Sounds like Google has found the best way to monetize
YouTube yet, and it puts itself in a pretty competitive spot versus the likes of
Netflix,
Amazon VOD, and Apple's iTunes movie store. According to
Wall Street Journal, the company's currently in talks with Lions Gate, Sony, and Warner Bros. studios over putting their content on YouTube for a rental fee, likely $3.99 -- the same price as Apple's SD movie rentals. Even more interesting is talk of getting some titles online day and date with the DVD releases. Some options could still be free with advertising, but as for paid content, Google's enticing studios over to their way of thinking with a proposed minimum fee of "just under $3 per title viewed." A three-month beta testing is apparently scheduled to begin soon among 10,000 Google employees, and after that? Well, here's hoping the G-Man manages to sign on some more studios and offer us the films in streaming HD.
posted Sep 2nd 2009 6:02PM
I hope you all have had a FABULOUS Wednesday!
Oh my!
Does anyone else always hear every one of DanielIT's comments spoken with a lisp and a flailing limp wrist?
HAHA thats ture lawyer bird but every time i see your post i think im about to get prosecuted by a clown!!!!
every time i read comment threads like this i do a facepalm
What? Youtube wants to charge me to watch something? All good things must come to an end.
Google is in a unique position to make this free or close to free after advertising. I hope this all pans out!
the best position and one that I know has been sent to Hulu as well is viewers being able to chose between free but with ads, or paid and no ads or at least no internal ads (one before the video isn't too hideous). I myself would gladly pay $15-20 a month to Hulu to get ad free viewing cause that's still like a third of my cable bill. Since all the shows I watch have turned up on Hulu, I could drop cable and save a bundle
My guess is that it'll still be U.S. only, so I don't really care.
This is what you do:
1) go to http://www.youku.com/ (Chinese version of Youtube)
2) Type in the name of the movie you want to see (in some cases you might need to look up the Chinese name of the film. Just use Google: " Chinese")
3) Watch movie in decent quality on the spot without 600+ meg download.
Some are really great quality DVD rips (more and more), other not so great quality. However, if you are looking to quickly watch a movie you don't already have on hand... it is a great alternative!
Shit... forgot to say the movies are free
Hasn't youku been blocking countries outside of china for months now?
Their servers are slow to access from outside of China so the videos don't always work great but I don't think they've ever blocked access to anybody.
Oh, apparently they block western copyrighted stuff like movies if you're not in China but for regular legitimate videos they're not blocked anywhere.
Cool. Anything to move this market forward honestly. More competition good.
I don't rent DVDs at all anymore. I watch what is available on my Apple TV or Amazon's VOD via a Tivo HD. If it isn't available there I DON'T WATCH IT. Despite the fact that content available is still way less than stellar.
I'm personally not interested in watching movies online on a laptop very often, so this needs to be tied to SOME kind of STB, for example Tivo, Roku, something. And no, I'm not going to buy a new TV to get this, get real.
But if this increases the distribution and thus the content available for online streaming/download, the more the better.
Lots of tv's now have youtube on them through the internet. Of course they suck cuz you have to use your remote to type, but if you could get movies right on your tv, then it would be just like amazon VOD.
Yeah, the question is going to be whether those TVs for example will support the DRM youtube will have to put on these rentals to get the content they require. My guess would be *no*.
What's the point when Comcast is capping residential at 250gb on Oct 1st?
October 1st...of 2008...
Don't get me wrong; I think data caps suck. But isn't 250gb more than enough for the average movie watcher?
Dude! I'm capped at 60GB. I manage to get by.
@DanielT I was like, "wtf is this Daniel dick talking about?" And then I searched Engadget and saw the article my friend linked me to yesterday was Aug 31st, 2008. Ooooh *shakes fist*
@Henzapper Well, considering I live with two other guys than myself who all watch tv and movies online not to mention gaming it can eat some bandwidth. Especially when you're streaming HD media.
Anyways, my original comment is irrelevant because I thought it was 2009 but it was 2008 and obviously Comcast didn't stick true to their plans(probably after the Time Warner fiasco). I've definitely been over the 250gb limit like every month since Oct 1st 2008 and Comcast has never complained.
250GB?? hell Watching 3 shows a day on Netlfix would eat that up....I sat down and watched part of Season 6 of N.C.I.S and managed to get 10 episodes in and I hit like 12GB
How would even watching 3 shows a day eat that up? At a gig an episode that's only 90 gigs a month. I'm guessing you were streaming in HD as well since I get much lower traffic numbers for SD streaming.
