My article on this has just been published over on The Register. I hope it’s an interesting read. One nugget I’d like to pull out of it is regarding Acetrax, the pay per view service found on quite a few smart TV sets.
The Acetrax website proudly proclaims them to be an “independent pan-European VOD operator” and that’s true to an extent. But in fact, since last spring they’ve been owned by Sky. So Sky now has the ‘Sky Go’ service for their subscribers, NOW TV for those who want movies (and soon, sport and entertainment) without a dish, and also Acetrax, for pay per view stuff.
There is, of course, a certain type of person who doesn’t like the thought of paying Mr Murdoch for anything; I wonder how they’ll feel about Acetrax now?
Also worth wondering about is the extent to which the Acetrax service may be affected by this. At the moment, NOW TV is a flat rate ‘all you can eat’ affair, but they tell me that pay per view will be coming back to the service soon; it will be interesting to see if the availability of films on NOW TV follows through to Acetrax. And, indeed, whether or not the Acetrax app found in some smart sets can be updated to provide access to some of the NOW TV material.
