A streaming OTT TV service named OnPrime TV and operated by Sky UK Ltd and Cisco Systems Inc, with its content aggregated by Encompass Digital Media, was launched at the beginning of this month.
According to the Ukrainian broadcaster 1+1, which has secured carriage for its international channel on the platform, OnPrime TV offers a variety of paid and free services, featuring packages from different countries and in different languages.
At the moment, the service is only available on Apple devices, but support for Android TV, TV Box and Roku is coming soon.
Although OnPrime TV can currently only be received in the UK and Germany, it will in due course be rolled out to other countries in Europe.
OnPrime TV will eventually offer a total of six channel packages – Arabic, South Asian, Russian, Star and News, with 1+1 International being located in the Russian one, which also includes eight Russian channels, among them CTC International, Peretz, TV1000 Russian Kino and Channel One Russia.
At present, only the Russian, Arabic and News packages are available.
The Russian pack is offered on a one-month free trial basis, after which it costs £17.99 a month with no contract. Interestingly, the news pack is offered free of charge, while the others will cost from £8.99 to £12.99 a month, again after a free trial and with no contract. However, the news pack has a limited offer of Sky News (English and Arabic) and France24 (French, English and Arabic).
Broadband TV News notes that OnPrime TV LLC filed a US federal trademark registration for OnPrime TV on September 4, 2015. OnPrime TV LLC is based in San Jose, where Cisco also has its headquarters.
The trademark information for OnPrime TV is “audio and video broadcasting services, broadcasting audio and video content over global computer networks, video-on-demand transmission services, pay-per-view video and audio transmission services”.
Broadband TV News also believes the platform uses the infrastructure that Cisco gained following the acquisition of the OTT developer 1Mainstream. As previously reported by Broadband TV News, this allows content companies to launch OTT services across multiple platforms such as Apple TV, Xbox, Android TV and Samsung.
Commenting on securing carriage on OnPrime TV, Vladislav Svinchenko, general producer of 1+1 International, said: “We are constantly working to ensure that everyone interested has access to the channel’s content in a way convenient for them. After all, there has been an increase in audience interest to 1+1 International. On the one hand, this contributes to capacity growth and success of the 1+1 Media’s in-house production; on the other hand, it to the development of technical capabilities for signal delivery. We believe that this partnership will bring long-term benefits and OnPrime TV will soon become the European audience’s favourite platform”.
1+1 International is aimed at the Ukrainian diaspora and already available on Virgin Media in the UK and Kabel Deutschland in Germany.