But yes data caps suck big time.
Apple TV and XBox Live use about 5Mbps for "HD" (720p) movie streaming. At 5Mbps you use about 2G Bytes per hour. So 250GB would be about 125 hours, or 4 hours per day, assuming you do nothing else. Real HD, at 1080i, for example the XL format Vudu supports, would likely be double that.
Subtract some software downloads, internet backup overhead, etc and its certainly imaginable that you could hit the 250Gb cap if you watch a lot of HD video on the net (e.g. don't have a cable TV at all say).
You are all complaining about being capped at 250GB. I am capped at 5GB. And that is a good, expensive plan. Several of my friends still live on dial-up.
60gig, 250gig....sheesh
Over here in kangaroo land we get caps of 5 or maybe a whole glorious 10gig a month and you have to sign up your first born.
People complaining about 60gig, grumble, moan, bitch
Think about:
Devices left and right are putting in youtube support. They are already building the ground work. Now, if you want to watch pay content, you could select the movie or show and just watch it.
Tsk tsk tsk. You engadget photoshopers cheated this post..
Do I get a prize for know this is the opening scene of George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead "?
Not when it says night of the living dead and clearly shows it's in the beginning of the movie. Better luck next time.
They're coming to get you, Barbara...
Wow, fail of the day...
I still think $3.99 is too much. Even on my Dish Network, I never buy the Pay per view stuff. I think they would sell more if they charged $0.99. I wouldnt think twice about buying a movie to watch for 1 day for $0.99, but $3.99, I know I wouldn't buy it.
Just my 2 cents.
exactly. anything more than 99 cents I wouldn't bother. I can go to the supermarket or walmart and get a movie out of the redbox for 99 cents and not worry about hitting bandwidth issues or caps.
Hooray for competition.
Realistically though, I don't see youtube taking my buisness away from netflix. For the price of two of those rentals a month I get unlimited streaming and one dvd/blu-ray out at a time. That and while youtube is a fantastic player for short clips and music videos, for watching a full length film the quality leaves something to be desired.
Today rental movies, tomorrow everything.
Google needs to go bankrupt along with Apple, Chapter 7 bankruptcy, or whatever Chapter that insures they never come back.
Why, because they've been able to provide fantastic products to consumers without charging anything year after year? Because they've pushed for progress and innovation in every area they can get their hands on?
And apple? If apple was gone, Microsoft would have no substantial competition, and would produce products not as good and rip us off even more because they would be the only ones providing that product, much more, they've forced companies like microsoft to push the envelope with the Zune HD, and companies like Palm to produce much better phones like the Pre (Or googles G1)
No company should be forced into bankruptcy unless their business is not working. If you take away those companies or any of their competitors it means less competition and worse products for more money.
I'm.. buffering
not going... buffering
to pay for... buffering
anything... buffering
from youtu...
The problem probably has more to do with your connection that youtube.
Cool, but you can get 'Night of the Living Dead' for free. Blu-Ray quality even...
http://www.archive.org/details/Night.Of.The.Living.Dead_1080p
So people know. (And yes, it's legal)
$3/movie is too much. Make it $1 to compete with Redbox or give me a subscription service like Netflix and then I'd be happy.
For real... YouTube needs to compete with a) Redbox's price or b) Netflix's subscription. Then again... I already pay for Netflix... so I'd rather see them get more titles.
Paying $3 for a Youtube rental movie is crazy since Google is the king of ad-based free stuff...
I agree. Since embracing the Redbox Revolution, I lowered my Netflix to one movie-unlimited streaming, took off the blu-ray charge (Redbox has a few blurays at the same $1 price) and save a few bucks a month :) I never could see the whole online-rental thing (Amazon VOD, etc) as a viable product with Redbox available so easily, unless you aren't located near one.
They have to support subtitles or closed caption. Netflix haven't start that yet. Otherwise, not worth to watch their on daemon movies.
HAHA thats SOOO true lawyer bird but every time i see your posts i think im about to get prosecuted by a clown!!!!!
Something like this is what Palm would want. Youtube plays fine on the Pre. 8gb isn't much space for movies anyways.
Youtube doesn't work on low-res, HD movies? I won't blow my $4 to see if it works...
Aren't movies on the computer meant to be free?