YouTube To Allow Video Rentals

poopdeville writes "Starting Friday, Google and YouTube will allow movie rentals. The first five films available to rent through YouTube will cost $3.99 for a 48-hour viewing period. Movie studios will be able to set their own prices, with rental viewing windows ranging from one to 90 days. YouTube will get an unspecified commission from each rental. Barclays Capital analyst Douglas Anmuch expects YouTube to generate about $700 million in revenue this year, an estimated 55 percent increase from 2009. If YouTube hits that target, it likely will turn profitable, helping to justify the $1.76 billion in stock that Google paid for the site more than three years ago."

Comments

Indie films.

[Cheney]

I hope that this will be a useful distribution and money-maker for Indie films.

Hopefully, it won't be stifled by the big studios.

Re:Indie films.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully, it won't be stifled by the big studios.

If wishes were ponies, I'd make salami.

In other words: yea, right.

Europe?

[s1lverl0rd]

TFA doesn't say anything about where the service will be availible. Will I and my fellow Dutchmen be able to use it?

Re:Europe?

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize PAL is lower framerate but higher resolution...right?

Re:Europe?

[ProppaT]

Most of these films are filmed at 24fps, so I don't see what the issue with this is really.

Re:Europe?

[anss123]

That's too bad. I'd like to see smooth camera panning like you see in video games. Thought it was because they cut frames but if they make the movies that way even bluray is useless.

Re:Europe?

[leamanc]

If only they were streaming from a 35mm projector then. The problem is they are encoded at 29fps for NTSC markets--where most of the movies were made--and then sped up, or frames cut, for PAL.

Re:Europe?

[epp_b]

Are you people kidding?

24fps is the way to have it. 30fps makes movies look like cheap, crappy home videos.

Re:Europe?

[anss123]

24fps is the way to have it. 30fps makes movies look like cheap, crappy home videos.

That must be because you are used to 24fps, not because 24fps is better

Re:Europe?

[Anonymous Coward]

24fps is the way to have it. 30fps makes movies look like cheap, crappy home videos.

I doubt 30fps is that much different to 24fps. What you're thinking of is traditional video which is 60 *fields* (half-frames consisting of all the odd or even-numbered lines) per second.

While you might be thinking that 60 frames is the same as 30 full fields, it's not, because moving objects will be in a different position between the odd lines being scanned and the even lines being scanned 1/60 second later. So you get higher motion resolution, albeit not at full spatial resolution.

Ironically, the more fluid motion this gives is more "video" like and considered cheaper-looking. Strange but true.

Re:Europe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction: "While you might be thinking that 60 frames is the same as 30 full fields, it's not" should read

"While you might be thinking that 60 fields [per second] is the same as 30 complete frames, it's not"

No thanks

[BlackHawk-666]

More expensive than renting a physical DVD either at my local store or Netflix -and- I have to provide the bandwidth as well...no thanks. (note: in Aus we don't get unlimited bandwidth, I'm on 50gb / month at present)

Re:No thanks

[GodfatherofSoul]

It's cheaper to buy a pizza in a pizza shop than have it delivered. You're paying for convenience.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case he is also paying the moped and the fuel so I guess he has a point in there.

Re:No thanks

[carlhaagen]

But what will this convenience be worth if the material is in low resolution, or with notable encoding artefacts?

Re:No thanks

[ami.one]

Not always. Some places with high real estate costs price the takeaways cheaper than dining in rates.

Re:No thanks

[Rogerborg]

Bandwidth won't be a problem for you in Oz; if Hulu is anything to go by (and I think it is) there's slim-to-no chance that this service will be available outside the US anyway.

Re:No thanks

[mikael_j]

Not really, most places around here simply have a minimum order for delivery, they won't deliver a single small pizza but if you order a two medium pizzas or a single large pizza they'll happily deliver it at the same cost as they and others charge for eating in the pizzeria or picking it up.

I have seen a couple of places that had a "If you order for less than $AMOUNT then there's an extra delivery fee" thing, but those places that I've tried have been pretty crappy.

/Mikael

Re:No thanks

[Xugumad]

I was about to say, most of the places around here will deliver for free if you spend a decent amount on food...

Re:No thanks

[Stooshie]

I think that, "... never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of tapes ..." would apply nicely here!

Re:No thanks

[Anubis350]

Unless you're a total tool you've still got to tip the dude delivering the food if you get it delivered...

Re:No thanks

[JackieBrown]

This is cheaper than pay-perview which would be the same type of audience.

Myself, I am waiting for my Wii netflix cd. I hate early advertising because it hurts my need for immedite gratification :(

Re:No thanks

[iangoldby]

you've still got to tip

Depends on the culture where you live. In many countries a tip is for exceptional service. It isn't part of the wages.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

A proper comparison of going to a video rental store vs. online rental would be: he delivered pizza cost 50-100% more, you have to pay the delivery car+fuel on top of that and it would only come with 50% of the toppings.

Re:No thanks

[jamesh]

Unless you're a total tool you've still got to tip the dude delivering the food if you get it delivered...

Tipping is a US cultural thing I believe, it's not quite as common in other parts of the world where workers actually have to get paid a proper wage. In fact in some cases it's quite rude to tip, although I can't imagine a delivery guy being offended under any circumstances :)

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

It costs them less to provide the service online. Each buyer provides part of the infrastructure. They avoid the expense of disks not returned, disks damaged, paying staff and maintaing kiosks. Fewer employees are needed per transaction to sell the product.

If it costs less to provide the price should be fall accordingly.

Pizza on the other hand costs more to deliver.

Re:No thanks

[Tim C]

Actually, here in the UK that's not generally the case, unless you include the "10% off on collection" and similar offers you sometimes get - but then of course you can't use any other offer at the same time.

What you do tend to get is a minimum order price for delivery, but with the prices of the pizzas that's never been an issue for me.

Re:No thanks

[kamikazearun]

Hulu is ad supported. Youtube is charging money. Hulu finds it profitable to discriminate because some regions bring them less ad revenue than others. Youtube on the other hand will profit equally from countries other than the US.

Re:No thanks

[blahplusplus]

"You're paying for convenience."

Not with torrent sites, you're paying to get ripped off.

Re:No thanks

[Kjella]

But those services that can be digitized, is normally cheaper online. Take my online bank for example, no fees whatsoever for doing things online. Do anything in a physical bank here in Norway these days? Expect a 1-5$ fee depending on what you're doing, and I'm not talking about any special service either. The iTunes store is much cheaper than retail CD stores. Online shops are in general much cheaper than retail sites, even if it's real goods sent by mail. The only reason pizza delivery costs extra is because they can't ship it out of a big server farm or warehouse, they must have people near you on duty on time to make it, which makes it cheaper to have everyone in the area come to you than you coming to everyone in the area. There's absolutely no reason an online movie store should cost more, except that the copyright holders got a monopoly on it and can set prices at will.

The real issue they have is that people overestimate how much distribution costs. Pressed CD/DVDs are cheaper pressed than burned, jewel/DVD cases cost very little in bulk and that printing press will print covers way cheaper than your home ink printer. What costs is shelf space in high-priced central retail shops, going with an online store the overhead is really quite low and the amount of unsold goods also much lower, unlike the retailer who sometimes have to do real bargain bin cleanouts that they have to take into their margins. Or maybe they underestimate how much a data file is, when it's not a tangible object. All the costs that went into production and marketing are already sunk costs, that 100,000$ scene doesn't become a 50,000$ scene just because you get it online rather than on a cheap plastic platter.

Quite frankly, I was hoping something like iTunes Plus would come for video (1080p/no DRM) or something like Spotify for music would take off, but so far the closest thing is Voddler which is nothing but a GPL-violating bandit shop (check their forums, and the comments on the allegedly "answered" questions) so I don't imagine there's much hope.

Re:No thanks

[rolfwind]

It's cheaper to buy a pizza in a pizza shop than have it delivered. You're paying for convenience.

If they were deliverying DVDs to your front doorstep, you might have a point. Delivery pizzas has a cost to the business - assuming its their own car - car itself, car insurance (more expensive for businesses than personal use), gas, wages. Convenience costs there because they have costs providing it to you.

Here, the costs are minimal. Convenience itself shouldn't add to the cost of a product, it should be a way to get people to a) consume more of it or b) outdo your competitor. Cost of "convenience" is at play with food/drinks at ballparks, airports, movie theaters, and convention centers where they gouge you for every little thing. It may not be the vendors themselves since they have high costs operating there but then it's the venue itself. It doesn't make me want to go there all that much. In fact, I avoid those spots.

Now, $3.99 for 5 movies should be nothing to bitch about for 5 movies. I assume your OP didn't read the summary correctly, that's cheaper than redbox. Of course, I assume Avatar and the like won't be included...

Re:No thanks

[slim]

Actually, here in the UK that's not generally the case, unless you include the "10% off on collection" and similar offers you sometimes get - but then of course you can't use any other offer at the same time.

What you do tend to get is a minimum order price for delivery, but with the prices of the pizzas that's never been an issue for me.

I've never seen (in the UK) the "10% off for collection" negated by other deals, because it's not a "deal" as such, in the way that "Thursdays: 2 pizzas for the price of one". They knock 10% off because not delivering is a genuine saving for them.

What Americans don't understand is that for food delivery, the closest we'd typically come to tipping in Britain would be "keep the change" if the total was just below a round number.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh the summary gives no indication that you are getting 5 movies for 3.99. In fact it reads more like there will five titles available initially for 3.99 each.

