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Google Video Not Ready for Prime Time?
elfguy writes "Ars Technica has a piece on the Google Video Store, and their opinion is that it seems a little rushed to market. The interface is very bad, with paid and free videos mixed together. While free videos can be viewed in Flash on any platform, their paid DRM'ed videos require a Windows program, and the page tells you the available formats only after you purchase it." From the article: "As I pointed out in my coverage of the keynote, for all of its evangelization of open standards, Google has done an about-face with the video store. Not only are the videos protected by DRM, but Google has gone and rolled its own home-grown solution instead of using one of the current solutions. On one level, that makes sense: Apple doesn't share its DRM, and Microsoft is Google's biggest competition. However, inflicting yet another flavor of DRM on the public goes against the desire of many in Congress and in the consumer electronics industry to see a single, unified standard emerge."
It's not just the fact that it doesn't look pretty.
1- When you buy the video, you are told "requires Windows XP and an Internet connection". You only find out AFTER buying it which format it comes in.
2- When you buy the video, you buy the right to stream it only. If you try to download the video, it will only download a small file and STILL stream the actual video from Google, so you cannot view it offline.
3- Because of the special DRM, there is no way to put paid Google videos on iPod or other mobile devices.
From The Article
Mac and Linux users are still waiting for a version of Google Earth and Google Desktop Search
Google Earth for Mac is already out.
I'm wondering if Google rushed this product out the door because of the timing of CES and because everyone expected them to. Google has carefully chosen places where it wants to compete, with the result that its product releases have mostly been a string of successes.
So we'll see if the article is right or not. We'll see if Google Video takes off. I'm betting it will.
I saw a piece on this the other day, so I checked out the Web site. I'm one of those people who is pretty critical of bad UIs (just ask my co-workers). I don't see any major problems with their Web site UI. It's nothing especially good or bad. I did not have any problem using it. I'm not too keen on the DRM, as it seems to be implemented and it seems a little deceptive if you can't actually download the files for viewing, only stream them. That isn't really buying a video, just subscribing to a service that will stream it for you. It makes it pretty useless for watching shows on your laptop while commuting, or on a drive.
My opinion is the service is technologically too limited to be useful to me, but the UI is just fine.
Use gnash
Most online music stores, including iTunes, post any album sold by CD Baby, unless the artist opts out of digital sales. CD Baby will sell anyone's music -- all you have to do to get on iTunes/Napster, etc., is to send 5 CDRs of your album to CD Baby, and wait for the music stores to update their databases.
I was reading an NBA related blog where someone was speaking about their experience purchasing NBA game videos from Google Video. Apparently, many of the videos are cut off prior to the end of the game, in the 3rd quarter frequently, with NO 4th quarter coverage. This seems to defeat one of the purposes of offering NBA game videos: so the consumer can watch the game and find out who wins. The purchaser contacted Google Video, who told him "sorry, all sales are final." They definitely have a lot of kinks to iron out, one of them being ripping off consumers buying NBA game videos. See here for the blog post I'm speaking about.
This is not the only non-open Google product to date. Pretty much all of Google's portfolio that doesn't come in or out of the main search page is closed-standard. Google Maps is one of the rare recent shining examples of openness, but Maps as a resource in itself was orphaned by Google when it stuffed and devalued it into Google Local.
In the meantime... Google Earth, Picasa, Google Talk, Google Desktop, Google Deskbar, and now Google DRM Video are notoriously limited to commercial platforms and/or tools. So much for Google being the preferred choice of the O/S world.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
There's a feature built right in to make iPod compatible videos. I have no clue where the parent is coming from.
For those witty people who've pointed out it's in Beta and therefore should not be judged too harshly .... NEARLY EVERYTHING BY GOOGLE IS IN BETA.
Google uses the term "Beta" they way regular people use the term "final release, further development will not occur ever".
I think Google News is the oldest service they offer that is STILL IN BETA - from memory it's 6 years old now.
If there's any tweaking on one of their (many) Beta services it's most likely going to be the advertisements tweaked to perform a little better.
Anyway. Google Video (the buying bit anyway) is a joke. I went there with the honest intent to purchase a flick, and couldn't find anything I wanted to see. Where's all the popular movies and tv shows??
Why they even bothered launching without amassing a huge amount of movies and shows (that people would pay money for) is beyond me.
The instructions given for downloading/transferring videos onto PSP are simple at best, and provide no instruction on where they should be placed. As a little background, there are separate locations for original PSP video as well as the AVC format that is allowed by the 2.0 firmware (Both are MP4 format). It's not specified that these are AVC videos, and as such need the new firmware. Furthermore, they must be renamed in a correct format in order to be played on the PSP.
/MP_ROOT/100ANV01/
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Anyone looking for this information, get ready:
PSP videos downloaded from Google Video *are* AVC.
That means:
* you need firmware 2.0 or higher
* files are put in
* name them to follow the MAQ#####.MP4 convention
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Many people keep their firmware at 1.5 in order to play homebrew software, as well as use emulators, etc. Spare me the talk about piracy issues and the like, I have a 1.5 and don't expect to have my cake and eat it, too. I just wish they'd make it clearer what format the video is in, and where it has to go.
FYI, I'm going to post this over at the Google Video group.
I'm not here. This isn't happening.
Bah. The Slashbusted link should be this. Come on, Slashdot. | isn't an invalid character in URL's...
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!