Google Strikes Deal With Paramount

redletterdave writes about more movies being made available on Youtube's rental service. From the article: "Google announced a new deal with Paramount Pictures on Tuesday, which will make more than 500 movie titles available for rental on YouTube and the new Google Play platform. The deal was made even though Google is still embroiled in a four-year-old legal battle over copyrights with Paramount's parent company, Viacom. The latest deal means Google has rental deals with five of the six major Hollywood studios, including Paramount, Warner Bros., Disney, Universal Pictures, and Sony Pictures. The lone exception is 20th Century Fox, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Google will only make these titles available for rent; the search giant has not yet made a decision to sell any movies it licenses, despite pressure from major Hollywood studios looking to compensate for poor DVD sales."

Comments

I'll stick with Netflix streaming, thanks

[crazyjj]

I can watch *way* more movies and TV shows than that with no hassle on my Xbox and they don't expire or require some annoying separate login, weird PC-only DRM scheme, or any other annoyances. I just pay my $8 a month, click "Netflix" on my Xbox menu, and watch whatever I like.

Keep it simple, make it easy--then we'll talk.

Re:I'll stick with Netflix streaming, thanks

[geekoid]

Except netflix keep loosing content, and getting farther behind.

Re:I'll stick with Netflix streaming, thanks

[firex726]

Yea, I was looking at some online rentals and they were like $5 each.

Fuck that, that price is more then Blockbuster ever was, and I would only be able to watch it once and had to do it within 24 hours.

Re:I'll stick with Netflix streaming, thanks

[phantomfive]

More options is better.

Re:I'll stick with Netflix streaming, thanks

[crashumbc]

Vudu is actually 4.99 for 720p and 5.99 for 1080p (both with 5.1) Now that is for same day as DVD rental, blockbusters. Prices generally start dropping after its been out awhile.

Note: you also have 30 days to start watching it, once you start you have 24hrs to finish. (or watch it again if you want.

I don't watch movies often so it works great for me because I get the quality I want with out leaving my couch.

Re:I'll stick with Netflix streaming, thanks

[morari]

Except that in this case your Xbox is the DRM. Furthermore, you're paying for Xbox Live on top of your standard Netflix fee for some reason. I wouldn't be so proud about letting Microsoft double-dip on me like that.

Re:I'll stick with Netflix streaming, thanks

[jedidiah]

Farther behind doesn't matter so much if you never bothered to pay attention to release dates to begin with. Netflix is great at fostering that kind of attitude and they have been doing well at it for over 10 years now.

The only content they are "loosing" is perhaps the streaming stuff.

The disk service is still going strong despite a number of factions that want to ignore it.

Yields better features and quality while not subject to network bandwidth issues, caps, or throttling.

Movies that become disc-only

[tepples]

I can watch *way* more movies and TV shows than that with no hassle on my Xbox and they don't expire

I beg to differ. Netflix's contracts with particular studios have ended in the past, forcing Netflix to pull movies from availability.

Make your own alternative to Paramount

[tepples]

The digital restrictions management was dictated by Paramount and the other major motion picture studios. So the only way to escape DRM like this in the long run is to find some way to produce and promote an independent film comparable in production quality to those of the major studios. How is this most efficiently done?

Re:Make your own alternative to Paramount

[spikesahead]

Easy, Netflix could begin financing new films themselves and promoting them, until people begin joining netflix to get at the new series, then staying for the amazing catalog.

Besides, the vast majority of AAA movie titles are garbage anyways, date filler and explosion porn over and over.

Re:Make your own alternative to Paramount

[Bigby]

Or buy Paramount and change their distribution

Your own country's film industry perhaps?

[tepples]

Google and Paramount are both headquartered in the United States. If you live in (for example) France and want to watch French film, look for a French streaming provider that licenses from French studios.

Re:Your own country's film industry perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google and Paramount are both headquartered in the United States. If you live in (for example) France and want to watch French film, look for a French streaming provider that licenses from French studios.

Supporting local industry is a nice point, but having reflected on my earlier whinge I guess that's not really what I was getting at. It irritates me that these are the international companies who complain incessantly that people are illegally downloading their products without giving a large chunk of the alleged culprits the legitimate alternative. They spend huge amounts of money advertising it and building hype and then won't give us all of the available options for watching it. They've pushed European nations into enacting pretty tough anti-piracy laws and then made deals that won't allow us to use the legitimate supply lines. Your point would be great if Paramount didn't advertise in France, but they do.

