Sony Pictures in Talks With YouTube 84
CNet is reporting that Sony Pictures may be in talks with YouTube to license full length movies to the video sharing site. Set to post nearly a half a billion dollars in losses this year, YouTube could certainly use some juice to combat sites like NBC-owned Hulu which already has an array of movies for streaming. "Details about what a final agreement could look like are sparse, but any partnership between the two powerhouses would likely benefit both. Representatives from both companies declined to comment. Word of the negotiations comes a week after Disney announced it had licensed short-form content to YouTube. Those clips will come from a range of Disney brands, including ABC and ESPN. For YouTube, obtaining short-form clips from Disney is an important step but still doesn't provide what YouTube needs most."
Re:YouTube nearly bankrupt? (Score:3, Informative)
Hulu's quality pales in comparison to that of a decent encode you could:
Make yourself
Download from the intertubes.
Re:People don't have any standards anymore ... (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah right.
It'd be in a .DLM wrapper (DownLoadMax) with the Super Downloaded Video codec for video and SDDS and ATRAC for the audio tracks.
Also, you'd need an SDVF (Super Downloaded Video File) player to play it. The logo would look neat but you'd never see it on any consumer device from anyone but Sony.
BluRay titles from Sony will feature a digital copy of the film in SDV format, but you will still have to download them to a super memory stick super. All you get is an authorization code. Some collector's editions may include the copy on a separate useless mini frisbee (umf) disc.
(Hint: I am referencing betamax, sdds, super audio cd, minidisc, umd, memory stick pro, and other sony abortions).
Re:YouTube nearly bankrupt? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:YouTube nearly bankrupt? (Score:3, Informative)
Most people would much rather directly stream a fairly high quality video, than wait 3 hours for some pixelated piece of crap rared into 50 different password protected files.
I don't know where you've been pirating, but the worst case is 50 different non-protected rar files. Quality is generally very good, much better than Hulu. Additionally, I can play it wherever I want, without an Internet connection, without waiting through 15-30 seconds of ad at every seek, on any video player that can handle it -- which means my own keybindings, not Hulu's -- oh, and Flash sucks for video, compared to just about any standalone video player.
I stopped watching Naruto when it got picked up by Hulu -- and thus, Dattebayo stopped subbing it -- and thus, quality, both of the subs and of the encode, dropped massively. Additionally, in order to display the Hulu and Viz Network logos, the entire video was encoded at a 4:3 resolution with black bars. Thanks to being played through Flash, I couldn't do the usual mplayer trick to crop those out. That means there are ginormous black bars inside of ginormous black bars, making the video look tiny on my full HD monitor (widescreen, of course).
You've provided a good summary of Hulu's business model, but the simple truth is, piracy continues to provide better quality in just about every respect. The only advantage Hulu provides is that it streams out of the box on most systems -- no need to install a BitTorrent client, then PeerGuardian, then wait a half hour or so for whatever it is to download.