iiNet first to back ABC online streaming site

[Pink_Troll]

THE ABC's innovative new iView online TV service will be available as an unmetered stream for customers of internet service provider iiNet.

iView, launched last night, has six channels which allow people to watch a variety of ABC TV programs streaming online.

It includes a children's channel, documentaries, ABC shop, a news channel, arts and "Catch-up" where people can view popular shows from the last few weeks.

iiNet today announced it would allow users to watch iView content without the videos counting towards their monthly download limit.

"Being able to provide great content through ABC iView completely quota-free means our customers can now get more value out of their monthly quota," chief technology officer Greg Bader said.

"For example, if you wanted to watch a one hour episode of Doctor Who on iView, you would expect this to use around 200MB of your monthly quota," he said.

"Having this in the iiNet Freezone frees up our customer's quota for everyday emailing, browsing and downloading."

ABC director of innovation Ian Carroll said the broadcaster was working to get other internet companies to exclude the service from customers' download quotas.

"The launch of ABC iView signals the beginning of a whole new distribution platform for the public broadcaster," he said.

"We appreciate the support of iiNet to ensure that their customers have free access to the service.

"In coming weeks the ABC will be having further discussions with all of Australia's ISPs about access to this free service from the public broadcaster."

However Telstra BigPond today ruled out supporting free iView downloads and other service providers said technical problems prevented them from following iiNet's lead.

Internode, originally the first Australian ISP to unmeter the ABC, said it wasn't able to exclude iView from download quotas since the broadcaster began using a separate hosting service.

The service, Akamai, specialises in hosting content for media organisations around the world such as the ABC, BBC and News.com.au. It holds the content on its own servers, taking care of storage and bandwidth issues, and integrates the content into the client's website.

An Internode spokesman today said "expensive" equipment was required to identify ABC programs from other content hosted on Akamai servers, in a post on broadband community website Whirlpool.

"I expect it'll be addressed in the future – just not today," he said.

He said Internode and the ABC were working on a solution to help other ISPs get around the issue.

iiNet first to back ABC online streaming site | NEWS.com.au

[Westy]

yayyyy hooray for being with iinet ... first more quota now this.

[esjay]

**** YEAH

[kiz]

Im sure Internode will have a mirror soon enough

/pats his usenet access

[azitiz91]

eNet D:?

[SASQUATCH]

Had a look at iview yesterday, looks awesome.