ZoomTown.com (www.zoomtown.com) will begin offering all of its customers a commercially available video-on-demand offering on April 3. ZoomTown, a subsidiary of Broadwing Inc. (www.broadwing.com), will work with Intertainer (www.intertainer.com), a provider of on-demand entertainment and shopping content, to bring the service to customers in the Greater Cincinnati, Ohio, area.
The commercial launch of the video-on-demand service comes after more than a year of joint market trials, research and development in the ZoomTown Strategic Technology and Advanced Research Testing (Z-START) program. Through Z-START, Intertainer was able to improve its VoD service through testing with real users.
Beginning next week, most of ZoomTown’s 40,000 DSL customers in Cincinnati will be able to access Intertainer content, which includes new film releases, classic movies, music videos, TV programs and full-length concerts. Intertainer has rights to more than 65,000 hours of programming from more than 70 content providers.
ZoomTown subscribers will be able to view these programs with full VCR functionality, which will allow them to stop, rewind and fast-forward selections.
“Broadwing’s ZoomTown is one of the most progressive DSL platforms around because they’re giving their customers the kind of futuristic, cutting-edge entertainment service that other people are just talking about,” said Jonathan Taplin, president and CEO of Intertainer.
The entertainment content will be delivered to ZoomTown customers via Microsoft Corp.’s (www.microsoft.com) Windows Media Video 8. The product , which is integrated with digital rights management technology, offers secure, near-DVD-quality video in bandwidths as low as 500 kbps.
