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Google Video Store Announced

Posted by Zonk on from the when-will-they-be-unveiled-as-the-illuminati dept.

acid06 writes "Engadget and BusinessWeek covers Larry Page's talk at CES regarding the much anticipated Google Video Store. The rumours proved to be true and they're really going online with CBS to sell commercial-free episodes of their series. Deals with NBA, Sony BMG and Greencine.com were also announced." From the BusinessWeek article: "The video providers have the option of offering content on a download-to-own or download-to-rent basis. In a sign that content owners will likely pursue different approaches through Google Video, the National Basketball Association will sell broadcasts of its games one day after the event for $3.95. Meanwhile, public television staple Charlie Rose will post his interviews the day after a broadcast, allowing a free streaming for the first 24 hours then making it downloadable afterward for 99 cents each. Meanwhile, CBS is selling episodes of its popular 'CSI' and 'Survivor' series at the standard iTunes price of $1.99 per download."

15 of 271 comments (clear)

  1. Availibility by heavy+snowfall · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Will this be availible outside of the US too?

    I hope so, a lot of the good shows never make it over here while a most of the run of the mill sitcoms do.. :/

  2. talk about a head start... by User+956 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So Apple, and now google, have video offerings. Video blogs are popping up all over.... and microsoft is just getting around to launching a music store (that, by the way, isn't even open yet).

    ] I realize that Microsoft expects to be able to dominate by competing brutally on price, and by leveraging the xbox platform, but how much of a head start are they going to give Google?

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
  3. Re:What about Google Pack? by Kickboy12 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The Google Video Player (currently only available through Google Pack) is really slick. The Google Pack itself is slick. Very nicely made.

    Go Google!

    --
    google.slashdot
  4. beyond American shores? by nighty5 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There is a whole world out there, and I just hope that Google comes to the party and starts selling videos beyond American shores .

    We're dying out here in Australia, our local content providers suck arse. They swabble over stations, muck about the times, cut shows mid season, cancel whole seasons, are usually up to 18 months behind the US in delivery. Its beyond contempt.

    We are entering a brave new world in video delivery content, finally, a medium that puts the consumer in charge of the loungeroom. Lets only hope that offshore countries are also in for the ride.

    1. Re:beyond American shores? by jZnat · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This is where "pirated" video content shows its most major benefits over the typical delivery medium chosen by the gods: international distribution. These content providers are still stuck in the twentieth century blindly assuming that there is no way to physically deliver content to all parts of the globe simultaneously. That may have been true a few years ago, but there has been this new-fangled "Internet" becoming more and more popular, and many have already found the low cost and ease of publishing anything online is definitely a Good Thing.

      Region blocking is an artificial barrier created to keep content producers within their old, outdated business model. It may have been something that used to work, but now there's no excuse for content providers to restrict their content to certain parts of the globe when one can easily publish it on the internet. Which would you rather have: wait for a new DVD release to come to your country after a few months of its original publishing in its home country, then get a DRM'd copy of the media with forced advertisements that doesn't allow itself to be played in any DVD player but ones that respect its draconian DRM measures (not to mention outrageous costs in some cases), OR would you rather acquire a full digital copy of the content you want (for free even, but if the content providers used this method, people would pay for it) at your convenience as soon as it is initially released, also allowing you to use your digital copy of the media however you wish (e.g. burn it to a DVD or VCD, stream it using a media center type of computer). The obvious answer would be to follow the high seas as you get a far better deal (even if you paid the same for pirated content as you would for the original content), yet the copyright holders have absolutely no idea on how this works. Even Apple continues to blatantly embrace the old distribution methods with a bit of marketing to at least give people a taste of what the superior business model can be like.

      --
      'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
  5. I just hope by TubeSteak · · Score: 2, Interesting

    that they're not going to be in Flash Video (FLV) format

    You can download it off video.google.com, but it's a pain

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  6. Re:Welcome... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 3, Interesting
    If you normally watch 5 or 6 shows with any regularity, over a full 22 episode season, that comes out to 264 bucks a year. How much are you paying for cable yearly?

    $600 per year for cable. However I watch a lot more than just 5 or 6 shows. The cost per show has to drop significantly before this would be attractive for me, especially considering the poor video quality compared to my TV.

  7. So, what about... by rpdillon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...Linux support?

    For a company that is internet based and uses Linux heavily on the backend, I'm kind of surprised they don't support Linux more in their product lines to give back something to the community that helped them start up.

    I browsed through pack.google.com but didn't see any mention of a Linux offering now or in the future. I'd love to see Google Earth and Google Desktop on Linux, not to mention the video stuff.

    Anyone heard anything about this?

    1. Re:So, what about... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      (posting anonymously for job safety)

      Linux support is coming. I can almost promise it. Expect to see Picasa and Earth at some point in the reasonably near future. The video store should go cross platform at some point too.

  8. Too expensive by an order of magnitude by Jherek+Carnelian · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Most tv shows have a budget under a couple of million per episode. Most tv shows do not make a profit until they hit syndication, which usually requires around 100 episodes in the can.

    TV show downloads have the potential to make first run TV shows profitable up front, no need for syndication. But pricing levels of $1 or $2 per show for non-niche shows are beyond reasonable.

    Take a look at "Lost," one of the most expensive shows on TV today, they've been doing around 20M viewers per episode in the USA alone. If only 10% of those viewers go to pay-for-download that's $4M per episiode, which is already turning a profit never mind the commercial fees for the remaining 18M viewers still watching it over the air with commercials. At 20% of the audience or just 4M viewers, the revenue becomes $8M which is probably significantly more profitable than any show ever in the history of US broadcasting.

    Thus these big-name, big-budget shows should tend to be priced closer to 20cents per episode if there was real competition. Similarly, the shows with smaller audiences often have much smaller budgets (for example an episode of anime usually costs $200K-$300K to produce) and should still be inline with pricing in the 15-30 cents/episode range.

    Don't even get me started on video quality - itunes video is far too low resolution, I believe a pseudo-HD resolution of around 960x540 ought to be an absolute minimum considering that MPEG4/AVC1/H264 can do that reasonably well in about 500MB.

    1. Re:Too expensive by an order of magnitude by timeOday · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I was going to say you need to factor in transfer costs, but actually they're very low.

      At serverbeach you can get 2TB down the wire for $119. That's only $0.03 for each 500MB program. And I didn't even shop around.

  9. Re:Welcome... by msobkow · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...poor video quality compared to my TV.

    That depends entirely on the technology being used. DiVX at 5-700MB/hour produces some damned fine video.

    And you'd probably be rather annoyed to realize that the digital feeds your cable provider distributes are only a higher bit rate because most of the feeds are still using older MPEG formats instead of MPEG4.

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  10. Re:Welcome... by timeOday · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Did they actually announce a resolution of 320x240? That would be very disappointing.

  11. Re:Welcome... by Xugumad · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Here's the thing... I'm much more interested in being able to get these shows on some sort of watch twice DRM. I don't tend to watch TV shows more than once anyway, so outright buying most of them is a waste of money for me. I want the DRM to give me the ability to watch it twice so that if there's a power cut the first time through, or there's something I want to go back and check, it's not an issue, and I don't want to be time limited either (the other alternative here).

    In the meantime, I rent DVDs from Amazon.co.uk, getting 6 DVDs/month for around $16. That's $190 for 12 different seasons over the year, give or take a bit...

  12. Re:What about Google Pack? by Viceice · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm not even going to touch that with a 50 ft pole... it contains Norton "Fuck up your PC while leeching you dry" Anti Virus.

    WTF Google? I'd expect like AVG in there.

    --
    Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.