British supermarket Tesco wants to start a film downloading service

May 8, 2005

The world's third largest supermarket chain, Tesco of Britain, announced intentions to start a film downloading service on the back of its successful music download service in the United Kingdom.

Tesco takes a 10% share in the UK music download market, even though they are a late comer.

The reason for the service is that Britain is one of the largest illegal downloaders of film and television programmes in the world, with many TV shows copied to PCs as soon as they are shown in the United States. Copies of The Simpsons, The O.C., Desperate Housewives and even Lost which is not available yet in the UK are found on p2p servers like Kazaa and BitTorrent.

This is not the first company who has decided to start a film download service. The entertainment giant Sony has asked for such a service, plus the music downloader Wippet has already decided to introduce film downloading in the UK.