SureWest to sell DVDs and Blu-ray Discs to video customers

SureWest announced today that it will offer its Kansas City video service customers the ability to purchase DVD and Blu-ray Disc versions of Warner Brothers on-demand movies through their remote controls. To support the offering the carrier has upgrade its video-on-demand service from SeaChange to VODlink 5.0, making SureWest the first company to deploy the new version of SeaChange’s VODlink software applications platform. SeaChange calls the DVD and Blu-ray purchase capability “Watch & Buy T-Commerce.”

“We’re at the point where we’ve tested all of the functionality and we’re making the final tweaks to the presentation pages so we can launch it to the full Kansas City market . . . in the next week to three weeks,” said SureWest CTO Ken Johnson in an interview.

A key driver of the move is to help bolster the carrier’s already strong track record in revenue generating units per customer, which currently stands at 2.7 in Kansas City, Johnson said. A revenue-generating unit is an individual service, such as voice, video or data (CP: Broadband expansionist).

“Strategically we’re actively trying to find features and products that span RGUs,” said Johnson.

Customers don’t have to purchase both video and broadband service in order to purchase DVDs through SureWest. But Johnson envisions that a broadband link could be useful in the future when the company hopes to stream a copy of a movie to customers’ computers when they opt to make a movie purchase.

SeaChange will be handling DVD and Blue-ray Disc fulfillment for SureWest, including shipping, billing and customer service calls. SureWest opted not to include the cost of DVDs and discs purchased on customers’ video service bills because they didn’t want to increase the size of the video bill. Other service providers opting to deploy Watch & Buy T-Commerce could opt to handle their own fulfillment, however.

SureWest’s agreement with Warner Brothers calls for the carrier to make titles available for purchase at the same time they are made available for video on demand. Titles available initially include “Arthur,” “Hall Pass,” “Something Borrowed,” “Sucker Punch,” “Red Riding Hood,” and “Unknown.”

Moving forward, SureWest hopes to negotiate similar deals for titles from other suppliers, Johnson said.

Faster program launch times
In addition to supporting Watch & Buy T-Commerce, VODlink 5.0 also supports faster VOD navigation and program launch times, along with enhanced graphics capabilities, SeaChange said.
“One of the complaints we’ve had historically is that load times are slow and the look and feel is a bit dated,” Johnson said. “We’ve had a major initiative underway to improve that.” The SeaChange upgrade, he said, “improves the initial load time and enhances the look and feel [to make it] more modern.”

SeaChange did some customization of VODlink 5.0 to meet SureWest’s needs, Johnson said.