Orange brings mickey mouse to mobile tv

Orange has made a digital TV content deal with Disney-ABC International Television, which will allow Orange subscribers to watch Disney movies on Orange’s forthcoming digital TV service ipTV.

Under the multi-year video on-demand deal for digital TV and PC, Orange will be able to offer for rental video on demand movies from Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures and Miramax Films, such as Déjà Vu, Wild Hogs, and Venus.

Tim Pearson, director of ipTV Orange, said: ‘The Disney-ABC International Television deal is the first of a number of content deals we’re announcing and demonstrates we’re gearing up for our launch of digital TV later this year. We intend to offer our customers a great range of the best movies on demand for which this agreement with Disney is a great step.’

Virgin Mobile to dump mobile TV service

Virgin Mobile has decided to dump its broadcast mobile TV service after less than a year because of poor customer take-up.

The mobile phone operator’s partner on the project, BT, is ending its experiment with mobile TV and disbanding its BT Movio business that was supposed to take mobile TV into other countries. It has also cancelled its contract with GCap Media, the radio business that owned the spectrum over which the service runs. The service is likely to be switched off completely early next year.

Earlier this year the Guardian reported that less than 10,000 people had signed up.

The last nail in the coffin for VMTV was banged in by the European commission last week when it called for the region’s mobile phone operators to get behind a competing mobile TV technology which can offer many more channels than Virgin’s service.