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Quickflix was an Australian company that provided online
DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
and Blu-ray Disc rental by mail as well as internet streaming of movies and television shows via online pay-per-view or subscription. Initially established as an online disc rental company in 2003, Quickflix launched online movie downloads in 2006, and their streaming service in 2011. By June 2014 the company had more than 182,000 subscribers. Although the first major streaming service to operate in Australia, Quickflix quickly lost ground to much larger competitor
Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fi ...
entering the market in 2015, among others. The company entered voluntary administration in early 2016, and was relaunched later that year under new owners. After several more years of trading, Quickflix was
wound up Liquidation is the process in accounting by which a company is brought to an end in Canada, United Kingdom, United States, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, and many other countries. The assets and property of the company are redistrib ...
in September 2021.


Services


Disc rental

The company provided a monthly flat-fee service for the rental of DVD and Blu-ray titles. Subscribers created an ordered list, referred to as their Quickflix Queue, of titles to rent. The discs are then delivered individually via Australia Post; the individual postage-paid envelopes would typically arrive within four days to most areas of Australia. Subscribers can keep the rented title for as long as desired, without any formal due dates and without accruing any late fees. However, there was a limit on the number of titles (a maximum of two, previously this was determined by subscription level) that each subscriber could have on loan simultaneously. To receive a new title, subscribers must mail a previously received disc back in the reply-paid envelope provided. Upon receipt of the disc, Quickflix would then ship the next available disc in the subscriber's queue (subscribers could also pre-notify the return of a disc online, thereby receiving the disc sooner).


Internet streaming

Quickflix streaming was available over a range of smart TVs, games consoles, Blu-ray players, desktops, laptops, mobiles, tablets and other devices. There were two tiers of content subscribers could access: a set library of movies (consisting of mostly older titles) that was included with a customer's subscription, and premium content (usually newer movies) that required an additional fee per title to watch. Consumers could also pay to watch individual premium titles without a streaming subscription. Prior to its relaunch in 2016, Quickflix also offered television series to stream, but after the relaunch their streaming library consisted exclusively of movies. Throughout the years, Quickflix had made deals with
Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
,
NBC Universal The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are ...
, BBC Worldwide and
Lionsgate Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation, doing business as Lionsgate, is a Canadian-American entertainment company. It was formed by Frank Giustra on July 10, 1997, domiciled in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and is currently headquartered ...
to stream their content. HBO's 2012 investment in the company also gave Quickflix access to HBO's back catalogue of shows until 2015. Customers could combine a streaming and disc rental subscription for a discount.


