Hollywood Backs Swedish Movie Streaming Site

paulraps writes "Forget Spotify and Skype: the latest strangely-named-but-hey-it's-free service from Sweden offers users streamed on-demand movies free of charge, has deals with two major Hollywood studios, and is called Voddler. Since its launch two weeks ago, the service has signed up a quarter of a million users and has almost the same number queuing for an invitation. After signing deals with Disney and Paramount, the company provides access to thousands of films, which are shown uninterrupted after a barrage of ads. The target is the file-sharing generation: 'Our customers can be sure that Voddler is totally legal, secure, and that there are no risks of computer viruses infecting their machines from downloaded files,' says executive vice president Zoran Slavic."

Comments

barrage of ads; been to the theater lately?

[dltaylor]

One of the reasons I stopped going to theaters to watch movies was that after I paid to get in, I was sitting through commercials (not just trailers, but commercials). I decided that I might as well stay home and wait for the movies on non-premium cable.

Re:barrage of ads; been to the theater lately?

[MartinSchou]

One of the reasons I stopped going to theaters to watch movies was that after I paid to get in, I was sitting through commercials

As far as I can tell, the only thing you're paying to use Voddler is the bandwith and the time to watch the adverts.

Why is it bad to have your movies paid by watching ads? Yes, on paid cable and theatres ads are fucking annoying as I've already paid for admission. Here, the ads ARE my payment of admission.

Re:barrage of ads; been to the theater lately?

[CopaceticOpus]

Why should I have to make choices like that if I'm a paying customer? If the theater wants my money, they should be bending over backwards to give me a better experience than what I get at home. This is what I would expect:

• Ability to buy my tickets online, so that I don't have to wait in line or worry about getting in to a new release.
• Ability to reserve specific seats when purchasing my tickets, so I don't have to get to the show early for good seats.
• No extra charge for buying tickets online. Running an online shopping cart should be cheaper than paying a ticket salesperson, so there is no justification for extra fees.
• No ads. No more than 3 trailers.

Do I sound picky? Perhaps. I have a nice TV at home, and renting movies is very cheap. It is up to the theater to give me a reason to not just stay home.

Re:Um.. Can someone tag this "phishing"?

[sopssa]

Well he is also calling it a phishing site, which is just to troll and throw this articles comments offtopic. Even the summary notes that theres tons of people waiting for invitation, so its kind of stupid to think you're just gonna get account like that from their main site.

But interesting note from About Voddler site is "Finally an alternative to illegal downloading is available on the Swedish market.", which makes me think if Voddler is available elsewhere too (atleast nordic and european countries like Spotify has). It might even be that this is specifically developed for Swedish market (at least first), since so large percent of people, specially young, pirate movies and music.

That being said, if this anything close to "Spotify for Movies" I'm really interested. It's been an year that I've used only Spotify for my music listening and it's even more convenience than downloading mp3's and everyone I know is the same thing. Been a premium member for months too.

Re:No news here, RIAA peddles M$

[sopssa]

How exactly pirating movies will boost business?

I know there's lots of people on slashdot who like to justify their pirating with all these "open", "bad bad record labels" etc bullshit, but truth is that people just want stuff for free and conveniently. As surprising it is after all the years of fighting from industry, it was really surprising that Spotify actually offers legit service that is a lot better than downloading warez. And with both free and paid, all-you-can-eat models. Spotify really changed things around here in Europe - it brought lots of people that download mp3's or send them between friends to a legit service.

And I love it.

Re:No news here, RIAA peddles M$

[Grimbleton]

Free isn't the big issue. Convenient is.

Re:Um.. Can someone tag this "phishing"?

[MadJo]

Welcome to the rest of the world.
It's often that us non US-people only get a sparse page with a few fields to enter your data in, only to find out that the service you thought you were registering for doesn't work yet in your country.

Call it phishing if you like, but it's par for the course. It's just that you US-ians don't notice it as often.

Re:No news here, RIAA peddles M$

[sopssa]

Yeah I agree on that tho. I buy pretty much all games from Steam too because its just so much more convenient than walking to store, and comes with extra features like friends lists, community stuff and the ability to always download the game again when you need to.

Free model is a plus in this.

Re:Um.. Can someone tag this "phishing"?

[Jurily]

And the AC answering with "you're an idiot' and "jackass" is informative... that is more of a flamebait I think...

It's not an insult to say a dead man is dead.

Re:Um.. Can someone tag this "phishing"?

[xtracto]

And it is also not an insult to say that a jewish persn is "Jew"... it all depends in how you say it.

Yeah right...

[Hurricane78]

...that argument works, because your customers can't tell data formats (like MKV or AVI) from executable files.

Unfortunately, I say FUCK streaming! I'm not falling for that "you actually don't own shit" strategy!

Either I own the unencrypted file on my hard drive, of you can just right GTFO.