Dedicated to viewing videos of all kinds on smartphones, whether feature films, series or TV shows, Quibi has chosen to offer sequences of ten minutes maximum. Another originality: the possibility of changing point of view according to the direction of orientation of the smartphone.
The CES electronics show in Las Vegas is an opportunity for all players in the sector to announce their new products. This year, the Quibi company is entering the juicy streaming market , and rather than competing with the biggest, it is trying to create its own niche. Quibi is the idea of Jeffrey Katzenberg, former president of Walt Disney Pictures and co-founder of DreamWorks, and Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay and HP .
Jeffrey Katzenberg explained in detail the new service to The Verge . Quibi will be a new video streaming service that plans to create new content, limited to clips of 10 minutes maximum, called ” quick bites “, hence the name of the service. All videos will use a new technology called Turnstyle, which allows clips to be viewed both in landscape and portrait mode.
Two different points of view to alternate freely
All clips will be filmed with two cameras, so as to present two different views of the scene. For some scenes, it could be for example a wide shot as well as a close-up on the face. In another clip shared on Twitter , a woman answers her intercom on her phone, and changing the orientation switches between the woman’s view and the image of the intercom she is looking at on her mobile.
It will not be simple experimental clips or low budget, the content will be produced to comply with three categories. Daily news should cost from 5,000 dollars per minute (4,500 euros), while intermediate programs could cost between 20,000 and 50,000 dollars per minute (18,000 to 45,000 euros). The last category, the AAA episodes, could even reach 125,000 dollars per minute (112,500 euros), or 7.5 million dollars the episode (6.7 million euros). A cost close to the first episodes of Game of Thrones!
A subscription with three hours of new daily content
The latter category represents a whole new format. These episodes are essentially films that are cut and published at the rate of one episode of four to ten minutes per week. The cost is partly justified by the presence of many celebrities, such as Zac Efron, Idris Elba, Kristen Bell, Chrissy Teigen, Kendall Jenner, Tyra Banks, Steph Curry, 50 Cent, or Anthony and Joe Russo.
For the first year, they have already announced more than 175 original programs, with a total exceeding 7,000 episodes. They plan to publish three hours of new content every day in order to retain users for daily viewing. The Quibi service will start on April 6 in the United States and will be exclusively accessible on smartphones. It will cost 4.99 dollars (4.50 euros) for a monthly subscription partly financed by advertising, or 7.99 dollars (7.20 euros) without advertising.