Why wait for Netflix to launch in Central and Eastern Europe, especially its smaller markets?
That seems to be the message coming out of Croatia, where a new SVOD service named Pickbox recently made its debut. Although facing local competition from on demand services provided by HBO GO and the national commercial broadcasters Nova TV and RTL Televizija, it appears to be unique in some respects. These include the fact that it is also available in the other countries that once made up the former Yugoslavia, namely Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Macedonia.
So, what more do we know about Pickbox? A quick web search reveals that it is backed by Sanja Bozic-Ljubicic, the owner of Mediatranslations, Mediavision and New Europe Market (NEM), the annual content market held in Dubrovnik. Its offer, which consists of 3,000 hours of mostly movies and series, is commercial-free, costs only HRK38 (around €5) a month to receive and can currently be viewed on all types of iOS and Android devices, along with smart TVs from September.
One of the early criticisms of Pickbox was that it did not offer HD content. It is not clear of this is still the case.
Furthermore, although the series it showed were relatively new, the same could not be said of its movies, which one report described as “outdated”.
Then there is the issue of piracy, which is still quite a problem in Croatia, and most probably the other countries Pickbox is present in.
Although the service, says one report, still needs to do a little work on both the content and technical side, its initial pricing is realistic and offers viewers “bang for their buck”.
While it seems likely Netflix will in due course expand into Central and Eastern Europe, with Poland one of the first markets it will enter, countries such as Croatia will probably have to wait for years before it hosts the service.
It is therefore perhaps no surprise that it has taken matters into its own hands and is developing SVOD services of its own.
