Google Strikes Deal With Paramount 105
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."
I'll stick with Netflix streaming, thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
Poor DVD sales? (Score:4, Insightful)
How about making movies that are actually worth buying? Instead of just remaking, or worse, re-releasing movies for a blatant money grab.
Re:Your own country's film industry perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Poor DVD sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
Too late for me (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Too expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
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?