Re:No thanks

[BlackHawk-666]

Quite right, I can't get Hulu here (without presumably some proxy fun and games) so doubtless Netflix will shaft us too. Amazon is the same with their so called download service. Regardless, the point stands, it's more expensive and locks up the bandwidth, and uses up your allocation if you're capped. Wonder if you get the extras too, or just the main film?

Re:No thanks

[Turzyx]

Why the hell should I use my bandwidth AND pay for the privilage? I get capped at 2mbit for 4 hours if I download more than 1GB during peak time.

It is refreshing to see alternative business models being marketed to the movive/music industry, but these schemes really need to involve the ISP if they are to suceed, especially since as internet usuage increases, availible bandwidth decreases - and they aren't going to upgrade the networks any time soon.

Oh yeah, and if I pay to download a duplicate that only costs the supplier a fraction of wholesale fibre-time, I better be able to keep the copy.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

note: in Aus we don't get unlimited bandwidth, I'm on 50gb / month at present

Come on, you serious?
I'm on 50GB too and i would gladly use this service.
50GB is A LOT of data.
Do you actually use all your bandwidth each month to justify the cost of paying for it?

And really, how many films would you actually consider watching in a month?
It is going to be a while before any studios consider putting older films up there. (At least i would think they'd rather try out their newest and greatest first to bring people in to it first, then progressively add older ones)

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

More expensive that redbox(1 dollar), costs more than netflix which for less than 9 bucks I can dl all the movies I want. Less than many movies on demmand now. It seems like a big zero.

Re:No thanks

[betterunixthanunix]

We have upgraded; it is now trendy to say, "never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of 1TB hard drives."

Re:No thanks

[Tim C]

Maybe I'm extending the usual "not to be used in conjunction with any other offer" too far then; I never collect so I've never tried to use both offers at once.

But yeah, I wouldn't even think of tipping a delivery person, and only tip waiting staff if the service warrants it. I really do not understand the "must tip" mentality.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

More expensive and worse quality than renting on my Apple TV.

I at least get full HD quality and get to watch it on my plasma using an apple TV. youtube quality (even youtube HD) on my pc? I'll pay $0.99 for a rental.

Re:No thanks

[biryokumaru]

I believe the phrase you're looking for is:

"A soda can full of MicroSD cards."

- XKCD

Re:No thanks

[Lumpy]

Not if the tool delivering it dumped it on the side and is 20 minutes late. The delivery asshat get's ZERO tip.

I stopped getting pizza delivered because the delivery guys are usually idiots and nearly destroy the pizza. That and most pizza places sell their caller ID logs to telemarketers. Dominoes Pizza is proud in selling their caller ID logs and customer database to marketing firms.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about the OP, but I live in the US (Small city, about 250,000 people).

I've never paid for delivery.

There is no minimum order to my knowledge (unless it's less than half the cost of a small pizza).

There is a chinese place nearby that serves pizza and beer and will deliver all three. They may charge extra to deliver it to the university, but I think that's free as well.

The only thing that gets you is tip. You are expected to tip the delivery guy-- I usually toss him $3-$5 USD depending on how far he drove and how much we ordered.

Re:No thanks

[Webcommando]

I don't feel that I must tip but I tend to tip rather well. I tip the grocery delivery person (in my area in the states, it is Peapod), the pizza guy, hair care professional, the person who makes my latte, as well as wait staff.

Although I get excellent service because they remember me and appreciate the tips, I think of it more as keeping my "charity" local. I make a very good living and know many people who worked service jobs. They work as hard for far less (usually a real salary not dependent on tips) as I do and an extra $10 in their pocket will be multiplied as they spend it with other local businesses.

Yes this is probably a phenomenon that is only prevalent in the states but I don't feel bad doing it.

Re:No thanks

[Fred_A]

I really do not understand the "must tip" mentality.

Especially in US hotels with the "this is your room, that's the bed, and that's the bathroom, and that's my empty hand" guy which serves no purpose whatsoever.

Re:No thanks

[Ipeunipig]

But they've changed EVERYTHING from the sauce, to the cheese and the crust. SURELY they've changed this as well.

Re:No thanks

[slim]

I've never paid for delivery.

Delivery is included in the standard price.
I get the impression that in the US, collection is very much the exception.

Re:No thanks

[jedidiah]

50G would get you ONE full bitrate high definition movie.

50G isn't squat once you start talking about video.

Even if you make extreme compromises with compression, you going to eat up 50G quick.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

In these cases, all prices are raised to subsidise delivery, so delivery is really the best value for money unless you happen to live next door.

And contrary to the other reply, just-eat is an awesome service. It's an aggregator and order system for many takeaways. Takes credit cards and the whole ordering process is online. Just like the take-aways you find in the yellow pages, some of the ones listed on just-eat suck. Others are pretty good.

Re:No thanks

[liquiddark]

Maybe a truck full of soda cans full of MicroSD cards?

Re:No thanks

[TheRaven64]

In the USA (not sure if it's country-wide or a per-state thing), service staff are (or, were; not sure if it's still true) exempt from minimum wage laws. This means that they are often employed on a token salary with the expectation that they will make it up in tips. If you don't tip them, then you are receiving a service from them for which they are not compensated. In the UK, for example, this does not apply and they will be making a real salary (although it may only be minimum wage), so a tip is something on top of what they expect to make. A reward for good service, rather than part of their minimum income.

Re:No thanks

[maxume]

Why are they charging me for the convenience of not having nearly as much physical infrastructure to maintain (including the 100s of human bodies required to fuss with the media)?

If the studios were smart enough to charge $1 for PPV, revenues would explode (and I'm pretty sure the various people doing the delivery can accomplish the delivery for less than that $1, for example, I don't think the ads on hulu are netting them $1 for each movie, and a Dish Network and Direct TV don't actually have any marginal costs on the delivery side).

Re:No thanks

[squiggleslash]

How do you work that out?

Around half of Blu-ray discs are single layer, limiting them to 25G (and one or two HD DVD titles were single layer too.) That's high definition video plus at least one "lossless" 5.1 audio track, plus several "lossy" audio tracks for different languages/commentary/7.1 audio for people who'd prefer that over "lossless". Typically two hours of HD 1080p video, minus the audio, fits into a little over 10G. You'll only need one audio track to be streamed to you at any time.

Likewise, ATSC tends to be around 5G an hour (sometimes a little over, sometimes a little under), including two channels of 5.1 audio, and that's not even H.264!

Sure, you're not going to rent many HD movies if you're limited to 50G per month, but unless you're doing something severely wrong, or are typically watching 10 hour long movies, you should be able to watch up to 5 a month in quality akin to Blu-ray or HD DVD.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't shoot the messenger! At least not without a fair trial...

I used to deliver pizza when I was in high school and I can honestly say that 99% of the time, the reason your pizza came late or was messed up is because the kitchen f-ed it up... I usually had my orders at the person's door no more than 10 minutes after having it handed to me. But of course I was the one who took the blame for everything and had my tip taken away :(.

Gave me some insight that the 'lackadaisical delivery guy' stereotype is unjust! I have always tipped since.

Re:No thanks

[ClosedSource]

Wow, you have limited bandwidth and you
waste it here?

Re:No thanks

[DaFallus]

In a few countries I have visited (Spain, Mexico, can't remember how they do it in Italy) the tip can be automatically factored into your bill. This doesn't usually happen in the US unless you have a table with 8 or more people.

Re:No thanks

[TheRaven64]

50GB is one dual layer BluRay disk, completely full of data. Most BluRay movies are single layer and even then aren't completely full. For comparison, 720p H.264 movies from iPlayer tend to be about 2GB and are noticeably better quality than DVDs. That's the bottom end of HD, with the top end being 43GB for a two hour movie if you use all of the bandwidth available for a BluRay disk. The bandwidth used for iPlayer is 3.2Mb/s, which is low enough to stream quite easily. The maximum bandwidth from a BD is approximately 50Mb/s, which is not feasible for most current home connections. At iPlayer HD quality, a 50GB allowance would give you a film every couple of days quite happily.

Re:No thanks

[paulpach]

It is not the cost of producing something that determines the price of something. It is supply and demand.

If that was the case, then no company would ever sell anything below the cost of production. Ask car companies, or any airline. Most of them were forced to sell below cost of production, and thus lose money in the past couple of years.

Now, if they sell something for well above the cost of production (where cost includes time), this signals other entrepreneurs to jump in so they can get in on the profit boat. Over time, the more entrepreneurs that jump in, the bigger the competition, the bigger the supply, forcing prices to come down.

Profits are an aberration, an imbalance between the value consumers give to a good and the cost of producing that good. It is profit itself the signal that tell entrepreneurs that more of this good should be produced. Loses are the same imbalance in the other way, and they signal to entrepreneurs that the things that are being used to produce something are more valuable elsewhere and they should stop wasting resources and produce less of the good that is losing money.

In a free market all profits and loses tend to disappear over time. That is why companies are forced to innovate in order to keep profits. There has to be some new products, or changes in consumer preferences to generate new profits and loses. The only thing that can (and does) prevent this is government intervention.

Re:No thanks

[butchersong]

You come across a little snide in that comment. What countries are you speaking of? Other than parts of Asia where it might I guess be considered an insult in many cases 'tipping' is pretty standard or it is automatically appended to the bill for you. I know you aren't talking about North or South America or Europe or the South Pacific...

Re:No thanks

[DragonWriter]

Other than parts of Asia where it might I guess be considered an insult in many cases 'tipping' is pretty standard or it is automatically appended to the bill for you.

