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Telstra Launches Broadband VOD Service

Australian telco, Telstra, has rolled out Australia's first broadband VOD service. Dubbed "BigPond Movies Download," the service -- which offers new-release and library movies, television series, sports programming and music videos -- was launched at an event in Sydney that featured Australian actress, Toni Collette. The service currently offers around 1,000 titles from Columbia, Tristar, Screen Gems, Sony Classics, MGM and UA.

The service, which requires users to install a "BigPond Media Manager" on their PC and which can be used only with the Windows XP Home and Windows XP Pro operating systems, allows users to view content as many times as they want within 24 hours or on a weekly basis -- after which the content is automatically deleted from their hard drive; however, music videos can be viewed indefinitely.

Customers of Telstra's BigPond Cable Standard and Cable Extreme broadband services can begin watching content almost immediately after commencing a download, as the content streams while they view it in real-time.

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