Five years of TVNZ On Demand

Today marks the fifth birthday of TVNZ On Demand, the free TV streaming service that allows viewers to catch up with shows whose broadcasts they may have missed.

TVNZ has issued some figures to mark the occasion, saying that in February stream views were up 48% year-on-year, with 70 linear years of content viewed by over 1.8 million unique browsers.

Initially a paid service, all content is now free, supported by ads before and after videos, as well as when users pause.

Other notable events in the service’s timeline are the launch over PlayStation 3, in April 2010, and the introduction of Ad Selector, which invites viewers to choose between three advertisements prior to watching their video, in November of the same year.

In November 2011 the previous video platform was replaced with a service from Brightcove, reducing buffering and errors by over 80%.

Tom Cotter, general manager of digital media at TVNZ, says when TVNZ On Demand was launched viewers were happy ot be able to access any TV online, regardless of quality.

"Today we all expect to see everything, everywhere in perfect quality,” Cotter says.

"Our next generation of platform has enabled this, and we have only begun to leverage its capabilities.”

Go here to see what’s on TVNZ On Demand.