A service charge that is added to you bill automatically and which you have no option as to the amount and whether or not to pay is a very different thing than a tip.

The idea that the usual, expected service is not included in the charge to the customer (or the wages of the server), but is something which the customer is socially expected (but not obligated) to pay in addition to the bill, in a variable amount, based on their satisfaction with the service involved is far from universal (and, particularly, the situations in which that idea applies vary a lot from place to place.)

Re:No thanks

[fast turtle]

Hell according to the caluclators, my 512Kbps download equals 165GB per month.

It's damn easy to refute your argument that 50GB is a lot of bandwidth per month as I've got over 3x that though it's not very fast.

I'm in the states and although I have a slow connection, it's 24/7 (supposedly) though according to a speed test this morning, I'm getting 6x down with 1.9x up speeds. Not bad when nobody is online.

Re:No thanks

[Alinabi]

I pay $13 a month for Netflix and get 2 DVDs at a time plus unlimited streaming. How is $3.99 per movie competitive?

Re:No thanks

[jamesh]

Australia is where I live and what i'm familiar with. Tipping just isn't normal here, at least not where I've been. You might tip if you received exceptionally good service, that it's still not something normally done.

It's a big place though and I don't frequent the bigger cities very much, so maybe it's more common there. Wikipedia tells me that it is has become a bit more common in recent times, but mainly in tourist areas where tourists "bring a bit of their culture with them".

The best a delivery guy gets is "keep the change" when you hand him $20 for a $19.95 order, and then only because you'd rather not have yet another 5c coin.

Re:No thanks

[mgblst]

I love the American concept of charity, don't give to people who are starving or homeless, give to people who already have jobs.

I hear that the main difference is that a lot of people in the US do not get paid enough, and actually require tips to get a wage to live on. Since tipping is ingrained in US society, employees have used it as a justification to start paying people less. This is evil.

Much better to get paid a fair wage as in most other countries, and not require tipping.

Re:No thanks

[jedidiah]

> How do you work that out?

I rip disks. Lots of them.

I also record lots of TV both in ATSC form and captured HD cable in h264.

Audio tracks aren't that big and when you are possibly even using the same
codec, the idea that you can dump 90% of the data and still maintain anything
near the same quality level is "highly mathematically interesting".

If you're satisfied by a 2G stream, then it being marketed as "HD" is probably a moot point entirely.

Re:No thanks

[Webcommando]

I love the American concept of charity, don't give to people who are starving or homeless, give to people who already have jobs.

I don't think they are mutually exclusive. I give to both charity and tip well. Toys for less fortunate, food pantry, clothing donations, and money are all things my family has done. I'm sure that is true of many others.

Many of the people I mentioned do make a living wage but I recognize that the percentage of my salary I have to use for necessities is probably less than others. Who doesn't want a couple extra dollars in their pocket to go to a movie or dinner.

International Viewing?

[sofakingon]

I hope they allow people to use this service outside of the EU/US... I HATE not being able to use Hulu or Netflix or most of the Boxee services here Korea.

Re:International Viewing?

[Tanuki64]

I don't hate it. I just read 'This service is not available in your country' as 'Please use Bittorrent'.

Re:International Viewing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's true for the EU as well.

Re:International Viewing?

[Rogerborg]

Huh, we don't even get Hulu in the 51st State, USS Great Britain. I think there's slim-to-no chance of the YouTube service being available outside the US.

Re:International Viewing?

[mikael_j]

Us europeans pretty much always end up with the short end of the stick as well (when it's american companies providing the service, at best they'll provide their service to the US + UK (+ maybe France) but mostly it's just the US), but like Tanuki64 I just interpret Apple's silence regarding tv episodes in the iTunes store and Hulu's refusal to allow us swedes to use their service as "Please use Bittorrent".

/Mikael

Re:International Viewing?

[lordholm]

Apparently, licensing in the EU is horrible since collection "agencies" only have mandates in their home state and cannot issue licenses for use in other states. The upcoming commission have promised to patch the system so that an EU-wide license can be granted without any fuss, but as expected the national collection "agencies" are upset... I say "agencies" within quotes since they are normally set up as a company.

Re:International Viewing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just read 'This service is not available in your country' as 'Please use Bittorrent'.

That's what every commercial tells me to do. And every bathroom urge. And every important scene/phrase I miss, but can't rewind and watch again.

Add to that, the immorality of creating artificial scarcity to begin with, based on the false premise that creativity will somehow be stifled if we don't.

Re:International Viewing?

[Anubis350]

There's a certain irony to that statement... :-p

Re:International Viewing?

[paziek]

I really doubt that it will be available outside US. Look at other products where Google needs some kind of deal with other company in order to provide service:
Nexus One? No Sir, you can't buy it.
Google Voice? Sir, you must be kidding. Only the Chosen Aryan race can have it, and that would be US residents.
On YouTube there is even certain polish band, with we in Poland can't watch, since their distributor doesn't allow that... beat this.

As a side note, I'm trying for a few days now to legally buy a certain song made by The Guild, but every site I come by says, its not available in my region, or - usually - its only available in US. I pretty much asked their distributor if I need to pirate it in order to have it, wonder what they say.

It really feels like companies treat people outside of USA like second rate humans, and for that (and many others) I came to extreme hate towards USA.

Re:International Viewing?

[goldaryn]

I don't hate it. I just read 'This service is not available in your country' as 'Please use Bittorrent'.

I agree. You might try tor for things like Pandora (Google "tor + Pandora"). If you were desperate for streaming US video, you could also try international VPN services.

Re:International Viewing?

[bemymonkey]

Why France?

Just curious. :)

Re:International Viewing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand. What do you mean by states? We don't really have those in Europe. Do you mean countries? If that's the case it seems obvious that one country can't issue licenses for another. It's like asking why Australia would issue licenses for the USA. Or have I misunderstood what you meant?

Re:International Viewing?

[Yetihehe]

This may be THE reason for muslim terrorism. Maybe US can fix the situation by dropping some porn over Iraq and Afghanistan?

Re:International Viewing?

[johnreedaw]

It's not as if we can use many of those in the EU either...

Re:International Viewing?

[Opportunist]

Big country, big market. Simple as that.

You already see it with shows and dubbing. You'll get shows dubbed in French and German, but rarely in Polish or Dutch. (except maybe kids shows). Everything else is subtitled.

Swiss residents so far benefitted from having a larger audience that just happens to speak the same language (French, Italian or German), so they got their dubbing "for free" because it was already done. It won't work for such deals I'm afraid where not the language but the country is the bar to overcome to benefit from it.

Re:International Viewing?

[Muad'Dave]

I think he meant state as in 'Nation State', not in the US sense.

His point about the EU is likely valid, though. There are rules that imply "all for one" when it comes to certain things like border crossings, prices, etc. I could see where licensing agreements should/would/could span the whole EU instead of being issued to individual member countries.

Re:International Viewing?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"State" as in "Nation State" not "state" as in "Wyoming"...

Re:International Viewing?

[Anonymous Coward]

international VPN services.

they block it now...

Re:International Viewing?

[Idiomatick]

:/ Does that make Canada the 52nd? ... lame that we are moving down the list.... Ah well Australia is still below us at 53rd.

Re:International Viewing?

[VJ42]

Surely each Canadian province is a separate state; otherwise you're bigger than the rest of the US put together.

Re:International Viewing?

[Idiomatick]

Not when you count britain and australia :p

Re:flat rate?

[fastest fascist]

The summary, 3rd sentence: "Movie studios will be able to set their own prices, with rental viewing windows ranging from one to 90 days. "

I'm curious about bitrate, codec and resolution

[carlhaagen]

Anyone managed to find any info? If this ends up in the vicinity of what most of us are familiar with as mpeg-4 asp (or "divx/xvid" as most people erroneously call it) at around 640*352 of ~1mbps bitrate, then it is soooo not worth my pennies... Actually, if it's around that resolution, I'm not throwing money on it even if it's done with a good h.264 encoder.

Re:I'm curious about bitrate, codec and resolution

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll use a format with readily available drm, so I'd expect it to be Windows Media.

Re:flat rate?

[Stooshie]

If you RTFS! it says, at the end of the first line for god's sake: "Movie studios will be able to set their own prices" But this is slashdot. Ho Hum!

Wow

[Celarnor]

Good timing, Google.

Piracy, the better choice

[Meneth]

http://www.miraesoft.com/karel/2007/01/02/piracy-the-better-choice/

Re:Piracy, the better choice

[Opportunist]

This is the sad truth. I said it before a million times (even to the IFPI and other organisations, but they refuse to listen): Legal merchandise has to have a higher customer value than counterfeit or stolen goods.

It works for real goods and thus there's a thriving market for it. If you buy the "real deal" brand item, you get more than what you would get if you bought the knockoff. If I buy a genuine intel CPU, I get warranty. If I buy a genuine nVidia video card, I get support and downloads. Essentially, if I buy "honestly", I get more out of it than what I'd get from something that fell off a truck.

With content you not only do not get more from a legit purchase than you get from a copyright infringing copy, it's even worse. You get less from the legal copy than you get from the illegal one. When I download content from P2P networks, I can freely choose how to use it. I can put it on my server and stream it to the TV. I can extract soundbits or video snippets without loss. With music, I can convert it in any format I please and put it on any arbitrary MP3 player, play it in my car stereo or, again, put it on my server and stream it anywhere. In theory, even the net if I so choose. Technically, there are very few limits of what I could do with the content. This is not true for legally bought content. I cannot (easily) transfer the movie to my server for streaming, I have to use specialized software to do that rather "simple" task. I might have to go through a lot of hassle to create a copy of the audio CD to put it in my MP3 player and, unless I plan to use possibly illegal software to do so, I could end up with a loss of quality in the process.

