MSN are adding more content to the MSN Video Player service after a successful trial period. The MSN tv on demand website was launched in August 2009 for the UK market, having an initial 300 hours of hit shows available including The League of Gentlemen, Peep Show, Derren Brown, Shameless and Hustle from BBC worldwide and All3Media. The tv streams can be viewed in Windows Media Video and Flash formats on any windows pc or Mac computer.

Now from this Thursday, more content will be added including tv shows from Big Brother creator, Endemol and RDF, Shed, Digital Rights Group, Raw Cut and Content Film. This will increase the quantity available to over 1000 hours of streaming tv goodness.

The service is not  a regular catch up service as the content available is older than the 7-30 day window associated with these services. So MSN will not be compeing directly with other UK catch-up services from the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. The service will be free and supported by advertising revenue, 30 second commercials will show before, during and after each show. MSN UK executive producer Peter Bale said:- “The six-month pilot is going full commercial launch. The pilot has worked. We’ve had a terrific response from our advertisers.” He added that “We’re having a very high number of people sit through the ads, because there aren’t many.”

Highfield also suggested that the MSN catch up service is better than the competition. MSN’s average viewer watched for 25 minutes, he said: “That is significantly higher than ITV and Channel 4′s online TV services, which suggests we are hitting the mark with our choice of content for the service.”

The service offers Microsoft’s Silverlight technology for viewing the streams, auto-adjusting the screen quality to meet the speed of the connection. However the streams can be viewed without Silverlight being installed on your computer.

In its current incarnation, the MSN player will not directly compete with aggregators such as YouTube and SeeSaw, who have each won Channel 4 and Five shows by giving the broadcasters control of their own advertising sales. However, Bale commented that MSN is looking to sign similar deals. “We always talk to the broadcasters,” he said. “It’s publicly obvious that ITV and Channel 4 have made different decisions what their current video-on-demand strategy is.”

If your a catch up tv online lover, then i suggest you head down to the UK as it seems to have the widest range and biggest selection of online tv services.

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2. Sky Online TV Player Adds More Channels To Lineup
3. Comcast to launch streaming TV on demand service
4. Microsoft Online Catch Up TV Service Launches in UK
5. MSN Launch Catch UP Online TV Service For The UK