Virgin Media puts Fantastic movies online

By Julian Clover
April 26, 2010 11.28 UK

Virgin Media is to launch its first online movies service, allowing subscribers to access several hundred titles, including recent hits Fantastic Mr Fox, District 9 and Twilight: New Moon.

Movies can be streamed directly to PCs and will be of sufficient quality for users to also watch on their TV with a suitable connection. “Virgin Media already offers the UK’s leading movies on demand TV service and we wanted to bring the same high-quality, easy-to-use experience to film fans online,” said Virgin Media commercial director Alan Green. “Virgin Media Online Movies will help visitors discover and enjoy a whole world of film and we’ll continue to develop the service by adding download functionality, even more titles and a great choice of HD films to the line-up.”

The facility has been put together by FilmFlex, the Sony-Disney joint-venture, which already operates Virgin’s existing on demand service. Users do not have to be Virgin Media customers. “With this new service, we believe online movie rental will really come of age. We’re building on our experience with Virgin Media’s TV platform to develop a great online movie experience for all film fans and we’re pleased that so many of our content partners have seen the potential of the new Virgin Media branded movie service and are with us for launch,” said FlexFlex CEO Andrew Keyte.

The new service can be seen as a precursor to Virgin’s new TiVo set-top box that will combine both linear and on demand content through a single inteface. Virgin Media already has an online music video on demand service and has plans to launch an online TV player this year.