The key problem is that legal content often has less value to me, as the consumer, than content ackquired through illegal means. That is the core problem today with content. And unless that's solved, more and more people will reach for the illegal channels. People enjoy having convenience. They want their stuff to "just work". And if the only way to get "just working" stuff is by P2Ping it, they will do that instead of buying. They would buy, no doubt. Because it's easier and more convenient. But they're learning that buying does not give them "just working" stuff.

Re:Piracy, the better choice

[slim]

I said it before a million times (even to the IFPI and other organisations, but they refuse to listen): Legal merchandise has to have a higher customer value than counterfeit or stolen goods.

But they do. Pirated movies are all fuzzy and unclear, have bad sound, and frequently include footage of someone a few rows in front getting up to go to the toilet.

I know this is true, because they told me in the unskippable advert at the start of the last DVD I rented. Why would they lie?

Re:Piracy, the better choice

[betterunixthanunix]

Frankly, I am not all that opposed to paying for music and movies. What I am opposed to is paying for music and movies, and then finding out that I cannot play it on my device of choice, or that my operating system is not supported, or that at some point there will be an attempt to prevent me from playing the media unless I pay again. I do not want to lose access to the movie I paid for because someone claimed there was a copyright issue, even if I get my money back.

"Renting" digital media is the most ludicrously stupid concept I have ever heard of.

Re:Piracy, the better choice

[betterunixthanunix]

There was a recent 60 Minutes segment about copyright infringement, and it was nothing short of propaganda. The segment started with some details about how Mexican drug cartels are starting to sell illegal DVDs, and some FBI analyst spoke about how this is part of an attempt to diversify from drugs and child prostitution. Then, a sudden switch to a discussion about Bittorrent, with no attempt whatsoever being made to explain that Bittorrent does not support child prostitution, and a wrap up interview with a director talking about how nobody is going to make a movie like The Matrix until people stop downloading.

If it sounds like "two minutes hate," well, the only significant differences I can think of is that it was a 15 minute segment and there were no sheep involved.

Re:Piracy, the better choice

[goldaryn]

Parent is insightful. I mean, that's why Steam platform adds value - it provides convenience - even over piracy! You have a permanent online backup of your games, the ability to install easily on multiple PCs, and faster-than-torrent downloads, whenever you want them (the odd outage aside). Many people I know buy games on Steam even though they already own them, such is the value of the service.

Re:Piracy, the better choice

[slim]

The industry has been lying transparently about piracy for at least 20 years.

In the 80s, the news frequently trotted out the claim that profits from selling pirate videos were used to fund drug dealers. It only takes a tiny bit of analysis to realise that drug dealing is a profitable activity in itself.

Just like the war on drugs, the war on piracy might be a bit more successful if it refrained from telling lies.

Re:Piracy, the better choice

[Anonymous Coward]

I came to the conclusion about a year or two ago that it doesn't matter what the movie industry or music industry does now, I just can't bring myself to pay for their content.

I can probably afford to spend more on entertainment than most people, but money I have available for that is still finite, and as such I have to pick and choose who gets my money. The software industry hasn't been perfect, but it's been far less horrible this past decade than the music and movie industry so I've decided simply that they will no longer get a penny off me no matter what they do.

If I download their content then I'll hear arguments about how that's hypocritical, how that makes me a pirate, but frankly, so fucking what? It's not like I'm going to pretend I don't like some of the music and movies they produce, I just can't support the fact that they're willing to go as far as bribing/threatening foreign governments and courts, lobbying governments for removal of fundamental human rights and so forth. I'm not going to make myself suffer for going without the content I enjoy, frankly I'll just download it, and if that makes me a pirate so be it, I really don't care, piracy should really be seen as a badge of honour for the most part.

When the movie and music industry stop acting so morally corrupt they can start having a share of my pool of entertainment money again, until then yes, I'm a pirate, but like many pirates I imagine, still a pirate with cash- you just have to be the morally better company with the better product if you want to earn your share of it.

Re:Piracy, the better choice

[BassMan449]

That's always been my opinion too. A lot of people complain about Steam saying it is the ultimate form of DRM, but they fail to miss the point that while it may be a form of DRM it also adds a lot of value to the games you buy through it. I had to reformat a while ago and installing games was so much easier than it used to be because of Steam. Queue them up and go to bed. In the morning I had almost all the games I ever play ready to go. That convenience adds a great deal of value to the games for me.

Re:Piracy, the better choice

[Truekaiser]

until steam says you can't play game x anymore online because we want you to play game y instead.

Re:Piracy, the better choice

[Anonymous Coward]

BassMan, you should try using Steam's "backup" feature: it's surprisingly good.

Re:Piracy, the better choice

[shutdown -p now]

until steam says you can't play game x anymore online because we want you to play game y instead.

It's possible in theory, but there's no precedent so far. Meanwhile, the added value is quite real.

Re:Piracy, the better choice

[IICV]

Also, presumably due to the savings from not having to create physical copies, Steam has been having ridiculous sales over holiday weekends. For instance, over Thanksgiving weekend, they had the THQ pack - nearly every THQ game ever published, including Red Faction: Guerilla and Dawn of War 2 + expansions - for $50. Further, because they don't have to pay for packaging or shipping, they can keep low volume games "in stock", like all of the X-Com games.

Re:Piracy, the better choice

[Anonymous Coward]

You argument is hogwash.

It is the same if you steal a car, you don't have repayments, worry about insurance, you may even get a free tank of gas. So I guess that this is the market that Car sellers should be going after, making their product better than free?

Don't mistrue my argument for comparing piracy to stealing, I am mocking your idiotic justification that they have to make their product better than free.

Re:Piracy, the better choice

[Truekaiser]

EA recently shut down all internet play on a popular sports franchise to 'force' people to buy the new game rather then playing a older one.

how about this, valve goes under and shuts off it's steam servers?

Re:Piracy, the better choice

[mjwx]

Just like the war on drugs, the war on piracy might be a bit more successful if it refrained from telling lies.

Wrong in both cases. Having a "war" on idea's is a fairly stupid thing to do in the first place.

If the average person knew that Universal, Paramount et al, were continuously making more money then they were last year there would be no support for a ill advised "war" on piracy. As it is now people think that these companies are struggling, I can show them the stock price from the last 5 years and they still don't believe how well the big 4 media companies are doing.

Average people will benefit from knowing the truth about the "war" on piracy, the war on the other hand will suffer greatly from it.

Drug users know the truth about drug production, but if they can get high they really don't care. The Anti-Drug campaigns don't really need to lie about the the conditions of Cocaine or Opium (and Heroin) production. Granted the Marijuana ones are serious embellishments but they've disappeared as they realised all those ad's did was push people onto amphetamines.

But why do we have to have a war on everything, what's next McDonalds declaring a war on anorexia, Nike's continuing battle with cheap footwear and we can never surrender to uncomfortable socks, there must be a war on that.

$2-$5 ?

[dreamchaser]

The largest supermarket chain here rents most DVD's for $1.

Re:$2-$5 ?

[MichaelSmith]

The largest supermarket chain here rents most DVD's for $1.

Not everywhere. To rent a first run movie is about $8 AUD overnight for me, and I have to walk to the video library where it might be out. An older movie is $5 AUD for one week.

Re:$2-$5 ?

[ibwolf]

The largest supermarket chain here rents most DVD's for $1.

Not everywhere. To rent a first run movie is about $8 AUD overnight for me, and I have to walk to the video library where it might be out. An older movie is $5 AUD for one week.

I'm sure that is correct. I'm also (reasonably) sure that this will only be available within the US.

Re:$2-$5 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow ... the entertainment industry in Australia sure know how to bleed people dry. Reminds me never to move there ... that and the hot weather ;)

Re:$2-$5 ?

[smallfries]

Which is nice for you, but everybody lives in a different market. It seems unlikely that I will be able to use this service as I use a non-windows O/S in a non-US country, but if they do offer this properly then I have three choices :
1. Walk 100m to a video store, rent a dvd for 2 euro a night. As a bonus I get to cache a rip of the dvd in case I want to watch it again.
2. Download a CD sized compression of the dvd. That takes about an hour on my connection on a popular torrent. The disadvantage of this is the illegality - and I don't really care about the legal/civil distinction as the odds of being busted for this are a million to one where I live. What does bother me is that the people who made the movie don't get any payment for their work.
3. So now there is (maybe) an online rental option. So it will be more expensive (2.66 euro is unlikely so we will end up with either 3 or 4 euro). Like option one some money is going to flow back to the makers so I get a warm fuzzy feeling inside while I watch the movie. Like option two the codec is probably going to piss me off while I watch the film.

So which will win? It's not a total ordering because cost is not the only criteria. Option two wins on cost and picture quality. Option three wins on getting revenue back to the creators. For now option one is my preferred compromise, but if the codec on option three is acceptable and it works here then I'll probably switch.

(The option of keeping a copy for a longer viewing window is irrelevant for me - I rarely watch a film more than once).

Re:$2-$5 ?

[mxh83]

Actually I was talking about purchase, not renting.

Re:$2-$5 ?

[biryokumaru]

What does bother me is that the people who made the movie don't get any payment for their work.

Do you honestly believe that the people who made a film get any money at all when you rent it from your local video store?

Re:$2-$5 ?

