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YouTube Adds Full-Length Television Shows

Posted by timothy on from the what-about-magnum-pi-and-square-pegs? dept.

thefickler writes "YouTube has moved to put full-length television shows on its site for the first time. Historically, YouTube has hosted a bewildering and attractive variety of video clips, the vast majority of which have been under ten minutes in length. YouTube has announced that it had finalized a deal with CBS to offer shows such as Star Trek, MacGyver, Beverly Hills 90210, and The Young and the Restless. I can't wait to watch The Young and the Restless!"

14 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. As a non-american... by Tx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...Hulu sucks, since it won't stream outside the USA. No mention in the article as to whether YouTube will add regional restrictions on these full-length shows, but let's hope they can convince the studios otherwise. If not, well, bittorrent works just fine.

    --
    Oh no... it's the future.
    1. Re:As a non-american... by FireFury03 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Does anyone seriously want to watch full length TV shows in a tiny box in their browser in crumby YouTube quality?!

      --
      http://blog.nexusuk.org
    2. Re:As a non-american... by FireFury03 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Youtube offer better-than-TV resolution. Check out their high-quality option, which you can view full screen.

      If you say so... I have yet to see a YouTube video encoded anywhere close to 768x576 (SDTV resolution), and resolution aside, they don't come close to broadcast quality from the encoding point of view either.

      In an era when people are interested in HDTV (1920x1080), making a big deal about a crappy sub-SDTV streaming service seems a bit nuts.

      (Note: I'm not one who believes in bothering with HDTV for most stuff - maybe nature programmes, etc, but certainly not worthwhile for anything with a story - but I do draw the line at watching significant amounts of YouTube quality TV).

      --
      http://blog.nexusuk.org
    3. Re:As a non-american... by EvilMonkeySlayer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Don't be so obtuse.

      If you haven't noticed the BBC isn't ad sponsored, it's UK license fee paid. How are they meant to cover the costs of international streaming? Youtube does streaming of their video internationally paid for by advertising with a well built back-end that can handle it.

      Comparing the BBC's iPlayer license fee paid service to the ad-sponsored Youtube is like comparing Apples and Oranges.

    4. Re:As a non-american... by FireFury03 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Which is why I watch YouTube on my TV. I installed a GreaseMonkey Script that will send the URL of a YouTube video to Xbox Media Center. After a little bit of caching, the movie plays.

      So you get to watch it on your TV in crappy YouTube quality instead... great...

      --
      http://blog.nexusuk.org
  2. Hulu vs. The World by junglee_iitk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The new services also put YouTube head to head with Hulu, competing directly for the full-length television show viewer. Hulu currently has more of this sort of content than does YouTube, but YouTube has the lionâ(TM)s share of the Web video audience. It is estimated that YouTube has 100 times the viewers that Hulu has.

    It might have to done something with the fact that Hulu's "video library can only be streamed within the United States".

    Some people go to great lengths to put their feet over an axe, just to see if it hurts or not.

  3. Region-locking is an abomination. by EWAdams · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's called the WORLD WIDE Web, assholes.

    --
    I piss off bigots.
    1. Re:Region-locking is an abomination. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So if they used a medium of delivery beyond HTTP, you'd be happy with it? Or would it just ruin your witty one-liner?

      Seriously, just because licensing agreements haven't yet caught up with the global nature of the Internet doesn't mean we should disparage the positive steps being made in the direction of having content available on the Internet AT ALL.

    2. Re:Region-locking is an abomination. by electrictroy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes this is the WWW, except that the American owners don't want non-americans looking at A-Team, McGuyver, et cetera. They want to sell those programs to Japanese stations for reruns, or on DVD directly to European citizens, and thereby maximize profit. If they gave this stuff for free via the web, they'd be killing their non-american market.

      Everything makes sense if you just follow the dollar to its source and assume the owner is greedy.

      --
      The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
  4. CBS only? by themightythor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The shows and their original networks:

    Star Trek: NBC
    MacGyver: ABC
    BH 90210: Fox
    Y & R: CBS

    I guess I don't understand how these things work...

    1. Re:CBS only? by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Star Trek: Paramount
      MacGyver: Paramount
      DH 90210: Paramount
      Y & R: CBS

      Paramount is now known as CBS Corporation. The Wiki has more info. Just because a show airs on one station doesn't mean that station owns the rights to that show. Although it does look like Paramount/CBS has had a change of heart: In February 2007, Viacom sent upwards of 100,000 DMCA takedown notices to the video-sharing site YouTube, alleging large-scale copyright infringement. Of the 100,000, approximately 60â"70 non-infringing videos were erroneously removed under the auspices of copyright infringement.[3]

      On March 13, 2007, Viacom filed a US$1 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube alleging massive copyright infringement, alleging that users frequently uploaded copyrighted material to YouTubeâ"enough to cause a hit in revenue for Viacom and a gain in advertisement revenue for YouTube.[4]

      The complaint contends that almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacomâ(TM)s programming have been available on YouTube and that these clips had collectively been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.

  5. Is this the end of reruns? by zakezuke · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Seriously. One of the things I hate about watching TV is the fact that you have to depend on a station to carry a show, and play it, all of it. It's fine when it hits the rerun zone, but there is no real assurance they will play it totally and in the intended order. So, much of my 20th century TV watching was watching the repeats waiting for what I didn't see to come around.

    The first stuff I started to see was on AOL's in2tv. They screwed up Rocky and Bullwinkle, one of "those" series where order and completeness matters, not so much that they don't carry a season but they broke up their "show" into their various little shows. Now we have Veoh and Hulu, and the quality of both is pretty good.

    So it makes me wonder, now that these things exist, sites that carry series that have little to no commercial value, what point is there to 100+ channels? Seriously it's reached the point that I should actually ditch the cable since all of my TV needs save the local news are covered online. Even cartoon network.

    --
    There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
  6. Key word missing? by BigBadBus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think the word "legally" is missing in the write-up. Episodes of some TV shows have been available for quite a while now; I watched an episode of Star Trek Voyager I had missed on YouTube many months ago.

    --
    My web domain.
  7. Re:Still using Flash by aztracker1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Okay, so dump a system that 98% of the people browsing the internet have support for, in favor of something people have to jump through hoops for?

    Given, I would like to see the inclusion of h.264 in Flash as a supported format for video. VC-1 would work as well (even if it is from MS). I wouldn't expect to see Theora or the like supported on YouTube any time soon, unless it is as widely available as flash is. Flash is a PITA on x64 Linux, I am well aware of this, however, from a business standpoint your suggestion makes no sense.

    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info