The new Netflix competitor Quibi announced its launch date and other details at CES 2020.
Netflix will have a new competitor this year, a streaming service named Quibi which has a different video proposal. Quibi has raised $1 billion to make its own market space and plans to launch its online content service in the United States on April 6th.
Famous directors, actors and models are going to create content
They plan to do it, by having some of Hollywood’s most important names to create content for the service that will only be available on mobile devices. Among the names are directors Steven Spielberg, Sam Raimi and Guillermo del Toro, as well as actors Bill Murray, Idris Elba and Reese Witherspoon, models Chrissy Teigen and Tyra Banks.
As the BBC explains, among its investors are traditional channels, such as Fox, NBCUniversal and Disney. Its bet to be different is to create videos of 10 minutes or less.
The monthly fee will start from $4,99
The CEO of Quibi, Meg Whitman -you can remember her from HP– and the founder, Jeffrey Katzenberg, announced the details of this new service at the CES 2020. Much of the presentation was done showing a feature called Turnstile, which allows viewers to keep the image full screen, either horizontally or vertically.
The creators have adjusted the frame of their shots so that the action adapts to any aspect ratio and in some cases they have used the function to reveal a different point of view.
In addition to the entertainment, the service tries to project newspieces from the BBC, NBC and Telemundo, among others.
Whitman was previously the CEO of eBay and HP, and Katzenberg had produced some of Disney’s best-known animated films before directing Dreamworks Animation.
The firm intends to charge US $4.99 per month for basic access, while users who pay US $7.99 will have a version without advertising.
Qibi will have short videos on mobile
Quibi will have videos of 4 to 10 minutes long. The services will include series of several episodes and also movies, which will be divided into segments or chapters.
Whitman announced that they’ve partnered with Steven Spielberg to create a horror series, After Dark, which can only be seen after sunset.
To do this, the application will verify the user’s location and local time, Whitman explained. Offstage, Whitman told the BBC that Quibi had received more than 100 proposals per week from filmmakers who wanted to use their Turnstile video technology.
This is not the first time that streaming services have released interactive videos. Netflix is offering a series of interactive features since 2017, when they did it with an episode of its sci-fi series Black Mirror. But the feature is still rarely used.
