BSkyB has revealed a little more about the on-demand TV service it’s going to start offering U.K. residents from this summer. It’s called Now TV and the company thinks it “marks he next chapter in our story.”

BSkyB

BSkyB is a satellite broadcaster 39.1 percent owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. It has been offering premium subscription services to British households for over 20 years, and millions of homes have the necessary dishes attached to an outside wall.

Sky and Virgin Media (the cable TV equivalent) have between them a large percentage of the British population signed up to premium monthly subscription plans that enable them to receive channels that aren’t free-to-air. But there are millions who haven’t signed, and likely never will sign, up.

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In a sign of things to come, Boxee has killed its desktop app in order to throw all its time, effort, and money behind the Boxee Box. This move brings it into direct competition with the likes of Google, Apple and Roku.

Boxee Desktop Dead

The Boxee desktop app is dead, with Boxee having pulled the plug on it at the end of January. Boxee announced the plans at the end of December 2011 when it released Boxee version 1.5. That final version of the Boxee desktop app was only available for a little over a month, and wasn’t even that brilliant.

This move attracted criticism from many longtime Boxee users, who had supported and tested the desktop client throughout its early iterations. These loyal Boxee adopters are now left with a stark choice: buy a Boxee Box or find an alternative desktop app for their video streaming needs.

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BSkyB is making a serious move into the online TV market, launching its own service later this year. Yes, it will likely cannibalize the company’s own business, but it’s a very necessary step at this stage in time.

BSkyB

BSkyB is the satellite television broadcaster in the U.K. which is part of Rupert Murdoch’s megacorps. It has built a profitable business by offering pay TV subscription services to people the length and breadth of Great Britain, competing with cable providers Virgin Media along the way.

Thanks to BSkyB both snapping up top-rated U.S. imports such as Lost, Glee, and 24, and owning the rights to Premier League soccer games, it has managed to secure a place in the homes of millions of Brits.

However, the number of people signing up is slowing down, from 140,000 to just 40,000 year-on-year in Q2, with the economy being blamed on people being unwilling to make a longterm commitment. But perhaps they no longer need to.

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Another day, another innovative use of the Internet to deliver content to paying customers is killed by Hollywood. Because piracy is a much better option, obviously.

Zediva Lives, Then Withers

Zediva launched in January promising a new way of renting DVDs. Rather than sending them out by mail or selling them in kiosks, Zediva would stream a physical copy of a film from its headquarters. Customers would tap into the stream. And with 10 streams costing just $10 Zediva became popular very quickly. Unfortunately it was a short-lived success.

The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) sued Zediva, claiming copyright and licensing violations. In August a federal judge ordered Zediva offline, granting a preliminary injunction against the company. An appeal seemed on the cards, but it wasn’t to be.

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SeeSaw is no more, with the website now displaying a simple message saying, “Thanks for your support but SeeSaw is no longer available.” Thankfully the U.K. is being targeted as the next market to move into by other services.

SeeSaw Swings

The last few months have seen SeeSaw live up to its name. First it was being shut, then it saved by a last minute injection of cash, and now it has actually shut because that promised injection of cash from new investors never actually materialized.

This is in stark contrast to the service’s beginnings, which promised much. When Arqiva acquired the infrastructure of the dead Project Kangaroo things were looking good, with the U.K. getting its own Hulu-like service filled with old and new content from multiple broadcasters. But a lack of interest from both broadcasters and viewers eventually ended with SeeSaw dying just two years after its inception.

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Netflix appears to have a new competitor waiting in the wings ready to strike while the U.S. DVD and streaming giant is languishing on the ropes. But ‘appears’ is the operative word, because Vdio is as yet an unknown quantity.

Netflix and…

In the world of streaming video it’s currently Netflix… and then everyone else. Amazon is the nearest competitor with its Amazon Prime offering. But Netflix has had a tumultuous past few months, which we’ve discussed on several different occasions here on WebTVWire.

The question is, do these troubles leave room for some competition to sneak in and grab customers?

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Ivi TV has turned to crowd-funding in order to pay the huge legal bills it will be facing as it gets head-to-head with the cable companies and television networks. But not many people seem to be willing to dip their hands in their pockets.

Ivi TV Service

Ivi TV launched over a year ago, in September 2010, as an app downloadable for free. Once installed on the device of your choice, Ivi TV enabled anyone to stream cable broadcasts over the Internet by taking the live feeds from Seattle and New York and rebroadcasting them to subscribers on the Web.

Ivi TV founder Todd Weaver believed this was legally acceptable thanks to a rewritten passage in the Copyright Act designed to help and protect fledgling local cable systems in the 1970s. But unsurprisingly the cable companies and TV networks disagreed, suing Ivi TV to get it taken offline.

It has been offline since February but Ivi TV has launched an appeal and Weaver is determined to fight this injunction to the bitter end. Which all costs money. And lots of it.

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