[Kjella]

If what bothers you is not paying them back, then the best option is real simple:

1) Torrent away
2) Every so often, order the movies you liked best on DVD/BluRay and let the postal service handle the rest. Make it so that it averages what you "should have" been paying.

Downsides: Slightly anti-environmentalism, somewhat poor distribution of the money
Upsides: Excellent convenience, that fuzzy feeling, more money to the movies you really like and a permanent copy for those few you might wish to see again*,

* Though if you use Linux and order BluRays, you'll need AnyDVD HD on Windows in a virtualbox to rip it first.

Re:$2-$5 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

but if the codec on option three is acceptable and it works here then I'll probably switch.

Do note that youtube already supports 1080p viewing and is encoded in h.264, making quality far better then that of DVD.

Now, will the option to rent in 720p and 1080p be available and for how much premium - that's a different question.

Re:$2-$5 ?

[hvm2hvm]

They do indirectly. Of course they won't give like 50% of the income from rentals to the makers but they did give money to some superstore that in turn gave the makers money. If you don't rent it, maybe small shops won't buy it, if not enough shops buy it the superstore will not buy it either (or will give a smaller sum). It's kind of backwards actually but in time it balances nicely.

Re:$2-$5 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, will the option to rent in 720p and 1080p be available and for how much premium - that's a different question.

I doubt they'll do 1080p movies any time soon. Even with much higher compression you'll probably still be looking at 3-4gig per movie.
That would take quite a few hours to download and fill peoples bandwidth usage limits quite quickly.
As for a premium.. why? It shouldn't. its the same movie. It doesnt make a movie any better having more more pixels.

Re:$2-$5 ?

[h4rm0ny]

He could achieve better parity between movies watched and those paid for by ordering every movie that he's downloaded after having watched it. Then he's actually achieving what he says he wants to.

Re:$2-$5 ?

[PIBM]

You have to take into account the fact that a location cost 1$ a day for whichever movie you want, in either dvd or bluray format at a lot of places in all of the US & Canada.

Thus, if he rents it at that place, he's maybe generating 5 to 10 cents for the movie studio (and that's most probably a gross exageration) and as such if they get 30% of a sale, out of a movie sold for 20$, then he only needs to buy 1 movie in 60-120 to reach parity.

So, if he's buying as many movie only based on the amount of money used to rent as many movies as he download, he would be giving much more cash to the movie studios, at the expense of the lenders distribution model. But everyone knows that that model, even at 1$ per movie, is flawed as you still have to walk 500m to the automated lender machine which you do not from a direct download. (that machine usually allow you to reserve your movie while either at work or at home, which is a nice touch)

Re:$2-$5 ?

[PIBM]

Average bandwidth keeps increasing ( ** except in some parts of the us from a report we had recently ** ), and with 6mbps you can view a 1080p (4GB, 1h30) movie in realtime. If you are paying for a limited monthly bandwidth connection, it's perhaps time to look somewhere else?

Re:$2-$5 ?

[biryokumaru]

Works like the trickle down effect, huh?

Re:$2-$5 ?

[Monkeedude1212]

It's backwards in that the money you will be giving the people will be going towards the NEXT film, which could be worthless trash you don't want to pay for. The money that you want to give for producing a great movie has already been payed to the actors, directors, and producers, etc, the opening weekend the movie is shown.

Re:$2-$5 ?

[MyLongNickName]

Where are you getting a reliable, consistent 6mbps?

Re:$2-$5 ?

[PIBM]

You mean as the source ? Most high profile web (microsoft patches, apple, youtube/google..) sites are able to sustain (well, for as big the files I can find) 60 to 70 mbps, only a few keep the connection capped at 95-98mbps.

On the low end of thing, I have a cheap (5$ per month) host which is pushing me over 50mbps on multi-gigabyte downloads..

Steam is usually around 80 mbps (best test case is GTA4 which is a pretty big download, was at that speed too for L4D2 and others..)

If you meant as a provider, then there are multiple options. http://speedtest.net/ can provide you with stats for where to look around you. Also, based on their data, the average download speed is over 6mbps in both north america an europe.

Re:$2-$5 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to Video Busters - all new releases are $1 on Tuesdays, and on other days most are $2, with a few at $3.

Preemptive response

[Anonymous Coward]

Before some one brings up the ending of the article, DVDs and Blu-Rays are very profitable, remember this, a large number of films loose money in their theatrical release. DVDs are often the profits to a film but at times they are counted on to return principal. I was involved in a film last summer and it was hoped with distribution costs that it would break even in the theater but we couldn't count on that and similar films had only gone into profits towards the end of the initial DVD sales. It's not always about greed it's often just trying to get the investment returned. The goal is really to break even on most films and hope some are breakaways that do big numbers to make up for the ones that loose money. Sure everyone would love each film to be a hit but most actually do loose money. If they had to count strictly on theatrical and rentals then easily half the films wouldn't get made in the first place. Take away theatrical and go all rentals and most of the hit films wouldn't get made because they'd never have a hope of breaking even. This is the panic Hollywood is in over their future. Theatrical numbers may drop like a rock, ticket sales have been eroding for years it's only increased prices that have kept the numbers up. Without theatrical and DVD sales the average studio film would be effectively the same quality as a TV movie. That may be the future no matter what they do.

Re:Preemptive response

[salarelv]

Maybe the studios should pay Tom Cruise less money for his pretty face? If the movie's don't get even why the actors and big bosses are living in huge mansions and driving in limos?

Re:Preemptive response

[ClosedSource]

I don't want to provide the movie industry with excuses, but the blockbusters pay for the movies that aren't successful.

The "Big bosses" probably get the money anyway, but the average actor doesn't live like a king. Bill Gates and I are about the same age and started out doing the same kind of job. That doesn't mean you'll find me on the richest list in Forbes.

Re:Preemptive response

[Whorhay]

From what I have heard and read a lot of movies don't make a profit because of Hollywood style accounting. That is the main studio pays some other company to promote the movie and such. The promoting company makes huge profits on the film instead of the main studio in order to essentially hide profits. The promoting company is a shell company that is owned by the same people as the main studio.

That's what led to Jackson sueing over the Lord of the Rings series. Part of his contract was that he got a significant cut of the movies profits. The studio used at least one shell company that they overpaid for services rendered. Since the same people owned the studio and the shell company they still get all their money, but Jackson gets ripped off because the profits are artificially lowered through the payments to the shell company. All of this is still alledged at this point I think, but it's pretty commonly believed to be what's going on in regards to so many movies apparently failing to make a profit.

The big question for me is ...

[Skapare]

... are they counting the Linux market as part of their revenue stream?

Re:The big question for me is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's where the last $4.99 comes from.

Re:The big question for me is ...

[mxh83]

What's your point exactly? YT works on linux.

Re:The big question for me is ...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"Rental" = "DRM". "DRM" generally = "Haha, Windows only, maybe Mac if we get around to it."

It is possible, though I suspect unlikely, that Google might not go down that road. The two big video DRM systems, at present, belong to Microsoft and Apple. Neither are Google's bestest of buddies, and Apple's isn't even for sale. Google could roll their own; but that would be a Sisyphean pain in the ass. If they could get enough video producers onboard(in practice, it'd be indies and maybe old stock only), they could just skip the whole mess and use more or less standard Youtube streaming, only with time-limited links tied to Google accounts. Making your server stop responding to requests for a given URL at a certain time is trivial compared to client-side DRM and the Youtube interface makes streaming easier than downloading, so it will deter the casual(and any more than casual would-be pirate would just download a crack for whatever DRM scheme you would hope to use).

If they do that, linux would work just fine(and, of more direct interest to Google, so would ChromeOS); but if they go with any of the usual DRM schemes, linux support is probably Not Happening on anything other than Tivoized embedded devices.

Flash makes this a no go

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just purely from a "flash sucks, it's not open, OSS for ever!" point of view. Lack of decent hardware decoding make full screen HD 1080p videos totally unwatchable on my 6 month old macbook pro, I dread to think how older hardware handles it. Even 720p is enough to make flash choke some times.

If Google to make to the move to HTML 5 this might be viable, but even then, the price needs to offer better value (compare it to the PSN store, which lets you keep videos for far longer, for about the same amount)

Re:Flash makes this a no go

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash has great hardware decoding these days actually... on windows.

Re:Flash makes this a no go

[Anonymous Coward]

On my machine, the Firefox HTML5 demo video performs no better than Flash. Which is a definite improvement, because when the feature was first released, it performed significantly worse.

Interesting

[segedunum]

Well, after my experiences with other such services - DRM attempts that just slow things down and stop it working or Silverlight with SkyTV in the UK (which is OK but isn't any better than showing video through Flash) - if YouTube and Google can be sensible about that not working then I'd happily pay some money to watch a film occasionally for convenience.

My spending on DVDs will still be higher, but if they get it right then I would happily pay to watch a film online for the first time ever - if they get it right that is.

The bigger news is that Youtube may make a profit

[magloca]

According to TFA, analysts expect Youtube to turn a profit this year. And, while it's not entirely clear, it appears that these analysts made this prediction before news of video rentals came out.

Whatever happened to Google Losing Up To $1.65M a Day On YouTube? And where is their revenue coming from, anyway? Can they really make that much from the relatively few ads they have, or is Google engaging in a little creative bookkeeping to make it appear that Youtube is doing great? Why would they do that?

Been there...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know what you mean. Here in Norway, Ive ordered takeaway twice now in the last week (been years before I did that).
The store had two delivery prices depending on the amount of order (as fuel is expensive in Norway as it should be).

