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YouTube To Offer Subscription Service This Week

jfruh writes "According to an email from a Google spokesman, YouTube will be offering a $1.99/month subscription service as early as this week. This service will 'bring even more great content to YouTube for our users to enjoy and provide our creators with another vehicle to generate revenue from their content,' though there was no indication of what content will be offered through the service exactly. YouTube has offered rentals for specific videos before but this is the first time the service would go head-to-head with subscription services like Netflix."

26 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. guess they didn't listen to us by Trepidity · · Score: 4, Funny

    The Slashdot vote was pretty clear!

  2. Ads by Teppy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'd definitely pay $2/month to remove the damn ads. Same goes for Hulu - why don't they have this option?

    1. Re:Ads by rudy_wayne · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'd definitely pay $2/month to remove the damn ads

      Or just use AdBlock.

    2. Re:Ads by JWW · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah, youtube has nothing that anyone wants to watch. They ought to just shut it down already, its just a wasteland with no viable content at all.....

    3. Re:Ads by Xemu · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'd definitely pay $2/month to remove the damn ads. Same goes for Hulu - why don't they have this option?

      It will go the same way as cable. First you pay $2/month to remove the ads. Then you pay $4,$8,$16 and then they put the ads back in as well.

      --
      Tell your friends about xenu.net
    4. Re:Ads by dzfoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think he meant it has nothing that anybody wants to pay to watch. It's popular right now because it's free, but cat videos may not pay the hosting service by themselves.

      --
      Carol vs. Ghost
      ...Can you save Christmas?
    5. Re:Ads by Seumas · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'd pay $2/mo to get rid of all the "featured" panels on the interface and all the juvenile crap from teenage morons that cater to a massive mouth-breathing audience of children (I keep seeing shit from guys named Fred and Tobuscus and Pewdiepie and other crap all the time). For that matter, dump all the "boobs and brain-dead response videos" crap and I'll definitely pay $2/mo for what's left.

      I primarily watch stuff like lectures from Stanford, hardware demos, high end hardware builds being benchmarked, etc. Yet, what do they keep spamming me with? Fucking idiot teenagers spending 20 minutes showing you how to do your makeup or spending ten minutes showing you everything they just bought at the mall (seriously, this is apparently a whole genre of videos now).

      How can a company with such a claim to targeted advertising now get this shit right?

    6. Re:Ads by dunezone · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because if everyone started using Adblock these websites would disappear or force people into a subscription. A large portion of their operating costs are supported by the advertisements that Adblock will block.

    7. Re:Ads by gman003 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Use the Firefox version. The Chrome version lacks several important features - the most significant one being that the Firefox version actually stops the blocked content from being downloaded, while the Chrome one only stops it from being displayed, due to Chrome not supporting that level of control in an extension. I would not be surprised if blocking video ads was also beyond the ability of the Chrome version.

    8. Re:Ads by gencha · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yeah, exactly. He wants to pay for a service. LOL! What an idiot. AMIRITE?

    9. Re:Ads by drinkypoo · · Score: 3

      Because if everyone started using Adblock these websites would disappear or force people into a subscription. A large portion of their operating costs are supported by the advertisements that Adblock will block.

      If they can't exist without ads I can't block, then I don't care if they can exist. I simply refuse to give up my brain to advertising. I need that space for minecraft and Doctor Who.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Re:Of course not by rudy_wayne · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It seems clear that the basic YouTube service will be free. The pay service will be for premium content.

    "Premium Content". I laugh every time I hear that phrase.

    What exactly would this "Premium Content" be? What do they have in that crappy little window that is so wonderful and "Premium" that I will gladly pay them for it?

