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EIRCOM HAS UNVEILED its answer to Netflix and Sky Movies with a movie-on-demand service offering film rentals to its TV customers.
The company said it would provide more than 600 movies from “major Hollywood studios”, including Fox, Universal and Sony, with the option to download and watch unlimited times over the 48-hour rental period on multiple devices.
The video-on-demand service will be part of its recently-launched eVision TV wing.
Eircom consumer managing director Kevin White said the service would start with a catalogue of over 600 movies but the titles would grow to more than 1,000 in a few months.
Since we launched eVision last October, we have been consistently offering our customers new added benefits and the launch of on demand is the next step to providing real value for money,” he said.
Enough talk, how much?
New releases can be rented for 48 hours for €3.99 while other films in its library will start at €1.99, undercutting rival UPC’s prices – which start at €4.99 for the latest movies.
But the service will also face an uphill battle against the big subscription-based services, including game-changer Netflix, and buy-or-rent options like Apple’s iTunes.
US-based Netflix launched in Ireland in 2012 and offers monthly subscriptions to unlimited streaming movies and TV shows from €7.99 a month.
Last year it had already recorded 150,000 subscribers - bearing down on market leaders Sky and UPC, both of which also have video-on-demand services on offer.
Sky’s on-demand movie offering costs an extra €28 a month for existing TV users, although the company also offers individual movies to buy or rent through its Sky Store.
Together through the ups and downs
Since it was launched in September last year, Eircom’s TV business has grown from about 1,000 customers to 21,000 in June after the company started offering aggressively-priced bundles with its broadband services.
It has been offering eVision as a free add-on to fibre customers for the first year.
Eircom’s board recently stepped back from plans to try a third float of the troubled former state-owned telecoms provider, which become Ireland’s biggest-ever company to go into examinership in 2012.
It emerged from the crisis after €1.7 billion of its crippling debts were written off.
The company’s revenues have continued to slide over the past year – mainly thanks to flagging sales in its core business supplying fixed-line services.
READ: Nothing on telly? You can now flick over and watch the Oireachtas
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4 quid gets you one film for 2 days from Eircom, 8 quid gets you unlimited films and TV shows for a month from Netflix. How do they even expect to compete?
Well they did say new releases. Netflix although I like it only has old stuff. I just download the new releases for free.
Big difference than the crap on Netflix and new releases
You can’t possibly be that thick can you?
Netflix is an old catalogue, the e-vision on demand is new movies.
Access to U.S or Canada Netflix is easy now and their selection is quite good for 2011-2013 movies.
Netflix movies are garbage.. The only reason I even have it now is because my laptop is broken. When I get it back it’s back to yify :-)
~Tony do you have a working DNS for U.S. the one I had no longer works
@hamburgerhead – What I do is use Chromecast and old laptop for Netflix. I cast to my TV from Chrome Browser using the cast extension and the Hola extension to select country. Works perfectly. I also use the TV Portal app from my phone and their selection is all the latest movies/ shows.( If you need info how to get that app in pro version for free let me know)
Hamburger, there is a page on facebook that keeps track of working codes. users themselves comment new codes when the old ones don’t work anymore. great for using the xbox or playstation.
https://www.facebook.com/netflixdnscodes?fref=ts
once UPC rolled out broadband in my area, Eircom got slammed into the bin. rip-off merchants for far too long they were.
Cheers Aaron – useful bit of info
Unlocator works and their doing a free trial
And in other news,Eircom are giving all new customers who sign up for their type-writer package a free quill & ink jar
I can barely stream YouTube videos with Eircom as it is…
wow, just wow.
Eircom are wasting their time and money launching their own streaming service like this,
They would be far better off bundling netflix with their evision boxes like what Virgin Media did with Netflix in the UK.
https://www.netflix.com/nrd/virginmedia?locale=en-IE&mqso=81134452
Instead some marketing genius in Eircom has decided this was a good idea and they are going to try and market it at customer’s who can get a far far far better value service from everyone else,
Complete agree. Ireland is just too small to make an investment like this pay. If it is good enough with enough content it will never be at a price that people are willing to pay
Actually it’s you who is commenting with no idea what you are talking about.
This is an on demand service to help make the e-vision service competitive with sky and upc.
Netflix is a totally different market to on demand. They are complementary but they aren’t the same at all. Skyfall is just arriving into Netflix now, 22 jump street is arriving on the on demand service.
This isn’t a streaming service, it’s part of e-vision which is an IPTV service. The marginal cost is essentially zero to Eircom.
The e-vision boxes might get Netflix eventually but most already have better option for Netflix. Roku/Samsung smart TV > underpowered virgin box.
Eircom have lost their way.They no longer have a business plan. Also, their customer service must be the worst I have ever experienced. I left them recently and will never go back.
I just did a survey with eircom, in multiple choice answers to why you would not consider eircom as a provider, one of the choices was ” because its eircom”. lol, so even they recognise they have a bad reputation
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…… Sorry, you’re about a decade late.
Musta taken ages to type all those ha’s
Epic fail
Who thought this would be a good idea?
Idiots.
My Netflix is 6.99 a month (guaranteed to remain €6.99 until at least 1st 2016) this allows me to watch movies up to 3 devices in HD, if i cancel for any reason i will lose this guarantee and be charged 7.99 a month… the drawback of this is the 7.99 plan is for only 1 device with no HD just standard Definition.
2 devices
at the same time. as many as you like otherwise. use it on around 6 devices myself.
Download showbox..loads of new release movies and boxsets for free..
How’s their music service going?…
Here’s a tip Eircom, provide a (reliable) VPN service that let’s me use RTE Player live abroad. I’d happily pay for that when Love/Hate comes back.
Eircom … the company we all Love to Hate !
Hola is the answer there
E-Vision is actually pretty good. We still can’t get a UPC phone bundle so splitting between eircom and UPC isn’t a great option. Eircom now offer quad-ply and delivering almost everything through fibre broadband means they can offer more services at a lower price.
IPTV is fundamentally better solution and likely to takeover from Satellite systems like Sky, which is why they are so worried about BT in the UK. We can get our TV through the fibre line but equally we can add a Virtual PBX and unlimited number of phone lines with very little hardware. Eircom actually have a reasonable edge to an extent.
Anyway E-vision isn’t bad. For dirt cheap we have a bunch more channels than we had before, a few HD channels, a well designed PVR with a great EPG and series link etc, an on-demand service.
Hope that service is better then the one we getting off them 8 weeks waiting for broad band and phone to be put in
Eircom focus on providing decent broadband speeds rather than movies, shower of wasters.
Nothing different from previous stuff really, they had “study hub”, where they had past exam papers online and some kind of service where you could listen to thousands of music tracks online from their website (Wow eircom that sounds fantastic, where do i sign), From their ads anyway their demographic seems to be computer illiterate parents who were nagged by their children to buy them an internet, which goes over the phone line because they need it for school or something.
All this stuff is free on the internet anyway, the only thing people want from their ISP is a reliable fast connection, that won’t lets say slow down the bandwidth of a competitor like netflix to make their own “Service” seem better.
have your say