Joining an already crowded Internet TV market, the debut of the “LiTV” service in Taiwan was announced yesterday, backed by TiVo Inc and a United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) executive.
The new Internet TV service boasts content such as YouTube, karaoke and movie rentals, as well as partnerships with two local home electronics heavyweights, Tatung Co (大同) and Sampo Corp (聲寶), which plan to launch smart TVs that come with built-in LiTV software.
“LiTV is catering to localized tastes and it is a service for the family audience — minus the adult programs,” Chien Ta-wei (錢大衛), president of TGC Inc (替您錄科技) and a previous vice president of TiVo, told a product launch.
TGC is a Taiwanese venture set up in 2004, with shareholders including TiVo and UMC honorary vice chairman John Hsuan (宣明智).
TGC brought digital video recording services TiVo to Taiwan in 2005, but it failed to take off. However, the company is aiming for a comeback with the online TV service.
Hsuan is equally confident that LiTV will suit Taiwanese consumers.
“Now is the best time for Internet TV because the broadband infrastructure is ready and more people are tuning in to Internet TV,” he said.
Chien cited Netflix Inc, the US flat-rate online video rental service provider, as an example as he said Taiwan’s market has room for exponential growth.
Nexflix, whose service costs only US$7.99 per month, saw its US subscriber base rise with more than 23.6 million in the first quarter, compared to 20 million in the previous three months, proving that more consumers are willing to pay for good Internet TV service, he said.
Despite touting Sampo and Tatung as hardware partners, the service could face some bumps as consumers have to buy smart TVs from these two makers to utilize LiTV, not to mention that each has only one model ready to support the application.
TGC said it is talking with more TV makers to have LiTV built in as a value-added feature, and it has plans to roll out set-top boxes that combine both TiVo and LiTV features.
Bigger rival Chunghwa Telecom Co (CHT, 中華電信) said in February it is gearing up to enhance its online TV — called -multimedia-on-demand (MOD) — by expanding its high-definition channels from 16 to 33.
It is aiming to boost MOD subscribers to 1 million by the end of the year, from 810,000 in December last year. CHT had 667,000 MOD subscribers in December 2009.
Meanwhile, Next TV is set to boost its appeal with the upcoming debut of games and Internet shopping services.
The Internet TV portal, which belongs to Next Media Ltd (壹傳媒), said last month it aims to grab a “large” piece of Taiwan’s market share by year’s end.
Next TV currently boasts more than 1,000 titles in its offerings and started to charge for some programs from April.
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