Google Video Store Announced

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."

Comments

What about Google Pack?

[wordisms]

Have you seen this?

http://pack.google.com/

Info here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

Busy day for Google.

Re:What about Google Pack?

[Kickboy12]

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

Go Google!

Re:What about Google Pack?

[teslatug]

Suggestions for inclusion are being taken here.

Re:What about Google Pack?

[Anonymous Coward]

Info here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

Can people please stop linking to the front page of weblogs? It makes the link useless after a day or two, when the next article is posted on the weblog. See that link that says "Permalink"? It's a fundamental part of weblogs. That's what you link to. It stops linkrot.

Re:What about Google Pack?

[Viceice]

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.

Re:What about Google Pack?

[I(rispee_I(reme]

For those of you who don't know, the "Google Video Player" is apparently a browser plugin based on the VLC media player.

Re:What about Google Pack?

[typobox43]

Trillian is part of the Pack, just not installed by default. Take a look at this page.

Availibility

[heavy snowfall]

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.. :/

Re:Availibility

[Pollardito]

this BBC article addresses this just a little :

Details about the service outside the US are sketchy. Mr Page said he expected different content to be available in different parts of the world, depending on rights issues. "The rights for video are really complicated so generally you are going to see video that is licensed for particular countries," he said.

Now we know

[LiquidCoooled]

We now know the answer to the previous slash article:

If DVD Is Dead, What's Next?

google Video store!

talk about a head start...

[User 956]

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?

Re:talk about a head start...

[Ohreally_factor]

Whaddaya want from me?

Re:talk about a head start...

[asylumx]

From your link: "...MTV Networks' forthcoming digital music service called URGE."

I think that pretty specifically says who is responsible for content and overall design. MS is just coding the damn thing.

You really should read the first sentence of the article you are using to attack somebody...

Welcome...

[Spytap]

Welcome to the REAL cable a-la-carte, where I don't even need a connection to watch my favorite shows, just download them for 2 bucks a pop. 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?

Re:Welcome...

[QuietLagoon]

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.

Re:Welcome...

[prockcore]

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?

Definitely more than that, but I also have about 15 shows in my TiVo Season Pass list. Not to mention all the little shows on History Channel and Discovery that I watch randomly.

I also get them from the cable company at 720x480, not 320x240.

It's a far better deal to buy those shows on DVD anyway.. it's cheaper, you get extras like behind the scenes and commentary, and it's better resolution.

Re:Welcome...

[msobkow]

...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.

Re:Welcome...

[timeOday]

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

Re:Welcome...

[msobkow]

Err, you miss the point.

Cable providers get the majority of their feeds via digital satellite nowadays, not analogue. They run it through hardware that reduces the MPEG blocking artifacts and blast it down their analogue pipes. In some cases, the digital-analogue conversions are done rather close to your house with a digital main trunk.

Of course the average consumer doesn't realize that, so they make arguments like yours, thinking it's similar to the old vinyl vs. CD argument. I remember vinyl audiophiles insisting their records sounded better than CDs even for groups that were using CD-rate digital mastering back in the '80s. They simply refused to accept that the "improvement" was signal smoothing that is now done in the digital domain by high-end audio players.

Re:Welcome...

[Xugumad]

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...

Don't be ridiculous.

[Anonymous Coward]

People won't pay for things unless they have to, irrelavant of how one person may have higher moral standards, there are at least 100 for that one who think that, hell, people shouldn't have to pay for music unless they really like it.

I, personally, think that MP3 file-sharing should be legalized as a type of on-demand radio. Similar to radio or TV, people can browse and listen to the stuff they like, and if they really like it they can go out and buy CDs or Box Sets of their shows.

This is how it appears to me from a consumer standpoint, from the business standpoint, the plausibility of this happening is very small.

It's not like piracy is going to bankrupt any of these places anyways.

Oh yeah, for TV, people shouldn't have to pay per episode. I pay about as much for one of these episodes as I do for one entire channel on Satellite.

It's like charging 99 cents per article in a magazine. It doesn't work. Subscription based services are the way to go for this one.

beyond American shores?

[nighty5]

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.

Re:beyond American shores?

[jZnat]

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.

I just hope

[TubeSteak]

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

Resolution?

[WatertonMan]

It isn't clear what the resolution is. The big problem with iTMS is that their resolution sucks. I can't imagine paying for those videos.

I have an uneasy feel about this

[Psionicist]

TFA doesn't say anything about DRM on the videos you can buy. I quote:

ne of the more interesting aspects of the Video Store, however, is the fact that they're also making their non-copy-protected content available for download DRM-free encoded for the iPod and PSP (though there's also no word on what it is we're going to have to deal with in terms of DRM on purchased Google Video content).

