YouTube Now Streams Free Ad-Supported Movies -- Including 'The Terminator' and 'Hackers' (techcrunch.com) 86
YouTube's "Movies & Shows" page added a "Free to Watch" section last month. They're trying to compete with free ad-supported online movie offerings from Roku, Walmart, and Tubi, while "Amazon is rumored to be working on something similar," reports TechCrunch:
Before, YouTube had only offered consumers the ability to purchase movies and TV shows, similar to how you can rent or buy content from Apple's iTunes or Amazon Video.... Currently, YouTube is serving ads on these free movies, but the report said the company is open to working out other deals with advertisers -- like sponsorships or exclusive screenings.
YouTube's advantage in this space, compared with some others, is its sizable user base of 1.9 billion monthly active users and its ability to target ads using data from Google.
The 99 free movies include the first five Rocky movies, and four movies in the Pink Panther series (all from the post-Peter Sellers era, including the forgotten 1993 film in which the title theme is sung by Bobby McFerrin), as well as Pauly Shore's dreadful 1996 comedy Bio-Dome (which received a 4% rating on Rotten Tomatoes). Also available is James Cameron's original 1984 film The Terminator, the 2010 documentary With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story and the 1995 film "Hackers" starring Angelina Jolie.
"In this cyberpunk thriller, a renegade group of elite teenage computer hackers rollerblade through New York City by day and ride the information highway by night. After hacking into a high-stakes industrial conspiracy, they become prime suspects and must recruit the best of the cybernet underground to help clear their names."
YouTube's advantage in this space, compared with some others, is its sizable user base of 1.9 billion monthly active users and its ability to target ads using data from Google.
The 99 free movies include the first five Rocky movies, and four movies in the Pink Panther series (all from the post-Peter Sellers era, including the forgotten 1993 film in which the title theme is sung by Bobby McFerrin), as well as Pauly Shore's dreadful 1996 comedy Bio-Dome (which received a 4% rating on Rotten Tomatoes). Also available is James Cameron's original 1984 film The Terminator, the 2010 documentary With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story and the 1995 film "Hackers" starring Angelina Jolie.
"In this cyberpunk thriller, a renegade group of elite teenage computer hackers rollerblade through New York City by day and ride the information highway by night. After hacking into a high-stakes industrial conspiracy, they become prime suspects and must recruit the best of the cybernet underground to help clear their names."
Makes cord cutting that much easier (Score:4, Insightful)
Content with adds is most of what you pay the cable company twice for.
Re:Makes cord cutting that much easier (Score:4, Interesting)
>"Content with adds is most of what you pay the cable company twice for."
No, because I record everything on a TiVo and skip whatever I want. I haven't been forced to watch ads for 25 years and won't start now. Perhaps some people can tolerate it, I can't. This is why "streaming" is particularly dangerous- it is easy for a service to start adding ads that can't be skipped or fast-forwarded through.
Haven't listened to ad-laden radio for just as long.
Re: (Score:2)
Not to be nitpicky but the content still has adds, you're just removing them. Or did TIVO ever get it's ad skip feature back ?
Either way if you're comfortable with it, more power to you.
Re: (Score:2)
>"Not to be nitpicky but the content still has adds, you're just removing them. Or did TIVO ever get it's ad skip feature back ?"
Both. And yes. Most content still has ads, you can fast forward through anything, and some shows allow a skip feature.
>"Either way if you're comfortable with it, more power to you."
As long as we don't move to a model that forces unskippable/forwardable ads on most content, I am happy people have choices.
Re: (Score:2)
>"So you **are** watching the ads. You're just doing it in fast motion"
Well, no and yes. On those that are not skip-compatible, I am zooming past them at very high speed. About 5 seconds to skip through 4 or 5 minutes of them.
>"I just watched a coupe of movies on YouTube. The ads occur 10-15 minutes apart and are one ad long, which is sometimes as short as a five second flash screen."
That's not too horrible. But I am guessing if the content is more current/important/expensive, the ads would eventua
Re: (Score:1)
This is probably the first and only time Biodome and the phrase "quality content" will ever be used in conjunction.
Re:Makes cord cutting that much easier (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't been forced to watch ads for 25 years and won't start now.
This is how I feel about the Internet. I cringe every time I sit on some computer that doesn't have an adblocker installed, and I wonder how the heck do these people get anything done and not get seizures or something?
Once you get rid of ads in a part of your life, you understand just how much of an annoyance they are and you don't want to go back. In fact, I'd like to get rid of them in many more ways. Someone invented a prototype of glasses that filters out billboards. I'd buy that if it became available.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Try it, you won't go back.
Re: (Score:2)
Not available in your country (Score:2, Insightful)
Seems Google didn't make these available after all.
Re:Not available in your country (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems Google didn't make these available after all.
I wonder if this is likely to increase piracy of the movies in question that are "video blocked in country".
"Hey, that Stan Lee thing seems interesting."
"Oh, not available. :-("
"I wonder if there is a torrent...."
