Universal, Tiscali launch PictureBox

Duo kick off new on-demand service

By ELIZABETH GUIDER

Universal Pictures and Tiscali UK will launch the PictureBox subscription on-demand service, featuring movies from the Hollywood studio, on Tiscali TV in Britain. Deal follows the recent expansion of the PictureBox brand in Poland on ITI Neovision as well as PictureBox's worldwide premiere in the U.K. last December.

Subscribers to the PictureBox service on Tiscali TV will pay a monthly fee of £5 ($9.88) to view a selection of feature films to be delivered via the Tiscali TV IPTV platform. Pics will be refreshed frequently, with new titles added each week. The PictureBox service will include 28 movies at any one time, including to start, "The Interpreter," "Friday Night Lights," "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason," "Love Actually" and "The Chronicles of Riddick." PictureBox is wholly owned by Universal Pictures.

No financial details of the deal were available.

Tiscali U.K. is owned by Italian parent company Tiscali and headquartered in Cagliari. The British subsid was launched in July 2001 following the acquisitions of Liberty Surf, World Online and LineOne. It provides triple-play broadband, telephone and home entertainment IPTV and video-on-demand services to 1.7 million customers, ranking it as the third-largest DSL broadband provider in that market.