Order 1:
Pizza (veg) has almost no taste. Day after my stomach still has the pizza in digestion mode. The coke was good though ;-)

Order 2:
Indian (veg), mostly consisting of boiled peas and carrots mixed with a generic masala. Worst indian dish Ive ever tasted (and Ive lived in India!).
The apple-cake, worst apple-cake I EVER tasted. Its like artificial, something u might buy at the grocery store and they label it "cake", but it isnt.
This one was about 10 times worse than those. It just tasted like artificial and paper-mache or something. I seriously looked several times to try to find the paper..
The coke was good though.

I dont usually complain, and I know take-away can be crappy sometimes, but this is just living and breathing to the stereotype as much as possible. Seriously,
if they delivered decent food I might order from them later, especially if delivery is free. Now, forget it.
The place is called: Just-Eat btw, to be avoided like the plague.

Moral of the story:
Always order Coke, and youll be happy.
Avoid the store when they are crappy.

This will get interesting...

[MrCrassic]

Considering that tons upon tons of people already use YouTube, I wonder how badly this will affect Netflix...I, for one, look forward to this.

Re:This will get interesting...

[Lumpy]

Not at all.

Youtube = watching on my laptop in low res (even their "hd" is low res.

Netflix = 720p HD on my Big TV.

it's no contest. Netflix wins. plus I can watch 60 movies for the price of 4 on Youtube.

Re:This will get interesting...

[FatAlb3rt]

Since this content is being purchased/rented, I bet YouTube makes it at least equivalent (better?) to what Netflix is doing. It won't be the same ol' low res crap.

Re:This will get interesting...

[Rakshasa Taisab]

WTF are you doing on /.? Aol.com is ==> way.

This place is for people who know more about technology than just how to double-click an icon.

Re:This will get interesting...

[MrCrassic]

Just wait until it matures. I highly doubt that Google/YouTube will keep their movies as grainy as their other content.
 
And while movies are more expensive now, two things to consider:

• These are their introductory prices, so they will probably drop over time, and
• YouTube is way more accessible than Netflix, as YouTube serves up tons of other content at the same time.

Re:This will get interesting...

[Cryp2Nite]

even their "hd" is low res.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amo5V5hgE1k
1920x1080

Re:This will get interesting...

[ClosedSource]

Yes, if you want to post here you have to be able to single-click on "Reply to This".

Re:This will get interesting...

[asavage]

Youtube added 1080p in November last year.

Re:This will get interesting...

[Lord_Dweomer]

Actually, if you're on the Netflix unlimited plan (most people are), you can stream an unlimited number of movies/TV shows in HD for $9/mo and I can use it through my Xbox so its already hooked up to my TV. Not a chance I'll be using this Youtube offering.

Re:This will get interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

didnt add that capability to any of the set box apps or DVD players. so it's an epic fail.

And yes, I think it's stupid to hook my laptop to my TV. My samsung blu ray player has Netflix and Youtube on it, it is unable to play any real HD on the client for Youtube.

And thanks to Big Content...

[Max Romantschuk]

I will likely not be able to view any of them here in Finland.

(Not to mention that my Ubuntu desktop might not support whatever DRM they mandate.)

On "creativity needs funding"

[jonaskoelker]

Add to that, the immorality of creating artificial scarcity to begin with, based on the false premise that creativity will somehow be stifled if we don't.

Making a two-hour film takes a significant amount of time out of many peoples' lives. Why would we expect people to do that if they're not paid?

Making music is (comparatively) cheap, and an easily accessible hobby. So is making software. Recording music can be done fairly easily because you don't need to pull that many people together, and you can pay your way out of not being a good recording technicians. The maintenance and evolution of software can be distributed (initial creation is more debatable).

Making films doesn't seem to have the same advantages that music and software does.

I'm not advocating any particular policy based off of these observations---I'm trying to say that if you expect people to create films for free, you may be disappointed at the volume and/or quality of output.

But let's say most copyrighted stuff makes most of its money in the first three(/five/ten) years after publication. Maybe that's a good argument for shortening the duration? And maybe different kinds of works should have different restrictions and durations, due to the economics of their creation?

Re:On "creativity needs funding"

[betterunixthanunix]

Who said that we were going to stop paying people to make these things? We are talking about the idiotic and insulting attempts that these companies are undertaking to create scarcity where there is none. Times have changed, technology has changed, and it is time for the movie and music companies to update their businesses; instead, they are trying to use the law to move us backward, so that the computer capable of processing a thousand songs at a time is reduced to a glorified phonograph player.

I certainly do agree about shortening the duration of copyrights. The US constitution requires copyrights to have a finite length, but lobbyists for media companies simply convince congress to extend that duration by 20 years ever 20 years. We no longer see copyrighted work enter the public domain during the same generation it was created; it now skips three generations, and the copyright lobbyists are still not satisfied (I think they hate the constitution, since it limits copyrights and fails to mention profits).

Re:On "creativity needs funding"

[TubeSteak]

Making a two-hour film takes a significant amount of time out of many peoples' lives. Why would we expect people to do that if they're not paid?

I think we've seen that there is room in the market for high performing low budget films.
The Blair Witch Project is the first that I can think of.
"9" started out as an animated short (which the movie remained faithful to).
Paranormal Activity was a low budget winner.

People obviously want good acting and good stories.
Film makers seem more interested in spending tens if not hundreds of millions on adding a layer of 3D and sparkle.

Re:On "creativity needs funding"

[jonaskoelker]

I think we've seen that there is room in the market for high performing low budget films[: The Blair Witch Project, "9", Paranormal Activity]

I agree with you that you can make really good films on the cheap.

But, like you said: there is room in the market. There is a market. The films (and their tickets) get sold. At least tBWP. How about the rest, were they given away for free? How were the budgets recouped?

That was my point: making films in the quantity and quality people seem to want takes money going in the makers' direction. Doesn't have to be much, but it has to be non-zero.

Re:On "creativity needs funding"

[psnyder]

People obviously want good acting and good stories.

Film makers seem more interested in spending tens if not hundreds of millions on adding a layer of 3D and sparkle.

This is exactly the point. The argument is that the layer of 3D and sparkle adds "value", whereas in most cases it adds "bloat". The bloat is often used to cover up something rehashed or badly written. It's exactly like software in that respect.

Since 200 years ago, when the UK and the US began copyrighting, the argument has been that giving a creator a monopoly helps society as a whole because people will have an incentive to distribute their new works publicly. Restricting freedoms for the betterment of society is what law is all about. Restricting copying is only valid if it adds value to society.

Personally, I don't find value in the bloat. I watch / listen to just as much highly ranked Creative Commons media as copy restricted media and there is excellent work and absolute crap on both sides. From my perspective, there's no additional value added to the copy restricted content.

Distribution used to be much more difficult, which added strength to the argument that an incentive was needed. Now that distribution is such a minor issue, copyright laws are currently solely based on a subjective "value" of bloated entertainment. I'd much rather live in a society where we all pool money together (taxes) to deal with things like safety and efficiency, and not with enforcing laws based on the subjective value of entertainment.

Re:On "creativity needs funding"

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Ill tell you a story:

I was feeling a bit lazy on Saturday about 2 weeks ago. So I tough maybe ill watch a film, now my spouse was on quite bad mood and didn't want any of this. Well I convinced her that of she picked the movie id pick it up at the rental. Well she did and off i went. It turned out it cost 5 euros for the evening, fine id already walked for 25 minutes.

But as coincidence would have it, they didn't happen to have any copies left. Now since I went trough huge deal picking the movie in first place i said screw you, went home and tormented it.

Now the bottom line is, i was and still am willing to pay this 5 euros for service I can not get. But I mean if you don't even sell me what i want when I'm willing to pay you kind of loose the right to complain about it. I mean I actually spent a hour get it legit.

Re:On "creativity needs funding"

[Anonymous Coward]

If nobody every downloaded illegally, there wouldn't even be the meagre attempts we see today. One day they will get it right, until then, I vote for that change with my bit torrent client.

If I can't buy it immediately online legally, I will seek it [illegally] until I can.

if youtube started offering every movie ever made... on demand... that competes directly with the capabilities of current file sharing.

Re:On "creativity needs funding"

[Anonymous Coward]

But as coincidence would have it, they didn't happen to have any copies left. Now since I went trough huge deal picking the movie in first place i said screw you, went home and tormented it.

Hey, it's not fair to be cruel to the film just because the video shop didn't stock it!

Price is good, but...

[dangitman]

The first five films available to rent through YouTube will cost $3.99 for a 48-hour viewing period.

$3.99 isn't bad for five films, but 48 hours isn't really enough time to watch them, unless you're hosting a movie marathon.

Re:Price is good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

$3.99... each?

Re:Price is good, but...

[johnreedaw]

Be careful with those movie marathons, RIAA (or your local equivalent) might get you to pay a fee for it...

Re:Price is good, but...

[srothroc]

I don't think it's five for $3.99, but rather, there are five films that will be the first released for rental via YouTube and each of the five will have a rental price of $3.99.

Re:Price is good, but...

[twoshortplanks]

I suspect that's meant to be read as "Google will be charging $3.99 for *each* of the five films that will be available on launch"

Re:Price is good, but...

[Idiomatick]

Each man... each.

Re:Price is good, but...

[dangitman]

Apparently slashdot doesn't understand deadpan humor.

Re:As a 49 year old feminist grandmother

[mxh83]

You're not a "feminist", you're just an idiot.

Yeah, there needs to be DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Just go look at IsoHunt for a new movie and see how many leechers and seeders there are you fucks. You've *proven* you can't be trusted. Stop acting like piracy doesn't exist.

