ReelTime.com

ReelTime.com is an Internet-based video on demand provider located in Seattle, Washington. It was founded as Reeltime Rentals Inc. in 2004 and went public in September 2006 at the same time that its online service was launched. The company's Directors are Michael Gersh and Beverly Zaslow.

ReelTime.com provides over 2500 movies and television shows in its catalog. It delivers these selections through a proprietary player that uses elements of peer-to-peer networking to reduce the bandwidth required from its servers by allowing a portion of its file transfers to occur between its customers' machines (i.e., peers).

On July 2, 2008, Reeltime Rentals Inc. had a market capitalization of $2.64 million. For the fourth quarter of 2006, its first quarter of online sales operation and the most recent information available, the company reported a revenue of $1,490, resulting in an EBITDA loss of $388,830.^[1]

Availability

Content is currently available on a service subscription basis, in which on-demand content is offered for a subscription of one to six months, as well as on a pay-per-view basis. There are other video on demand companies now offering advertiser-supported, rather than subscription based video, Joost being one of those. Companies like Walmart and Amazon.com also are now offering similar video on demand services.

Content

ReelTime.com offered a collection of feature-length films, shorts, television episodes, and film trailers from genres including Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Animation, Anime, Children and Family, Silent Films, Westerns, Foreign Language, Mystery, Romance, Horror, Action/Adventure, Documentary, Educational videos and Comedies. However at present, the site seems to consist of only a logo.

Technology

ReelTime calls its streaming technology Intelligent Rapid Delivery System. Different from most peer-to-peer transfer systems, where a file is sent or received in small chunks from multiple peers, ReelTime's system streams its content primarily from its own contracted servers, while performance is enhanced by the sharing of small pieces of files through the peer to peer system. The system also employs Blowfish encryption as a digital rights management scheme to prevent unauthorized viewing of the transferred files. IRDS permits media resellers to publish an XML feed of available content, and tracks distribution to provide an accounting of that distribution so that content providers can be compensated on a revenue share basis.

See also

• Internet television

References

External links

• Comparison of video on demand services
• ReelTime.com
• Nothing to Watch on TV? Streaming Video Appeals to Niche Audiences (NY Times, August 6, 2007)