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Sony Pictures in Talks With YouTube
CNet is reporting that Sony Pictures may be in talks with YouTube to license full length movies to the video sharing site. Set to post nearly a half a billion dollars in losses this year, YouTube could certainly use some juice to combat sites like NBC-owned Hulu which already has an array of movies for streaming. "Details about what a final agreement could look like are sparse, but any partnership between the two powerhouses would likely benefit both. Representatives from both companies declined to comment. Word of the negotiations comes a week after Disney announced it had licensed short-form content to YouTube. Those clips will come from a range of Disney brands, including ABC and ESPN. For YouTube, obtaining short-form clips from Disney is an important step but still doesn't provide what YouTube needs most."
...will make the most mediocre offerings on Netflix instant viewing seem absolutely stellar by comparison.
>>>Set to post nearly a half a billion dollars in losses this year
Youtube is the most-popular video site. It should be making hand-over-fist in dollars. How can this be?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Who said Sony was evil?
stage6 all over again?
I welcome it!
Revenue? A business model?
I just had a look at Hulu and got this:
Google combating who? The only competition is torrent.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
Gee, why doesn't Sony Pictures create their own site and offer their movies for download ... preferably in h264+vorbis?
Am I the only one who hates watching stamp-sized movies in flash? Or even if it's like 720p, flash needs 100% CPU and doesn't even have vsync!
I can't for the life of me understand how people could watch movies on youtube.
Let's be clear. YouTube isn't set to post anything, let alone a loss. Google as a whole will post huge profits again, albeit below last year, and that will be that.
"would likely benefit both"
would it benefit the users though? or will this turn youtube into a paid service and EVERYONE will lose?
Sony Playstation 3 firmware upgrade added the link-in to Youtube during the last upgrade. Anyone who DIDN'T see this coming was blind.
Sony and it's empire vs. Microsoft and Disney and ABC on the other. Paramount is on the Hulu/Xbox side, owning NBC which really started moving so much of its stuff to Hulu, all the SNL episodes and lots of its archive stuff.
This fight will expand to be a USA vs. the world thing. If I am over at Google/Youtube my strategy is to take licensing outside the states. Get international content exclusive to Youtube with the Playstation tie in. Get broadband deals done with the major providers in Europe. Isolate the Hulu guys to providing US content only.
Content is king, and it's like suddenly everyone realized the general public couldn't do it. There are only so many videos of your guild's Epic WoW raid or cats flushing toilets that will hold an ad revenue stream in place.
Sony can really break the Hulu grip if they eschew any embedded commercials in the video streams. Grab Fox Studios and maybe Lionsgate, get New Line Cinema and it's game over.
Should be interesting...
Getting pretty sick of hearing these types of stories...Maybe the internet needs a bailout? I mean afterall, if a company posts losses, that must mean they're in trouble right? It can't possibly mean anything else like a shifting interest or more competition or declining quality offerings...it's always too big to fail.
I really hope youtube tanks but only after Sony buys it. Then I hope Radioshack buys Sony, then tanks and closes. Then Ruphert Murdoch will buy everyones trash, then he'll tank, then we'll be back to the way it was...when lemonade stands dominated the great plains and there were bowls of hard candy at every crosswalk.....zzzzZZ.
I think he needs to be filled with the content more than they do
So soon it will be possible to watch blocky, smeary versions of all the Spider-Man films in a web browser. Awesome!
For YouTube, obtaining short-form clips from Disney is an important step but still doesn't provide what YouTube needs most.
Porn.
Isn't Sony being consumer friendly one of the signs of the coming apocalypse? I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to start hoarding food and weapons.
When I read the title, I thought Sony was approaching YouTube to create a full length movie. Putting Sony's content on YouTube makes a bit more sense than YouTube's content on Sony.
Vimeo's guidelines are even stricter than YouTube's. You can't upload public domain videos, and you can't upload videos on behalf of an author who is someone else. You can't upload videos to promote your business. You can't upload videos of video games at all because you aren't the game's author.
They have my IP address. I'm just waiting for the bill.
Round'n'Round.
Love will find a way just give it time.
-Anonymous lurking attorney.
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It's going to be a 320x240 version of HD, with the word HD in a small button in the lower right. When you click it, it expands to 400x300, wow!
All the movies transferred to Goo Ray are going to be defocused, underexposed, shaken, & the audio muffled for the Goo Tube look you've come to expect.
... except that SPE is _already_ distributing stuff via Hulu. (i.e. crackle.com content)
I also prophesise that YouTube/Google will not understand broadcast timecodes and will require everything in simple seconds, to two decimal places. Why do they need timecodes? To know where to insert the advertising of course. Will users be able to skip the advertising mid-roll? Not a chance. And what problems will timecodes in seconds, with two decimal places, create? I believe we'll see adverts inserted at the incorrect places as different frame rates between PAL, NTSC and film content are not taken into account, or ad breaks that are placed in content at obvious points like fades/transitions/mixes (whatever you'd like to call them) will be a few frames incorrect, so the transition will happen slightly before or after the ad break.
I also predict that YouTube won't really understand about TV resolution and will request everything at 640x480 frame size, rather than say 720x576 for PAL. I predict they may also have problems dealing with Full Height Anamorphic content, but of course that's just a hunch.
Don't ask me how I know, just looking into my crystal ball you understand.......
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This has got to be a real kick in the nads for crackle.com (formerly grouper.com).