Re:Yeah, there needs to be DRM

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I think that your point just tripped over itself. Isohunt is loaded with people distributing copies of stuff, almost all of them(with the exception of theater cam-jobs and TV rips of really old broadcast material) derived from DRMed media. The DRM has failed and anybody who doesn't mind piracy already has a free option.

Any money spent on adding DRM to another venue(and DRM definitely costs money) is simply being wasted.

Re:Yeah, there needs to be DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

ummmm. no. the numbers of people who are too stupid to know how to use isohunt or, better yet don't trust it, makes dmr worth while. get over it. it's not your product. it's not your right to say how they package it. if you don't like those facts then boycott it. theft is not a legitimate form of protest in the eyes of the masses.

Google muscling their way into another market..

[Skythe]

Will this be like Chrome beating our Safari's market share? It did only take a year or two to overtake the 7+ year old Safari, I wonder if that will happen with this too, solely due to the size and name of Google.

Re:Google muscling their way into another market..

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I don't think that Chrome vs. Safari was really a "size and name of Google" thing. Apple has an extremely strong brand of its own and, given the number of iPods floating around, a huge software presence even on Windows desktops(which, for a while, they were using to directly push Safari, through Apple Software Update). It's just that Safari on Windows kind of sucks a lot and there aren't enough macs out there for Safari on OSX to really move the marketshare numbers.

48 hours

[Arancaytar]

Implies some pretty nasty DRM.

No thanks; but for several times that price, I might pay to download a video I can play permanently.

Re:48 hours

[IBBoard]

Depends how they do it. Sky let you rent or 'buy' episodes of House at £1.50 and £2 per pop respectively. That doesn't sound bad, and given that pretty much the only things me and the wife watch on Sky that we can't get on Freesat (free to air satellite) are House and Bones then it might work out cheaper than our Sky bill, even if we buy them.

The down side is that "buy" doesn't seem to be buy. It seems to be a still DRMed perpetual rental, so I'm getting the worst of buying (higher price and not replaced if I lose/delete/damage it) with the worst of renting (I could at any point get screwed over by the DRM crapping out or Sky's service disappearing, and I can't use it as I want).

Oh, and it seems to run on Silverlight as well and require Media Player 10, or something.

Re:48 hours

[maxume]

I would speculate that there are far more people interested in viewing a movie once than there are people interested in owning a copy of the movie.

I don't like the $3.99 price point (I don't care all that much for the instantaneous part and immediately compare the price to Netflix), but if I thought that more and more movies were going to be available for immediate rental for $1 or $2 in the future, I would be even less inclined to actually purchase them (I would go so far as to say that I would be fine with DRM locked to a single screen, as long as it was a smooth experience).

Re:48 hours

[Homburg]

It doesn't imply DRM at all. As YouTube has already made a significant investment into streaming video, I expect this will be a streaming service, too. Hulu and Amazon, among others, already offer streaming films, with the studios permission, using no more DRM than the obfuscation of using flash. I don't see why the situation would be any different for YouTube.

First five films

[Spyware23]

Bit more info on the first five films, taken from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8471635.stm

Summary: The first five films come from the Sundance Film Festival. The service will go live on 22 january, for US citizens only. The first five films available for rent are "The Cove," "Bass Ackwards," "One Too Many Mornings," "Homewrecker" and "Children of Invention."

Interesting excerpt from the BBC article: "Content providers will be able to set their own prices, with YouTube taking a cut of the revenue. All but one of the Sundance films is being offered for $3.99 (£2.50) each for users to watch over a 48-hour viewing period."

There are just 2 questions:

[Opportunist]

Location and limitations

Where do you have to be and what limitations will there be imposed? What countries will be able to use that service, and what software setup is required for their DRM to accept my box as a suitable viewing device? Can I stream it from my box to my TV (let's be honest, who wants to view a movie on a 19" screen when they have a 44" with Dolbi surround and all the jazz?)?

That's basically what will make or break it.

They have plenty of porn

[tjstork]

My brother in law, while on patrol, found that the universal constant of Islam is that every devout terrorist has a giant porn collection, and then will stand there and deny that it is his.

Re:They have plenty of porn

[Gerafix]

By those standards all of /. are devout terrorists.

Re:They have plenty of porn

[tompaulco]

By those standards all of /. are devout terrorists.
Honestly, who collects porn when you could look at brand new stuff on the internet every day?

What comes around...

[Muad'Dave]

So now we have DIVX (not the codec, the video rental plan) without the disk, and without the embedded security of the DIVX player.

Cracked in 5, 4, 3, ....

Is this US only? Like HULU and all those?

[VShael]

And will they make it available to small indie movies too?

There are MANY movies I have wanted to see, but the distribution channels just don't exist.

One recent film festival (Fantastic Fest, Austin 2008 I think) allowed you to stream the movies being showcased at the festival from anywhere in the world. It was great. I saw some excellent documentaries I would never have had the chance to see otherwise.

(Like the very disturbing "I think we're alone now" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1152828/ )

YouTube sails away from the people...

[MindPrison]

...as it becomes a part of the movie industry.

YouTube is headed for Commercialization hell (which is a very real place!) and that usually means:

- More restrictions
- More censorship
- More forced Ads
- Less fun
- Less freedom
- Less randomness

The same reason GOOGLE was COOL - applies to services like YouTube, a place where you can search for - and find ANYTHING, as it becomes more and more commercialized, we'll see the increased restrictions on EVERYTHING, and YouTube will eventually just be another X-Factor/Americal-Idol & movie rental service, and ADVERTISING / Viral-videos outlet than the peoples no#1 info-video channel.

Oh well - it was fun as long as it lasted.

Re:YouTube sails away from the people...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like regular cable or OTH broadcasting.

Re:YouTube sails away from the people...

[Eil]

I don't know that I fully agree. YouTube has been struggling to make money since its inception, and renting movies is quite simply the most obvious way for them to get profitable. They have all of the technology to do this, all they need to do is put it together.

Besides, it's not like they're going to stop letting people upload their own content.

If you want a poster child for an internet business that snubbed the little guy for big-business profits, look at eBay. At the height of their popularity, the fees were restructured to make it lucrative to be a high-volume, low-margin seller while low-volume, high-margin sellers (people selling rare or custom-made products as a hobby or side-business) got the shaft. It's not profitable to be the latter on eBay anymore because shipping, eBay fees, and PayPal fees totally negate the markup they were counting on.

At least it should work on Linux

[jburroug]

The yahoo article was light on details but since YouTube works just fine on a Linux box I can't think of good reason why the new rental service shouldn't play just fine on my Linux HTPC. Unless they do something stupid like require Silverlight w/DRM for the rentals. But if they are going to offer these rentals in a Linux friendly format I will definitely support that choice with rentals, especially if the XBMC or Boxxee teams release a nifty and stable YouTube movie rental plugin.

Cheers,

Josh

Re:At least it should work on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't hold your breath on that. Unlike the normal youtube videos, they will probably have to agree with the studios to DRM these. Such schemes are usually Windows only.

Re:At least it should work on Linux

[Homburg]

I don't see why they'd need DRM. If it's a streaming service, there's no (easy) way to make a copy of the video to be watched after the 48-hour rental window anyway. Amazon uses straightforward flash streaming for it's Video On Demand service, as does Hulu, with no fancy Windows-only DRM, so I assume the studios would be happy with a similar setup for Youtube.

Flash

[DrYak]

It seems unlikely that I will be able to use this service as I use a non-windows O/S in a non-US country

Content access restriction already exists in Youtube and isn't currently handled at all by code running on the client.
But code running on the server :
the server only accepts to stream data to users...
1. Whose IP corresponds to a country where the content is allowed (somethings might be available in EU but restricted elsewhere)
2. Who are logged in and have access (adult content only goes to users with an open session and are flagged adults in their accounts).

Very probably the same mechanism will be employed for the movie rentals : access management will probably be handled by the server, and client-side you'll only have a thin flash player.
So for non-Windows OS : As long as you have a x86 comptible CPU you'll be able to run the official Flash from Adobe and will not have problems (I mean, besides the fundamental problems due to crappy quality of Adobe's software itself).
Otherwise, you'll have to rely on 3rd party players. And - good luck - Youtube is one of the main target against which Gnash developers test their creation. It works not so bad with the current version of Youtube. So chances are high that the developers will keep up and fix their implementation of flash for anything required by the new Youtube.

The main problem will be legal : Youtube could probably rely on the crappy, useless RTMP:// protocol. This thing isn't even DRM-ed or otherwise properly protected, and has even been reverse engineered (google for RTMPDUMP). But nonetheless, it might be illegal in your jurisdiction depending on the wording of your local DMCA-clone law. (It's illegal in the USA, it's explicitly authorised in Switzerland if used within copyright/fair use limits).

Is this a joke?

[WinstonWolfIT]

Are they renting flicks in a tiny window with crap resolution? For more than .25US?

Netflix Competition???

[NightHawkeye]

The pricing just doesn't seem competitive with Netflix. For $11 a month I usually get eight to ten blue-ray movies delivered to my mailbox, plus unlimited streaming.

Granted, $4 per viewing is better than $6 which the local cable company charges with their pay-per-view. But I've never used that either ...

I'll tell you what I want as a service.

[BlackHawk-666]

I watch a lot of films, and I'm on a pretty tight budget, so it needs to really provide bang-per-buck for me to be satisfied. I'm actually on a pension for now, so not only is the budget really tight, but I have a huge amount of free time to try and fill each day and TV is not helping.