According to Wall Street Journal ( http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB11364381456 4838423-wGEG4V5bN3Q0Pm7bvt0ceWXfYjQ_20060112.html? mod=blogs ):

Some details of Google's online video service remain unclear, such as how much content owners might charge consumers to download their videos. Google last year had said it planned to allow content owners to charge for videos, but it hadn't activated that feature. Interest in delivering video over the Internet has surged since October, when Apple began offering downloads of popular TV shows through a partnership with Walt Disney Co. Google has developed its own digital-rights-management software to protect downloaded videos from piracy.

So Google is now creating their own DRM. And they have a partnership with Walt Disney. Anyone else feel a conflicting interest here? Yeah, business is business, but I really liked the "do no evil"-mantra. At least I liked Googles _taste_. Buying AOL of all companies AND creating DRM is not what I'd expect from Google.

On the other hand, Apple did it, and most people still like Apple. It's a sad world when the best we can do is hope for the lesser of all evils to win...

Re:I have an uneasy feel about this

[marsonist]

Perhaps you should re-read that part about Disney again, because your quote is simply refering to Apple's deal... It says nothing about Google and Disney.

While I do see Google's DRMed videos as a step in the wrong direction, I don't think you will find any studios willing to sell there works without it. Unfortunately content restrictions are the wave of the future. Economic Darwinism will find the closest balance between the restrictions the studios feel will earn them the most money, and the amount of BS consumers are willing to put up with.

We got a taste if that with DVDs and most people didn't care... now it's time for round two. Without a strengthening of the public domain and fair use portions of copyright laws this will be a quick battle with a grim end.

So, what about...

[rpdillon]

...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?

Re:So, what about...

[ballwall]

I think it's in Google's best interest to ween (sp?) people off of windows kind of like how they're doing with firefox.

If there's anything Microsoft is good at it's catching up. They don't even have to be better, just good enough because they can just toss whatever it is on top of windows. (Internet explorer, media player, etc). All of a sudden there's no significant reason to seek out a solution. [Normal] Users don't go looking for browsers and video players, if they click a link at it works they're happy.

So, from Google's perspective, MS is in a strong position to compete, even if they're late to the game. If Google doesn't take steps to lessen the OS advantage MS can still win with an inferior product.

Or, I could be wrong and Google has a name that will keep it on top (though does anyone know if the last xerox machine they used was a xerox?)

Re:Google Pack Is Insecure

[Anonymous Coward]

They use an active x/firefox plugin, and don't tell you about it. (And funnily enough, MS is going to a stand alone windows update).

http://pack.google.com/common_installer.js

they dont put it in the firefox directory either... its in the google updater directory. Granted, it doesnt do much work, but adding another 50K visual studio plugin to firefox is not good. the idea is good though, one stop updating of internet facing apps. bad implementation. also, the programs google pack installs STILL do their own update checks which is annoying. in fact, after installing google earth via google updater I ran it and it said there was an update available :)

Too expensive by an order of magnitude

[Jherek Carnelian]

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.

Re:Too expensive by an order of magnitude

[timeOday]

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.

Re:Inevitable

[222]

Wow, I actually RTFA.

"Besides programming from CBS, the NBA and Charlie Rose, the list of other video material that will be sold through Google includes: old episodes from "I Love Lucy," "The Twilight Zone," and "The Brady Bunch;" music videos from Sony BMG; and historic video from Getty Images."
There is a bit of fuss over a new form of DRM, but It certainly isn't mandatory on the distributors end.

I'm so happy about the twilight zone episodes I dont know what to think!~

Variable pricing makes sense

[geekee]

"Surprised no one is complaining about the variable pricing. Now the greedy music/movie industry can rip us off with variable pricing and they now have a competitor to threaten Apple with. Hope things don't go that way!"

Variable pricing makes sense. Why should a company like Apple or Google have the power to decide what a video or a song is worth? The content provider owns the material. That person has the exclusive right to charge what he thinks a song or video is worth. The ditributor only has the right to tack on his fee in addition to the content cost. Apple claiming that every song is worth $0.99 is the essentially price fixing. They're leveraging their monopoly in the online music distribution market to dictate the value of songs they didn't even create.

Re:Variable pricing makes sense

[nickscalise]

Variable pricing makes sense. Why should a company like Apple or Google have the power to decide what a video or a song is worth? The content provider owns the material.

Should a car dealer not be able to set the price of the cars they are selling? Should a grocery store not be able to set the price of the meat they are selling? Shouldn't any merchant be able to set the price of the items they are selling?

Google and Apple are merchants. Merchants should be able to set the price of the items they are selling.

