Agreement with Telecom Italia will see a number of major films launched on the Internet before reaching cinemas. New “MTV On Demand” channel unveiled, designed specially for broadband music content distribution. The portal updates its design and offers even more advanced features.
Telecom Italia is enhancing the content and services on its Rosso Alice broadband portal through two new agreements with Mikado and MTV.
As a result of the deal with the Mikado film distribution and production company, from June 22 Rosso Alice will be showing exclusive sneak previews of a number of Mikado’s Time Code Division releases before they hit cinema screens. Rosso Alice users will be able to book these sneak previews online and watch the movies in streaming mode. Norio Tsuruta’s “Premonition” (a huge hit in Japan) and Johnnie To’s hi-tech action movie “Breaking News” are already lined up to be shown. These films and many more will return to Rosso Alice as pay per view content six months after distribution on the movie-house circuit.
Thanks to agreements with a number of movie majors, Rosso Alice now has a library of more than 100 thrillers, comedies, classics, cult movies and shorts available for viewing at prices ranging between €1.99 and €2.99.
Rosso Alice’s latest agreement with MTV is another exciting development. The Rosso Alice Musica section of the web site now includes a special “MTV on demand” area, a new channel offering the best of Italian and international music on demand, designed specially with broadband in mind.
MTV on demand is a vast library of news and audiovisual content divided into two sections: “Music” contains artist biographies, interviews, live specials, classics, backstage insights and features; the “Video” section offers an initial 1,500 streaming clips of Italian and international artists. A new look and new broadband-enabled technologies allow web surfers to make their own personalized audio and video playlists with Playlist Creator, or access Celebrity Playlists and MTV Playlists. Rosso Alice users can also buy tracks directly from the Music Box service.
The http://www.rossoalice.it/ web site is offering free access to MTV on demand for a limited time, so that websurfers can try out all the new content available. After this introductory period, subscriptions will cost €4.90 per month, or €12.90 for the whole summer season.
Rosso Alice sports a new, simplified and more involving interface that enhances the high-quality audio and video on offer. Rosso Alice’s online shopping centre is one of the first sites of its kind in Europe, with a brand-new, intuitive graphic interface that allows users to navigate through all of the content on offer. Because the homepage and showcase areas in each section are updated in real time, the very latest releases are always immediately visible, and users can directly access all of the on demand content they want. The new interface employs technology to adapt all portal content and images dynamically to the monitor size of the user’s computer screen, enhancing usability further still. This technology effectively turns PC computer screens into consoles for creating personalized audio and video playlists.
Rosso Alice’s Community area now has a special “Alice Live” section, offering direct contact with stars from the worlds of TV, music, cinema and science. Professor Robert Gallo and film director Gabriele Salvatores will be followed by quick interviews with Syria and Sugarfree. Users equipped with web cams are free to join in to the live forum. All broadband websurfers, not just Alice subscribers, can access “Alice Live” content free of charge.
In a web exclusive, Rosso Alice’s Sport channel is serving up a whole new America’s Cup section for yachting fans. Websurfers will be able to follow Luna Rossa’s progress from their own computers, including on demand highlights, news, interviews and summaries of the preliminary races, in the run-up to the America’s Cup 2007 final phase, which will be shown live on the web.
Rosso Alice is divided into seven theme-based areas: Film, Sport, Music, Ringtones, Games, News and Community. All ADSL Internet users may access the site. Agreements with some of the biggest content providers in Italy and internationally have enabled Rosso Alice to acquire broadband computer content rights. Alice customers may purchase content by charging their Telecom Italia bill directly, using the Pago Rosso Alice electronic wallet, or by credit card. Other users can pay by Pago Rosso Alice or by credit card.
Launched by Telecom Italia in March 2004, in April 2005 Rosso Alice registered approximately 2,481,000 unique browsers (who accessed the site at least once during the month). The portal registered a total of 48,695,000 pageviews (an average of 1,623,000 per day). Telecom Italia continues to supply more and more broadband connections: 5,003,000 million at the end of April 2005, of which 568,000 outside Italy.
Milan, May 27, 2005