I've always been into alternative cinema far more than the mainstream films, but I tend to watch most things short of chick flicks and summer student films. I like my anime, Japanese horror, Korean cinema, and French films along with all kinds of other World Cinema - so my local store is never going to satisfy my desires.

At present I fan-sub what I can, pirate what I have to, purchase on DVD/Bluray as much as possible and every so often make a trip to the local cinema. Over time the divx's will be replaced with DVDs/Bluray or they end up deleted.

I divide films into several categories: see at the cinema, rent on dvd, buy it, download.

Putting aside the option to see it at the cinema there are three other ways that a single company could fulfill my purchasing needs.

On the day they release it to the rental places, they could also open up the opportunity for me to download a DRM copy that I can view at home for 2-3 days. The cost should be at least slightly cheaper than the rental stores because they have no overhead costs besides bandwidth.

On the day the DVDs hit the stores they should allow me the opportunity to download a copy with no DRM beyond that a normal DVD has - i.e. an ISO image I can burn to DVD and the covers so I can print both on the media and the slips for the box. Pirates working out the back of a shop in Chinatown can manage this, any decent company should be able to also.

The third way would be to make a DIVX/XVID copy available some time after release, and I really can't see them doing this or even being able to compete with the warez group - it doesn't make sense - so there are really just two ways to capitolise on me.

Now here's what grinds my gears. If I go to the cinema, or rent a DVD from the shop prior to buying, I still pay full price for the DVD. There is in fact almost no incentive for me to ever rent a DVD since they release for purchase soon enough after. The same applies to a cinema version - and with electronic ticketing and digital projectors there seems little reason not to propose this...if I paid you a whack of cash to see it at the cinema I should get a rebate on purchasing it to own.

Currently I might end up purchasing the "rights to view" a product three separate times. First it costs $22 AUS to view at the cinema, then $6 AUS to rent, then $30 AUS to buy to own. So on a really good title I have to pay a total of $58 AUS to see it at first release, then first home release, before finally buying to enjoy for the next few years.

So, what I want is this: Digital Rights Management - where I actually get "rights" and they are managed.

I want someone to whack up a pile of huge servers somewhere with plenty of bandwidth. When I pay my $22 for my cinema ticket I want that logged to my account and for them to offer me a modest discount on purchasing / renting the film in the future. When it's released to rental market I want that same site to let me know, and allow me to download the film. After I've seen the film I'd like to be able to indicate I want to purchase it on mainstream release, and get a decent sized discount on that. I'm a valued repeat customer, they should treat me like one and work hard to continue to do business with me. If for any reason whatsoever I lose a copy of a film I should be able to download it again at no cost. If a new print of the film comes out I should get access to this at minimal cost - why pay another $40 to buy the film again on Bluray when I already have a licence to watch it, and just want to see it in an improved bitrate/codec.

Currently I have to rent a film, just to see if it's even worth one watch, let alone the five or so watches that are required to break even on the cost of perhaps buying i

Re:I'll tell you what I want as a service.

[foo fighter]

You sound like the perfect Netflix customer. But then I see you are in Australia, so, that sucks. You don't have anything like Netflix there?

And why would you rent a DVD before buying if you have already seen it in the theater?

I wouldn't ever upgrade your entire collection to Blue Ray. My upscaling player (a Playstation 3) looks great--often indistinguishable from Blue Ray and never less than almost as good.

Re:I'll tell you what I want as a service.

[RivenAleem]

I stopped going to the cinema when I saw a notice in the foyer saying "Your ticket includes 0.50€ Royalty towards the artist". My cinema ticket was 13€. WTF?

Re:I'll tell you what I want as a service.

[Anonymous Coward]

Given all your free time if you want to minimize your payout to entertainment time ratio you may consider a new technology called books. They're cheaper, they keep you both entertained and intellectually stimulated, and a single one can provide that entertainment for an entire day instead of just 2 hours. Also many of them have the exact, or close to exact, same plot as the movies you're watching.

Re:I'll tell you what I want as a service.

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped going to the cinema when I saw a notice in the foyer saying "Your ticket includes 0.50 Royalty towards the artist". My cinema ticket was 13. WTF?

No kidding. They should be work for hire just like everyone else in this world.

Re:I'll tell you what I want as a service.

[BlackHawk-666]

In the past release times were sometimes a bit more extended that I would like, and I would be ready to see the film again by the time it was out for hire. They've compacted those times (I think), so it's not as bad an issue.

I also use a PS3 for playback, via PS3 Media Server, and while it upscales very well the detail is nothing compared to a decent Bluray transfer e.g. Wall-E.

I think we have a Netflix like service out here, but I'm a bad candidate for using it since my nearest post box is about 8 KM away - right next to the nearest rental place. I can't just pop DVDs into the mail as I pass on the way to work like I did in London.

OK, let me pre-cache

[greyhueofdoubt]

I would use service even though I have netflix because I have Clearwire and therefore it takes 3 hours to watch a 90-minute movie. With netflix (and the daily show, and others), you can't just pause it and walk away until the video is halfway done loading- the silverlight or whatever halts the download when it gets a few seconds past the playhead.

It's already bad enough that some youtube videos download at the 20-40 KB/s range, while others download at 5 times that speed (it's not my connection- I've gone back and double checked). It's a real pleasure to load up a 3-minute video, pause it, and come back 6 minutes later to watch it.

So youtube/google, if you're reading this: I WANT TO GIVE YOU MY MONEY. I want to buy your service. DON'T FUCK IT UP LIKE EVERYONE ELSE (silverlight). And have a wonderful day :)

-b

Why a fixed amount?

[Hurricane78]

How about doing it like Magnatune or Kongregate?
Allow the uploader to choose a price range in which the viewer has to choose an amount.
And/or if no range is chosen (=free) there is a tip jar for quick payments.

Done.

Of course these all still are business models that ignore basic physics (that information is no real object, and therefore can not be a good / product. Ever). But it’s better than nothing.

In the long run, one can only ask money for services. Like performing the song. Or like letting people sponsor a movie project (while in production) like a team of publishers/producers.

Re:As a 49 year old feminist grandmother

[Spazztastic]

Don't feed the trolls, young padawan.

FUCK THE MPAA

[themusicgod1]

I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I'm still boycotting them.

Re:Yeah, there needs to be NOT be DRM

[Aklyon]

which would you prefer to buy:
$25 Movie (DRM adding more to the cost)

OR

$20 Movie.

I'd say its obvious which is more intresting to the non-wealthy public.

The difficulty of designing good payment systems

[jonaskoelker]

Who said that we were going to stop paying people to make these things? We are talking about the idiotic and insulting attempts that these companies are undertaking to create scarcity where there is none.

Let us be sure we're talking about the same thing. You're talking about the limits copyright law places on people who want to make copies of films, correct? And the scarcity is the absence of copies people would make if the law wasn't forbidding them from doing that, correct? And the scarcity is artificial because we could set up a system where (1) all socially desirable* films exist; and (2) all the socially desirable* copies get made, correct?

* "Socially desirable" means that there exists some collection of people p_1...p_n who in total is willing to pay a sum of money equal to or exceeding the amount the producers want for their goods. (Either film makers or peer-to-peer film distributors)

I'd like you to explain to me the solution: which payment scheme should we adopt in order to make the film as wide-spread as is beneficial and so that the films people want get made? Why should we think the scheme you have in mind works?

I think this is a really hard problem. I don't have a solution. Shortening copyright without abolishing it still introduces scarcity: for $DURATION, some people go without the film, even though they'd be willing to pay the cost of copying it. (They go without because they don't want to pay the price that Copyright law lets the seller charge.)

How do we pay without introducing artificial scarcity?

Don't feel too bad

[ClosedSource]

Well, at least your mobile phone options are better than what we have in the US.

Re:The bigger news is that Youtube may make a prof

[ClosedSource]

Well, companies measure things in counter-intuitive ways. If you or I were out of work last year and had to go into debt, we wouldn't consider that we made a profit just because we have a job now.

Youtube will be truly profitable to Google when purchase price + total expenses since purchase "is less than" revenue since purchase.

Bandwidth != Quantity

[nuckfuts]

"Bandwidth" is a measure of throughput - the rate at which you can push data through your pipe. Nobody has unlimited bandwidth.

here in aus

[Anonymous Coward]

with the isp tpg, we get capped at 128kbit/s, which is twice what everyone else caps at.. yup every other isp ive seen on every plan including adsl2+ or vdsl or whatever caps you at 64kbit/s once you exceed the quota.

the plan we're on is something like $60/mo for 80gig, with something like 20gig onpeak 60gig offpeak, and the cousin came round with his xbox 360 and used all the on peak quota in a few hours (presumably downloading content, cause games shouldnt need that just to send coordinate updates/state changes), leaving us with laggy youtube etc..

so, yeah, unless they make a deal with the isp to not count it against the quota it just wouldnt fly in aus. we pay close to $1/gig and so its going to be cheaper to rent the dvd.

No extras, no rental

[Chess Piece Face]

The price is bad enough, but what keeps me from streaming/downloading more movies is the lack of extras. No alternate audio tracks, no subtitles (unless built in), just a movie. That means foreign films forcing the dub version, no access to creator commentary, and I'll even watch the previews when they don't auto-load. Everything that is great about DVDs is gone - might as well have us rewind the file before returning it.

Prediction

[JobyOne]

I predict overpriced rentals that expire at the drop of a hat, then use of the lack of interest as evidence against the viability of online business models.

The MPAA doesn't want change, and they will screw their consumers and their own potential profits to make a case against it.