The rights Starz Encore Group negotiated with its studio partners in 1999 might start to pay some dividends in the spring of 2003 when the premium programmer and RealNetworks Inc. bow a subscription video-on-demand service targeted to consumers with broadband connections.

The service, offered through the RealOne subscription platform, will offer the same movie titles that the programmer offers via its traditional Starz On Demand service. The companies envision that users of the broadband SVOD service will have access to more than 100 unique movie titles per month. Consumers who use the service are also required to be a Starz Super Pak subscriber.

In addition to curbing piracy, the Starz-RealOne combo will drive cable modem penetration and boost digital cable subscriptions, predicted Starz Encore Chairman and CEO John Sie.

"This is the first step in a long journey to arrest the illegal downloading of movies," Sie said.

To do that, the Starz-RealOne service leverages a security method used by services such as MusicNet and the recently launched Movielink, which has been scrutinized in some reviews for long-download times and sub-par picture quality.

RealNetworks Chairman and President Rob Glaser said users of the Starz-RealOne SVOD service will avoid long waits because they will be asked ahead of time for their preferences, and those titles will be downloaded during off-hours. After download to the PC hard drive, each title will be available for viewing for about 30 days, equal to its traditional SVOD window. All content for the service will be encoded in RealVideo 9, a codec designed to provide MPEG-2 quality at about half the bit rate for high quality, full-screen digital video, or 750 megabits per second, Glaser said.

Pricing for the Starz-RealOne service will be announced when the service launches next spring, but Sie said he expected it to be on par with the price consumers pay for the traditional Starz On Demand service, which runs about $10 per month in many cases.

Although the new offering might drive subscriptions for high-margin cable modem services, both companies were also hazy about how or if they would share revenue from the broadband SVOD service with cable operators, although Glaser said RealNetworks is willing to discuss the issue. "We have an 'open for business' sign on our foreheads," he said.

RealOne presently counts more than 850,000 subscribers and provides a swath of on-demand content from parties such as Major League Baseball, Fox Sports and news organizations such as ABC and CNN.

The 2003 launch will give Starz On Demand its third distribution platform for SVOD. In addition to RealOne and cable, Starz! is also testing an SVOD service with DirecTV customers who subscribe to Starz Super Pak and have a Tivo-enabled digital satellite receiver.