. Viewers will need to implement Silverlight Microsofts disdainful video program if they wish to entrance any of the calm in HD but the make use of will still duty for those users who have Flash.

Ashley Highfield, Microsofts UK consumer and online handling director, has insisted that the make use of is not rivalling the likes of iPlayer, ITV Player or 4oD (Channel 4s web TV service), discordant to alternative reports, as MSN Video Player does not suggest a catch-up service.

"This is not a catch-up service. We see this make use of as a element to the web TV services the broadcasters already offer. MSN Video Player is about a formulating a constrained report of calm that the assembly want."

Mr Highfield described the players aim assembly as elderly in between eighteen to 34 and consisting of "typically immature tied together couples".

Unlike alternative digital aggregators of TV content, such as the not prolonged ago launched video-on-demand make use of SeeSaw (which went live last month with over 3,000 hours of content), MSN Video Player is not perplexing to have a extensive preference of UK promote calm rather a selected preference of programmes that fit the users of the portal. This equates to that when users poke for calm on the player, there will be gaps in the gunnery unit of stream UK report content.

In the destiny the make use of will suggest users who have a Windows Live ID and are sealed in, programme recommendations formed on their prior observation habits. Mr Highfield additionally referred to that a tie-up with Microsofts gaming console, the Xbox 360, would be on the cards.

Additionally he stressed that the make use of was intensely critical to MSN as a portal business. He pronounced that Microsoft was responding to advertisers demands, who longed for the choice to publicize opposite MSN around video, as well as poke and display.

Dan Cryan concluded that the preference to supplement a video player to MSN that played prolonged form content, as well as clips, would have been mostly driven by blurb motivations. "This is a really classical portal fool around by Microsoft. Introducing MSN Video Player is all about mending the stickiness of the site [keeping people on the site for longer] and capturing some-more eyeballs that translates in to some-more promotion pounds.

"This is not going to set the universe of web TV on glow or shift UK online TV observation habits. The longer tenure plea for Microsoft in the destiny will be how to keep monetising this calm as nothing of the calm deals are exclusive. Other video sites will get the same element and the worth of the adverts around it will drop."

The player has 1,000 hours of calm in total, done up of full length and shave material. BBC Worldwide, the blurb arm of the corporation, creatively done accessible around 150 hours of calm 7 months ago when the beta version of MSN Video Player launched that alike to we estimate 50 programme titles. It is not believed to have combined any some-more calm for the enlargement of the service.

By comparison, the BBC iPlayer, that offers a 7 day catch up service, on normal uploads 400 hours of uninformed calm to the site each week.