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We often hear a lot about Australia and its woes with getting legitimate access to movies and TV shows from the US and elsewhere and how that has led to it becoming one of the biggest hotbeds of piracy in the world. In the UK things are a little better, with more available content, but it's still incredibly convoluted. In-fact, if you want to access all of the latest movies, you'd need to have accounts with more than two dozen different service providers.
This information comes from a recent study by research group KPMG, commissioned by NBC Universal to better understand the current state of availability in the UK. While a recent study of the US market painted a pretty rosy picture of availability, in the UK it turns out to be a bit of a mess.
While stronger than the US, streaming film availability is still relatively poor
While the report starts strong, highlighting that you can legally watch most of the latest movies via some form of streaming or download platform in the UK, it turns out that to access around 86 per cent of said films, users would need to sign up to a total of 27 services. To even access 73 per cent, they'd need to sign up with at least five. As Torrent Freak points out, the telling thing there is that even with five separate digital accounts, users are still missing out on over a quarter of all the latest movies and TV.
The report highlights that some of the issues with streaming movies on platforms like Netflix in the UK, is related to the fact that Sky holds an exclusivity deal with many major studios, giving its Now TV and Sky packages access to a lot of content well before anyone else. However, it noted that this deal would be up for renewal and renegotiation in 2017-2018.
You can read the full KPMG report, here.
Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.
Kitguru Says: Here's hoping that Sky loses that deal somehow, otherwise the UK is still going to be limited to Sky when it comes to many of the latest and most popular films.
I also download because it’s more convenient. I download at night time when no one else is using the Internet and then watch at my own leisure. I haven’t had to watch an advert for 6 years (we don’t have TV at all. Not even “catchup”).
I pay for Netflix and Amazon (which is mainly just a side bonus to Prime deliveries), but the kids watch those. I wouldn’t pay for anything more. At all. Least not if all Sky or Virgin. Pay a subscription to then be forced to watch adverts. Ridiculous.
I, for the life of me, can’t figure out why the industry hasn’t figured out that their system is completely broken.
In the past, there was always a legal market, but it was difficult and a bit more risky. You’d have to head down to a dodgy market or something to buy pirated DVD’s, or you know, but it from your dads friend who knew someone.
However, ever since the dawn of torrents/file sharing, the illegal service has been a better service than the legal one.
I have in the past has an account with netflix, lovefilm and sky all at the same time. Yet the amount of times the film I wanted to watch was on none of those services was ridiculous. I’d spend 10 minutes trying to find it on those services, then give up and head straight to a torrent site and have a copy of the film within 5-10 minutes ready to watch.
I LOVE the concept of services like Netflix, I absolutely think it’s the future. But until the industry relaxes on licenses and paves the way for these services to have MUCH bigger libraries the illegal service is going to remain a huge threat.
It’s all about efficiency and quality of service. Why would you want to sit around like a prat for two hours, waiting for a crap quality video to buffer on a legal streaming site, when you can download the HD version in 10 minutes – just enough time to grab a cold one and some popcorn?
Likewise, why would anyone pay £10 a head to go to a cinema full of screaming kids, tall people blocking your view of half the screen, and “food police” rifling through your private belongings to throw away any snacks or drinks not served at their extortionately-priced food court?
Sitting at home on your nice, comfy cushioned sofa, where you don’t pay £4.50 for a small tea or coffee and the kids can be locked in the cupboard if they get too loud – now that’s just great.
As everyone has said, over and over and over and over again,
To beat piracy, you have to offer a better service.
With torrenting, I could have the file literally on my home server and can watch it far more convieniantly that on netflix or love film. I don’t have the bandwidth available to stream in high quality. so Downloading over night means I get a better service, more convenient and higher quality.
The media industry really needs to get it’s act together and offer a better service and a good price. Then piracy will start to slow down.
Sorry but I don’t see how you not paying for better internet justifies you downloading. Your internet is shit so you can’t stream? The service is fine bar the lack of content, the technology is there you just don’t want to pay for it. Also I don’t think waiting to the next day is convenient, getting faster interenet and watching right this second is.
We’re not talking about better internet here. If he doesn’t have the bandwidth he can’t stream. Maybe he can’t get any better internet than what hes already paying for. Maybe he doesn’t want to watch something right this second. What he is talking about is highly justifiable
also everything is censored in india
Part of better service is being able to store what you pay for how you want. Even if i was going to pay for a service like netflix i wouldn’t want to use bandwidth re-streaming an entire movie because i wanted to watch it again.
No internet service should have a cap. The cap just makes it more likely that people are going to pirate instead of streaming just to save on their bandwidth. Here, in the Southeast US, Verizon, Brighthouse, and Comcast, the Big 3, are all cable providers. Yet, the FCC wants me to believe there is no conflict of interest by leaving these groups together, saying there’s no benefits to splitting these entities into different groups. How is having cable companies, who are losing profit to online streaming services, controlling the same internet, in which their competitors depend on for operating, a good thing? That’s the reason there is even caps in the first place. An ulterior way to put pressure on their online competitor.
I can’t get faster internet. I’m on the fastest package I can get at the moment.
I would rather buy and stream from proper sources, but I get around 6Mb/s on a good day, off peak. I can barely stream 720p without buffering every 4 mins.
Not everyone has decent internet connections.
Compounding the issue is that there are two PC gamers sharing that internet connection, one person starts watching youtube and the other gets lag.
on top of that, there is ‘ownership’ of the content.
One of my personal issues with steam, for example is that if I lost my account, or they closed it down, then I would loose access to all my games.
With streaming serivces, you don’t own anything.