Eastern’s residence halls get new TV streaming service

Roberto Hodge, Multicultural Editor

Students living on campus will be able to stream some of the latest movie releases, some which have not even come out on DVD or Blu-ray.

The service, called “Resident Select,” will update every month with 16 more movies totaling to 80 by the end of the semester; the movies will also be available to students six months before Netflix and video rental stores obtain them.

“It’s very much like Netflix. We want to give on-campus students an exclusive experience,” Mark Hudson director of housing and dining services said.

In order to access the site, students must go to movies.eiu.edu in the residence halls, which will take them directly to the service site. The site will not be available outside of a residence hall.

However, students living off-campus will not be able to access the streaming service and unlike Netflix, the movies will only be available for a brief time period.

At the end of each semester, the current movies will be wiped from the service, and will restart with a new set of 16 movies.

Hudson said the university always had a movie channel available to them on campus, which is called Swank, but it wasn’t until recently they found out the company offered a streaming service at no additional charge.

The university’s contract with the company owning the streaming service is $42,517 a year.

Matthew Boyer the assistant director for residential life and conference services said the students of Residential Hall Association chose what movies to pick during the summer and the previous academic year.

Boyer said the students try to pick a list of theme related movies for the month from the Residence Life Cinema in order to help educate students.

Currently, there are no restrictions on what is shown through the streaming service so long as the movies do not have and adult rating, Boyer said.

Essentially, the streaming is an upgrade from the old service previously provided in order to give students much more flexibility for their interests Hudson said.

The service is covered by room and board at no additional cost to the students.

Roberto Hodge can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected]