Liberty's Starz abandons Vongo and inks movie deal with Verizon

Thu May 29 2008, 09:30 AM

Liberty Media's Starz Entertainment is phasing out its movie download service Vongo, where users can buy an unlimited amount of movies for USD9.99 a month, says The New York Times. Instead of focusing on Vongo as a standalone business, Starz will try to cut deals with ISPs to offer a cheaper movie service - called Starz Play - as part of their broadband offerings. Already, Verizon has agreed to offer Starz Play to its broadband and mobile customers. Although Starz Play will provide roughly the same content as Vongo, it will cost USD4 less per month. Starz hopes that cable providers will eventually include Starz Play, which competes with the likes of Apple's iTunes and Amazon's Unbox, into bundled offerings.

Launched in 2006, Vongo failed to kick off, mainly due to its limited offering - it only has deals with Walt Disney and Sony Pictures. It's also only accessible on PCs, although this may change. A Starz spokesman, Tom Southwick, tells the NYT that Starz may work with set-top box makers to bring the service onto TVs - just like Netflix, which recently launched its Roku set-top box.