The mobile-first streaming platform, Quibi, has launched for its April 6th release date. If you register before April 30, you’ll have access to 90 days for free. After that, it will be $4.99 per month with ads or $7.99 per month without them. Ads are either 10 or 15 seconds, depending how long the video is. Quibi was founded by Jeffery Katzenberg, one of the visionaries behind DreamWorks Animation.
The new streaming service is now available on Android and iOS, not on your computer, and specializes in short episodes that are all 10 minutes or less. They plan on releasing 25 episodes, over three hours of content, each day.
Being primed for mobile, Quibi offers its shows to always fit your phone, whether you want to watch vertically or horizontally. The result is similar to the transition from full screen (4:3) to wide screen (16:9), but it is much more drastic, often leading to pretty tight shots on the speaking character when watching vertically. While the phone is horizontal, at least as exampled in Most Dangerous Game (starring Liam Hemsworth), the frame isn’t empty, but the space cannot be utilized for important details over wide areas, as the stories cannot withhold information from the viewers choosing to watch vertically.
A-list actors and sources have content on the new service. Sophie Turner of Game of Thrones stars in Survive. Chrissy Teigan takes up the gavel in Chrissy’s Court. Punk’d is back with Chance the Rapper as host. The Dodo has a series about adorable animals, called All the Feels. All pages for each series make it easy to view the credits for cast and crew with a dedicated section at the bottom and an additional page if you want to see more. There are also news options such as Around the World by BBC News.