Today marks the launch of the brand new streaming service Britbox. The service is being brought to you by the BBC and also ITV.
It’s also been confirmed that Channel 4 will be joining their competitors to bring you some of the best boxsets, comedies, dramas and documentaries of British television.
The majority ITV owned streaming services is hoping to take on the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime and the other US giants. It’s unclear on whether these current services will lose their licences to British television programs like Luther, Peaky Blinders, Sherlock and Doctor Who.
Britbox will cost users £5.99 a month and will feature the entire back-catalogue of Doctor Who, dating right back to the 1960s, the entire Downton Abbey back-catalogue and users can even treat themselves to Love Island refreshers.
The service was originally planned for February 2019, but due to issues, had to be delayed until now.
Britbox US, which launched earlier this year already has 650,000 subscribers, but unfortunately, is an extremely tiny amount compared to the 60 million users on Netflix across all 50 states.
Of course, the usual debate about TV licensing has popped back up onto Twitter, with people stating that the BBC already take a TV licensing fee for us to watch live TV and BBC iPlayer in the home. Technically, if users avoid live television and do not access BBC iPlayer, then they do not need a TV licence. Will Britbox fall under this category too?
Surely if all BBC released content will be available on Britbox, this could make BBC iPlayer, along with 4OD and ITV Hub pretty redundant. So the need for a TV licence could be eventually abolished. Time will tell, but if Twitter is anything to go by, people aren’t happy with the setup so far.
Dani Warner, TV expert at uSwitch.com, says; “Some viewers may be disappointed that recent hit shows like Bodyguard and Killing Eve will not feature on BritBox at first due to existing agreements with other providers, and iPlayer — which is a free service — will get to keep shows for one year before they transfer over.
“But BritBox will be a vault of great British entertainment when these shows eventually join the likes of Love Island, Downton Abbey, Broadchurch and Gavin & Stacey.”
