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Presto, the specialist movie streaming service from Foxtel, has halved its monthly fee, dropping from AU$19.99 to AU$9.99. The service remains “no lock in” with users able to cancel their subscription at any time. Presto also has a number of premium pay-per-view titles that attract additional fees over the monthly subscription.
At launch, the high monthly price was one of the main criticisms of Presto. While the new price puts it in line with, for example, the cost of Netflix in the US, Presto is movie-only, with Foxtel Play being the streaming option for Foxtel’s TV series.
Obviously, the price drop fuelled speculation that the service has been suffering from poor uptake. Presto representatives were unwilling to discuss subscriber numbers. They did, however, note that since launching Chromecast support at the start of July, 20 percent of all views occur via the Chromecast device.
They also noted that on weekends, Presto saw “an average of 40 percent of all subscribers accessing content”.
On Android, the Presto app has had between 500 and 1,000 downloads and has a rating of 2.4 stars based on 25 reviews. On iTunes, download numbers aren’t given, but across all versions it has a four star rating from 28 reviews.
Foxtel Go, by contrast, has had between 100,000-500,000 installs on Android, with a 3.5 star rating from 1,281 reviews. On iTunes, the current version has a two star rating from 160 reviews, with all versions having an average three stars from 2,800 reviews.