  4. Youtube could potentially dominate all other video by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think that Google first proved that they are capable of delivering pretty 1080p video without stuttering, while leaving you the option for 720p if your internet or playback device can't handle 1080p. We'll see what content they will be offering, but I'm pretty sure about one thing: People are comfortable with Youtube as a video delivery system. You can bet that there will be living room devices that will seamlessly treat your subscribed Youtube channels as regular TV channels. Hopefully, future Youtube Android apps will allow you to pre-buffer the premium content so that you can watch it even when you don't have a good connection, for example, on a bus. If some of their subscriptions were things like Discovery Channel, ESPN and Comedy Central, how many people would drop their cable TV altogether? If these channels were on premium Youtube, the living room experience of watching them would be undiminished compared to cable TV, and all kinds of new options for VOD and watching on portable devices would open up. If Google does this right, the only people that will continue subscribing to cable TV will be luddites who can't be bothered to make Youtube work in their living room.

  5. Re:Great Content by Hatta · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you know where to look, there's lots of great content on YouTube. Personally, I enjoy watching Matt Chat, Lazy Game Reviews, and Classic Game Room HD, more than anything on TV. If you're a smart person who wants to share your passion with the world, YouTube is a much better place to do that than any television network.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  6. Re:Of course not by HaZardman27 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    TV shows and movies I would suspect.

    --
    Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
  7. Youtube streaming sucks. by csumpi · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm on a 50 mb/sec internet connection and can't stream youtube movies above 360p without the movie stopping every couple of minutes due to buffer underrun. I've no issues with amazon prime, hulu or netflix movies. I don't know why this only happens with youtube. I don't see why I'd be paying $1.99/month.

    1. Re:Youtube streaming sucks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Blacklist your ISP's local mirrors.

    2. Re:Youtube streaming sucks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    3. Re:Youtube streaming sucks. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's probably your ISP's fault. I know my ISP, Virgin Media, breaks Youtube.

      What tends to happen is that the ISP notices a lot of traffic coming from YouTube. So they call up Google and get some caching servers installed inside their network just to handle YouTube video. All YouTube traffic is intercepted and redirected to these caches and for about five minutes all is well. Then YouTube traffic doubles in a year but the ISP makes no effort to upgrade its caches and everything grinds to a halt.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  8. Re:Of course not by stfvon007 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Extended editions of cat videos.

    --
    All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
  9. Re: Of course not by Runaway1956 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well, dude, high school really is unfair! Hey, kids studied the multiplication table in ELEMENTARY SCHOOL! In high school, it's just assumed that you should be able to multiply without resorting to a verbal recitation of the table. The least they could do, is to post the table at the front of the room.

    But, worse - they expect you to divide, add, subtract, AND multiply, all in the very same equation! It's INSANE, I tell you! Stupid formulas, new rules, geometry, trig, calc - it just goes on and on, with no end in sight!

    --
    "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  10. Re:Of course not by tepples · · Score: 4, Informative

    What exactly would this "Premium Content" be?

    Videos that are more expensive to produce than advertisers alone are willing to pay for.

  11. Obligatory by CriminalNerd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You're just one step closer to the dystopian future of the all-despising baby skull: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2490

  12. Try different DNS settings by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    A common trick used by content providers is to have the same DNS entry resolve to different IP addresses in different parts of the internet so that you'll get content from a sever close to you.

    This doesn't seem to be working out for you.

    I suggest trying a different DNS provider and see what happens. Try using google's own DNS if you're not (set your DNS to 8.8.8.8) or, if you are, try using the ISPs.
    You'll probably need to flush your DNS in the operating system and probably restart your browser to clear its own DNS caches before this has any effect (on a mac you can flush your dns cache with the sudo dscacheutil -flushcache command from the terminal)

  13. Re:Of course not by BasilBrush · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sport seems the thing that an awful lot of people are prepared to pay stupid money for.

  14. Wrong by Triv · · Score: 4, Informative

    This seemed fishy considering the market, so I did some poking around and, surprise!: not only does the summary totally mangle the facts of the rumor - Youtube is supposedly going to start offering premium CHANNELS for 1.99/month EACH, not a Hulu or Netflix-type broad subscription - but it's only a rumor that google has neither confirmed nor denied.

    http://consumerist.com/2013/05/06/report-youtube-introducing-paid-subscription-channels-soon/

    Good job.