Last night TelstraClear opened the doors of our Wellington showroom on Courtenay Place to a clever bunch of New Zealander who together have developed a New Zealand first.
 
New Zealand's first FREE internet TV Service -- Ziln.co.nz was launched and introduced first to TelstraClear customers.
 
Using the skills of e-Cast's ingest, store and payout servers and the production smarts of a range of NZ producers and directors from Netside TV, the Ziln team have developed a site that supports content that may not make it to mainstream broadcast platforms and allows content owners to reach audiences who want a range of quality content presented in the best possible way in your home over the internet.  On Cable it will be awesome, but on any TelstraClear broadband product it will work well and mostly without annoying buffering.
 
Find out more about Ziln here
 
The site offers variable bitrate streaming from 128kbps to 768kpbs depending on your connection to the internet.  At 128kbps 1 hour of viewing will be approximately 50Mb usage and at 768kbps the usage would be approximately 300Mb per hour viewed. The quality of the presentation is very good.
 
While TelstraClear is not commercially linked to Ziln, we felt the product too good not to tell our customers. Technically this is leading edge and although the content may not suit all tastes it will likely prove very complimentary to mainstream broadcast and Pay TV services.  This is not about replacing Sky TV, TVNZ or TV3.

 
Watch out for the eDM and TC newsletter for more information about the First On-Line Film Festival on Ziln, featuring 12 Kiwi films including Goodbye Pork Pie from 4th September.  Clearnet will have a page dedicated to Ziln from late this week.  Ziln is still adding content by the day and the site will only move from Beta to Production at 6pm September 1st.
 
Enjoy.
 
Steve Jackson

Head of Consumer Markets