Vongo is Gone-go
This certainly isn’t shocking: Starz Entertainment has shut down online movie service Vongo. A visit to the site shows the following message:
The writing was on the wall for the service when the company announced Starz Play, a white-label movie download service for Verizon, in May. But troubles for Vongo started long before that. Early on, customers had big issues with pre-installed software, promotional pricing and customer service.
I’m not sure Starz has learned its lesson though. According to the Starz Play FAQ, you have to still download and install software in order to use the service — a hassle customers don’t want to go through — especially since the movie selection is pretty stale at this point (Spider-Man 3, Ratatouille).
Hat tip to paidContent.
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[...] [via NewTeeVee] [...]
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[...] to Pony Up Billions for Premium Vids Don’t let the deaths of Vongo and ClickStar fool you — there will be a market for Internet-delivered movies and TV shows, [...]
People to Pony Up Billions for Premium Vids…
— 9:12 AM on August 13, 2008
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[...] Vudu gets 99 cent movies on demand — Well, if porn can’t save Vudu, perhaps this move can, says Mashable. Meanwhile, another online movie service starting with a ‘V’, Vongo, is gone, says NewTeeVee. [...]
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— 2:43 AM on August 14, 2008
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[...] little is known about Epix, but that Starz used to have the standalone Vongo broadband service, and ditched it in favor of providing its content to partners like [...]
Netflix Q2 Call: More Streaming, More Redbox
— 5:37 PM on July 23, 2009
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As I recall, Vongo’s initial launch announcement was the first of a flurry of legit content deals in early 2006 (this was way back in the day when content wasn’t available everywhere), so this is kind of the end of an era.
I must admit, even though I hated launching Parallels on my mac to use this service, I did really like it. I guess it could never compete with Netflix on-demand.