Origo opens online movie rental

Part of Axelero’s online amusement portal Origo>Play, the fee-paying service enables users to watch full-length, DVD-quality movies streamed from the ISP’s server. Currently hosting some 130 movies and available exclusively to Axelero subscribers, the project, dubbed Origo Téka, is set to create profits in two years’ time.

“It’s like renting a video or DVD, without having to go to the store,” Simó said.

The movies are stored on Axelero’s servers. Clients, after paying the fee required, can watch their selected movie as many times as they want during a period of 24 hours.
“The films do not get downloaded to the users’ hard drives,” Simó said. “And they are protected with Microsoft’s digital copyright protection technology.”

In the project’s introductory phase, it is only available to those of Axelero’s subscribers who have a bandwidth of at least one Mbit/sec.

“That equals 50,000 potential users. We would be quite happy with a couple of thousand rentals every month [in the first period of operation],” Simó said.

At present, Origo Téka contains around 130 films, including about 80 adult erotic movies provided by various independent producers. The other 50 films are provided in cooperation with film distributor Budapest Film Kft.

“This is partly the death of video rental as we know it,” commented Péter Bognár, co-owner of Budapest Film. “On the other hand, it’s a promising new distribution channel. Budapest Film initially supplies 50 films, representing the past five years’ most important art movies.”

Simó said Axelero is in talks with other major film distributors as well.

“Major [movie] distributors are cautious. They want to have references,” he said. “The first service of this type in the world was launched about a year ago. The biggest players would like to wait and see the market reaction.”

Similarly to other services of Origo’s portal, users can pay for the movies by bankcard or SMS, or they can have the fee charged to their T-Mobile or Axelero bill. Depending on the payment method and the type of film, renting a movie for a day costs Ft 590–Ft 890 (€2.40–€3.60).

Simó mentioned that in the future, exclusive content might also be added to the service, including archive TV series and web-exclusive feature films.

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