Is YouTube Launching a Netflix Competitor? 162
RedEaredSlider writes "YouTube could become the latest to offer a movie rental service, challenging streaming sites such as Netflix. Google is lining up deals with major Hollywood studios in order to launch the service. An anonymous executive at a studio that has signed on said Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Brothers, Lionsgate and Universal have all licensed their movies to the service. Not everyone is on board — Paramount, Fox and Disney declined to join."
Good luck with that (Score:5, Interesting)
Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Brothers, Lionsgate and Universal have all licensed their movies to the service.
How many movies? In what release window? will they be in HD? Will my xbox/PS3/blu-ray player support their streaming? Will they mail physical copies of movies that aren't available for streaming to my mailbox within 24-hours? What's the monthly fee?
Until these and many more questions are answered, I wouldn't call them a Netflix competitor at all. Netflix has established themselves as the guys to beat. And even if you can match their streaming service, you're damn sure going to have a tough time beating their mail service. And their mail service is still where I get most of my movies from them (since streaming is still only available for a fraction of their library). The fact that they're still missing three major studios doesn't give me much confidence that they're going to represent any real threat to Netflix. Blockbuster, Walmart, Apple, Amazon, and Hulu have all tried (often with half-assed efforts) to beat Netflix before. So you had better bring your A-game if you hope to do any better than they did.
Of course, they will decidely have an upper hand over Netflix in offering short videos of guys getting kicked in the groin and whiney teenagers crying about their tough suburban lives on webcams. I'll leave if for others to judge if that's an advantage or disadvantage.
Great, Market Fragmentation (Score:4, Interesting)
I can see it now.
Netflix will have an exclusive agreement with one group of studios.
Google will have an exclusive agreement with another group of studios.
Amazon will have an exclusive agreement with yet another group.
The result will be that you'll have to buy all three services to see all the movies you want... I can't wait.
Didn't think I'd champion Silverlight... (Score:5, Interesting)
But YouTube's "buffering" and Flash problems are worse for me than Netflix has *ever* been in streaming content. I can watch a movie in HD and if my connection starts to suck, the movie starts streaming at a lower quality in order to keep playing. Flash can't do that, and YouTube can't do that.
So no, I think that until we are all on HTML5 (no time soon) or until Google decides to use Silverlight to do the streaming, Netflix has no competition in this space.