Re:Your own country's film industry perhaps?

[afidel]

The biggest problem is that Paramount US might not own the distribution rights to every Paramount film in France (or Germany, or the UK, etc), those rights might be held by a third party that is not a party to the negotiation. It's a pretty messy industry from a legal perspective so I can understand why they might not get deals done in other markets quite as quickly as for the US.

Poor DVD sales?

[sureshot007]

"...despite pressure from major Hollywood studios looking to compensate for poor DVD sales"

How about making movies that are actually worth buying? Instead of just remaking, or worse, re-releasing movies for a blatant money grab.

Re:Poor DVD sales?

[TheRaven64]

How about making the DVDs available in a timely fashion? I don't buy many DVDs anymore, but I rent a lot. I often have to wait 6-12 months between a film being in the cinemas or a TV show airing in the USA and it being available to rent. On the other hand, if I wanted to pirate, films are usually available within a few days of cinema release and TV shows within a few hours. If you say 'you can get our product illegally now, or legally in 6-12 months' then you shouldn't be surprised when a lot of people opt for now. Especially when you spend a huge advertising budget on telling them that they want to see it right now...

SOPA/PIPA

[Microlith]

Quickly, everyone! Let us adopt the latest in DRM'd technology so that we may more quickly route our money to overpriced, overcompressed rentals of movies from companies who will then turn that money around and lobby Congress for even more oppressive laws!

Sumner Redstone

[tepples]

Viacom's market capitalisation is $27B

Are you describing a hostile takeover? I thought the publicly traded portion of Viacom was a minority stake, and Viacom and CBS were still majority owned by Sumner Redstone. As for Apple, if Apple were to buy any movie studio, it would probably be Disney, due to connections between the companies through the estate of Steve Jobs.

Too late for me

[future assassin]

I just pirate all I can. Yes I don't fucking care anymore especially with the media companies trying hard to turn Canada into some lock down DRM utopia. I have aprox 500 dvd's of which half were bought new and rest at pawn shops. I have no intention of giving the studios any money until they stop trying to take away my ownership right off an item and stop trying to get politicians to pass insane laws.

Also HOW MANY FUCKING MOVIES must be remade from 20 year ago?

Support your local Pawn Shop and Pirate!

Re:Too late for me

[RyoShin]

I just pirate all I can. [...] I have no intention of giving the studios any money until they stop trying to take away my ownership right

So how about just not watching the movie? I can completely side with you on not supporting the media companies. They're an unscrupulous and greedy lot. But then you go and download the movie anyway. True, you're not depriving anyone of anything, and I'm not chastising you for pirating; but, when you do that, you completely lose any credence in what appears to be a boycott/protest. Plus, someone out there tracks torrent hits, and that goes to show some sort of interest/consumption on some manager's desk, even if it's not monetary.

It's like saying you are going to protest/boycott the Mars company and then steal a Snickers bar or ask a friend to buy a Snicker's bar for you. Again, it's not about the method of obtaining something, it's about the hypocrisy at hand. You may want to ask yourself just why you do these things, and just how useful your position vs. actions are.

To me, it seems like a weird reverse of the NIMBY crowd--they want cheap, local, 'safe' energy, but not when it takes up their roof or makes noise when it spins or has an extremely low risk of radiation spilling out.

Too expensive

[hawguy]

I'm not going to pay $4 - $5 to rent a movie from Google for 48 hours when for $12/month I can have 2 DVD's at a time from Netflix. Their turnaround time is so fast that I can easily get 8 movies in a month. And if I wanted to be less ethical, I could rip them to a hard drive to watch at my leisure. Netflix thought they could coerce me to move entirely to streaming, but their streaming catalog seems to keep getting smaller, so I stlil rely on DVDs.

If movie rentals were $1 - $2 then I might consider it, but why can Redbox rent me a physical disk for less than the studios want for a digital download?

Re:Too expensive

[hemo_jr]

As a MAFIAA member, it is is pretty much a given that Paramount is a short-sighted all-the-market-will-bear robber baron type of company. They have their unregulated monopolies and will stick it to the consumer until the customer dies from loss of blood.

The Hollywood tradition is to screw both the artist and the consumer and the MAFIAA has had a century to perfect their craft.