With its ongoing endeavour to engage subscribers with quality content, Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) is at it again with the announcement of a strategic partnership with Vuclip, an video-on-demand (VOD) service provider, to offer the Viu Over-the-Top (OTT) video service to its subscribers. The partnership will allow TM customers to have access to Viu as part of their subscription, sometime in the middle of March this year. The Viu service will be provided to users on top of their current HyppTV services, similar to the iflix partnership.
Since Viu is already being offered as a freemium service on its own, Malaysian viewers who are not TM subscribers can still have free access to its content, but will have to put up with ads. However, a Premium subscription for RM 10 monthly will provide an ad-free experience, together with an access to additional premium content. Viu’s offering can be accessed via its www.viu.com portal, or via the Android app for phone or tablet. Unfortunately, there’s no app yet for iOS users. Users will have to stick to mobile browsers for now, but the app is expected to be available soon.
The Viu service itself is not new. This Malaysian launch follows similar successful launches in Hong Kong and Singapore. With Vuclip’s long-term partnerships with more than 250 studios globally, Viu is able to offer content from top studios around the Asian region, including Korea, Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, as well as from the Bollywood/Hindi and Kollywood/Tamil film industries. Apart from serials, variety shows and movies, Viu subscribers get to enjoy selected short clips, music videos, and even movie trailers.
This year, Viu expects to deliver more than 10,000 hours of premium Asian content to its consumers. Fans of Korean shows will now have even more reasons to celebrate as Viu is working with top broadcasters, such as KBS, MBC, CJ, and SBS to bring more than 3,700 hours of dramas and variety shows; all of which will come with subtitles in English, Bahasa Malaysia, and Simplified Chinese. The lineup comprises of new content such as ‘Oh My Venus’, ‘Moorim School’, and ‘Six Flying Dragons, together with award winning classics such as ‘My Love from the Star’, ‘The Heirs’, and the perennial favorite ‘The Running Man’. For selected new titles, Viu is promising to make them available, with English subs, after just 8 hours from their Korean premiere, and impressively, with BM subs within 24 hours.
Taking the app out for a spin, we found that it does offline downloads too. The first time that users attempt to download a video for offline use, they will be given an option of either SD or HD downloads. Once set, this will be the default quality and cannot be changed on the fly with each download. To switch the download quality, users will have change it in the settings (toggle the ‘Download Video in HD’ to active for HD, or leave it off for SD). The ‘DETAILS’ section provides a description of the video but more importantly, the download sizes for both resolutions. A typical 26 minute drama takes up about 120 MB in SD quality, and 188 MB in HD. Besides using the search option to look for content, users can also check out individual categories on the side bar, including ‘Just Added’ or ‘Trending’ for more options.
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