History

Quickflix was founded by Bill Keech, Sam McDonagh and Stephen Langsford, who were shortly afterwards joined by Simon Hodge. Langsford and Hodge would continue as long serving executives and directors following the company's launch in 2003 in
Perth, Western Australia Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth i ...
. Langsford had previously founded internet and web development group Method + Madness, which was acquired by Sausage Software; he also founded consulting, information technology and venturing group Change Corporation in 2002, which was similarly acquired by CSG Limited in 2007. The company would attract prominent business figures Bruce Gordon, Lachlan Murdoch and Domenic Carosa as investors. Quickflix was listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2005, but was delisted in 2017. In December 2005, Quickflix acquired rival company HomeScreen, a move that doubled the Quickflix customer base. In 2006, Quickflix launched movie downloads, competing against BigPond Movies. In April 2011, Quickflix announced the dispatch of their 10 millionth DVD, a copy of ''
Shrek Forever After ''Shrek Forever After'' is a 2010 American computer-animated comedy film loosely based on the 1990 picture book '' Shrek!'' by William Steig, produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The sequel to '' Shrek the T ...
''. In July 2011, BigPond Movies revealed that they would no longer continue their DVD-by-mail service, selling their library of 50,000 titles to Quickflix. In that same month Quickflix announced that they would launch a subscription video streaming service initially on a selection of
Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...
's internet-connected devices, with the service eventually launching on 27 October 2011. Quickflix streaming became available on PCs and
Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
computers, and on the
PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on November 11, 2006, in Japan, November ...
later that same year. In January 2012, Quickflix announced a deal that would bring their service to
Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...
TVs, mobiles and tablets, with
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...
signing a deal to make Quickflix streaming available on
Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generati ...
consoles later that year. The Quickflix app was installed as a stock app on a number of
Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design l ...
devices for a time. In March 2012 Quickflix launched their streaming service in New Zealand. That same month, US premium TV network HBO, a division of global media giant
Time Warner Warner Media, LLC ( traded as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City, United States. It was originally established in 1972 by ...
, invested $10 million in Quickflix for a strategic stake. However the following year saw the company face a temporary cash flow crisis that saw four of its six board members quit and its CEO depart. By 2014 Quickflix was established as Australia's leading streaming service, and had boasted more than 182,000 subscribers as of June of that year. However, facing stagnating subscriber numbers, on 21 July 2014 it was announced that
Nine Entertainment Nine Entertainment (registered as Nine Entertainment Co. Pty Ltd) is an Australian publicly listed media company with holdings in radio and television broadcasting, newspaper publications and digital media. It uses Nine as its corporate brand ...
had acquired all of HBO's shares in Quickflix, thus becoming Quickflix's major investor. Nine paid $1 million for HBO's shares, just 10% of what HBO paid. By the following year a number of streaming competitors had launched in Australia: Netflix, Presto and Stan, the latter a joint venture between Quickflix major shareholder Nine and
Fairfax Media Fairfax Media was a media company in Australia and New Zealand, with investments in newspaper, magazines, radio and digital properties. The company was founded by John Fairfax as John Fairfax and Sons, who purchased ''The Sydney Morning Herald' ...
. With their entry, Quickflix began to haemorrhage subscribers. On 26 April 2016, Quickflix Australia announced that the company had entered voluntary administration, appointing
Ferrier Hodgson Ferrier Hodgson was a firm specialising in corporate recovery, corporate advisory, forensic accounting and forensic IT. The firm has a specialist management consulting arm called Azurium. Ferrier Hodgson was established in 1976. It became on ...
to oversee the process. Quickflix blamed the company's largest shareholder, Nine Entertainment for their predicament, as they had refused to restructure the shares it had acquired from HBO, which would have enabled Quickflix to raise additional capital for investing in content and marketing to enable it to compete in an increasingly crowded market. According to the company, Nine would only accept the restructure in exchange for a multi-million dollar payment in cash, which the company did not have, or have Quickflix transfer its customers to Stan, which the company refused. Nine also blocked a prospective deal with rival Presto, and the company was also forced to abort the planned acquisition of an unnamed Chinese film and media company. It was reported that in the five years to 2015 the company had posted net losses of more than $40 million in total. On 4 October 2016, U.S.-based Karma Media Holdings acquired Quickflix. Quickflix was relaunched in December 2016, offering a revamped streaming subscription which includes rental of up to four premium titles a month in addition to the set streaming library, and a renewed focus on new release movies. However in the subsequent years Quickflix's streaming library saw increasingly limited updates, and the company's focus largely returned to offering disc rental by mail to a niche consumer base. In May 2021 a
winding up Liquidation is the process in accounting by which a company is brought to an end in Canada, United Kingdom, United States, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, and many other countries. The assets and property of the company are redistrib ...
application by
EnergyAustralia EnergyAustralia (formerly TRUenergy) is an electricity generation, electricity and gas retailing private company in Australia, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based and listed China Light and Power (CLP Group). EnergyAustralia also ...
was lodged against the company. Quickflix was wound up by court order in September 2021.


See also

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Internet television in Australia Internet television in Australia is the digital distribution of movies and television content via the Internet. In Australia, internet television is provided by a number of generalist, subscription-based streaming service providers, in addition ...
*
Subscription television in Australia Subscription television in Australia is provided using technologies such as cable television, satellite television and internet television by a number of companies unified in their provision of a subscription television service. Notable actors in ...


References


External links


Quickflix.com.au
{{Video rental shops Defunct video on demand services Subscription video on demand services Defunct subscription services Video rental services in Australia Australian streaming companies Australian companies established in 2003 Australian companies disestablished in 2021 Internet properties established in 2003 Companies based in Sydney PlayStation 4 software 2005 initial public offerings 2016 mergers and acquisitions Australian subsidiaries of foreign companies