Re:Variable pricing makes sense

[triplej]

Variable pricing makes sense. Why should a company like Sony BMG or Universal Polygram have the power to decide what a video or a song is worth? The performing artist owns the material. That performing artist has the exclusive right to charge what he thinks a song or video is worth. The music label only has the right to tack on his fee in addition to the content cost. MPAA members claiming that every cd is worth $15.99 is the essentially price fixing. They're leveraging their monopoly in the physical media music distribution market to dictate the value of songs they didn't even create.

Shovelware

[GrBear]

Granted it's free and all (well, for 6 months anyways), still Norton Anti-Virus is practically the WORST anti-virus software on the market (corporately I had to replace it with AVG because Norton missed WAY too many viruses that even the free version of AVG found on 'NAV protected' computers). Detection of spyware, ditto goes for Ad-Aware. Both were fine products in their day, but both have been religated to collecting dust on a shelf as they fail miserably to meet current computing needs.

Back in the day, we called these sort of packages 'shovelware'.. shovel as much useless crap to make it seem more valuable. The only difference with this is the price tag is non-existant.

NBA

[Paradise Pete]

National Basketball Association will sell broadcasts of its games one day after the event for $3.95.

Day-old basketball for four bucks. Oh yeah, that'll be a million-seller.

Re:Google needs to slow down

[generic-man]

Okay, Mister Sarcasmpants. Screw Google. Which search engine actually serves valid HTML pages to me?

(Give up? It's MSN! MSN's search page, search.msn.com, is valid HTML! The results pages are too. Time for you to switch.)

Well, I guess this doesn't matter as much anymore

[radiotyler]

It seems odd that just one post ago we were debating the future of digital media, and now we're talking about downloading TV shows from the internet, and will then have the ability to burn them to DVD.

So, who still cares about Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD? I know that what little inkling of opinion I had before doesn't really seem to matter anymore. As long as I have the source programming that I've downloaded and paid for, I can put it on whatever media I want to - or don't want to. Guess I'll have to build my own media PC now... instead of buying a new HD / Blu-Ray player. I'm very ok with that.

Re:"... Charlie Rose will post his interviews..."

[nns6561]

For those of you reading this in real time, don't miss tonight's show. He's doing a silicon valley episode.

Google is shipping DRM?

[Anthony Liguori]

Google ships DRM.

DRM is evil.

Therefore Google is doing evil.

Liars.

Avast is a good virus program and it's free

[aplusjimages]

I would suggest Avast. It's free for home use. All updates are free. Too many people stop paying for the updates on popular programs like Norton, so it renders the software almost pointless.

Re:Avast is a good virus program and it's free

[generic-man]

http://free.grisoft.com/

They still offer and support the free version.

Re:Avast is a good virus program and it's free

[generic-man]

Avast! looks horrible. Just like Winamp, iTunes, Windows Media Player, and all so-called "media" applications, the Avast! developers decided to make a window look like something other than a window. What the hell does an anti-virus program need an eject button for? Can I click on "Scan local drives," etc., or do I have to click on the options themselves? In the Quick Scan drawer, which is selected -- 1 or 2? How do I choose another option in that drawer or close it?

AVG may be unimpressive visually, but almost all the time I simply see a tray icon. The rest of the time it looks like a Windows application, albeit one developed by people who spent a little too much time using Lotus Notes.

I don't.

[acid06]

If anyone can possibly make a good and fair DRM system, it's Google.

I don't know if they'll end up screwing this one up and end up just playing along the content providers game but there's a chance that a new breed of fair DRM will emerge from Google.

I think that the DRM concept isn't necessarily the problem. The problem lies in its current implementations.

Well, at least, most of them.

It comes to me that a very nicely implemented sorta DRM system is Valve's Steam. It actually adds value, IMHO. I don't know its innards but it seems to provide some kind of developer platform which abstracts content loading, so that it can be downloaded on demand. A direct consequence of this is that I don't ever need to worry about losing the game disks of a Steam powered game. I can always download them again. I find this pretty neat.

Re:No, You missed his point

[msobkow]

Hmm. 22 episodes at $2 each works out to $44.

I have a number of DVD box sets that I bought at $35-60/season. Apparently there are consumers who'd consider $2/ep an acceptable price if you get to keep the episode and play it on any machine you want.

Re:No, You missed his point

[MBGMorden]

With DVD's you're getting much higher quality video than most streaming services currently offer, a permanent backup copy of your information, and nice boxart to you onto your video shelf. The DRM on DVD's is also so trivial that it's virtually non-existent. I'm guessing whatever they use on this will be more annoying.

DVD's could simply be seen a more "long term" purchase, whereas if I buy a download copy I probably just want to watch it a few times and delete it (of course, that decision should be mine and not some DRM restriction).

IMHO, pricing it at $0.50-$1.00 depending on the show would be much more reasonable. Online songs would be better off around $0.25.