Re:Not available in your country (Score:5, Informative)
"Hey, that Stan Lee thing seems interesting." :-("
"Oh, not available.
"I wonder if there is a torrent...."
Obligatory Link: I tried to watch Game of Thrones and this is what happened. [theoatmeal.com]
I don't know of an XKCD link, sorry about that.
Re: (Score:3)
"We're sorry but this ebook is not available in your country (but we are happy to ship a hardcopy)"
Oh well maybe I can fool it by paying with credit card... Nope
Ok, maybe I can fool it by using PayPal and entering the address of some random US hotel... Nope
Oh look, the Pirate Bay has the torrent.
I do try to buy my stuff legally. Music is generally available these days, legally, with decent terms, no DRM, at a decent pric
Re: (Score:2)
Of course it does. In my case it does so for ebooks, or rather it used to do so.
I get irritated by authors/publishers who do not even have ebook versions of their books. How hard would it be to take the torrent of the fan-transcribed book and sell that one? OK, maybe you want to read it over to make sure that it doesn't have too many typos but it seems like it would be almost pure profit.
Re: Not available in your country (Score:1)
I got "not available in your state" back to piratebay I guess.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
And don't forget the POQZMQ channels and the HJMQZGG channels, not to mention the ever popular GIOWWE channels.
Re: (Score:2)
MGTOW is "men going their own way", which I understand to refer to a subculture of men who have embraced a life path other than a romantic relationship with a woman. What do the other initialisms stand for? Does GIOWWE have something to do with professional wrestling? Google Search couldn't find anything relevant for the other two.
Video not available. (Score:5, Insightful)
And content producers are probably still wondering why people download stuff
"Hackers" ad-supported? (Score:2)
Does it delete ads from your memory in return for watching Hackers?
Trying to compete... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Trying to compete with Kodi and the Pirate Bay?
No, because it looks like these are 480p.
Reliving my 1980's childhood with low quality video, complete with ads isn't really my thing.
In the meantime (Score:5, Interesting)
Criterion Collection (AKA WarnerMedia) has announced their plans to make their entire collection available for $9.99 a month or $89.99 for a year (for charter subscribers) to replace FilmStruck. It will be known as the Criterion Channel.
https://www.criterion.com/curr... [criterion.com]
Bio-Dome? I don't even think they play that on cable.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll pay $10 a month for the Criterion Collection in a heartbeat.
Pauly Shore was robbed in the Oscar nominations that year. ; )
Not Available On Your Country. (Score:3)
Hmm. (Score:2)
Hackers, heh, I need to watch that again now that I know better.
I was pleased while rewatching Wargames though. It has aged well since it was pretty good about using actual hacking techniques.
Rewatching Manhattan Project was...weird. Totally fine film in and of itself, but man, the world is a very different place now.
...by country (Score:5, Insightful)
Not everyone gets to watch. They are all blocked in my country. Maybe some of the 99 aren't but I didn't try them all. Those I checked are all marked as "not available in your country".
*sigh*... ok, here comes the VPN. Why they do such nonsense to us?
Re: (Score:1)
they are all blocked for me.
* fires up torrent client *
All The Good... (Score:1)
Need to fix the ads first (Score:5, Interesting)
In about 50% of ads I see on YouTube, the player fails to return to the video I want to watch at the end of the ad. I have to reload the page.
Re: Need to fix the ads first (Score:1)
You watched two whole movies 15 minutes ago?
Re: (Score:2)
Ads? (Score:2)
The combination of Pihole and Adblock has meant that I don't see ads on Youtube, except on our Nvidia Shield. On the Shield, Pihole blocks nearly all ads that interrupt a video, but not the ones that play at the beginning. This is just barely acceptable.
I turned off Pihole for an hour to solve an unrelated problem and experienced the full-fat ad experience on the Shield. This is not something I could stomach and would pay for Youtube Premium...at least for the winter months when the weather pushes me into
Please combine them. (Score:3)
Old and new again (Score:2)
Big deal (Score:1)
Don't care (Score:2)
If applied intelligently, it could be great (Score:2)
There are a ton of old movies that are periodically put up that studios don't seem to be interested in investigating whether or not there would be any public interest in them. For the price of scanning them in (which they may have done already), they can put them up on YouTube and gauge customers' interest while bringing in a few bucks.
For the public, this could mean finding lost classics as well as giving scholars a chance to look back in history. There are a few movies I'd love to go back and watch ("Th
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
For the public, this could mean finding lost classics
archive.org already has been filling that need. They archive classic movies for posterity, without ads and other nonsense youtube foists.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanx for the link - unfortunately, I really couldn't find any classic Hollywood movies.
Strange Love (Score:2)
If you want to see a good film noir on YouTube right now, check out THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS (1946), starring Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin and a 24 year old, smoking hot Lizabeth Scott. It's good nasty fun and there are no commercials. It was directed by the great Lewis Milestone.
Here's a link. Don't ever say I ain't done nothing for you.
https://youtu.be/wHVGP8S984c [youtu.be]
And...? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
VIDEO UNAVAILABLE
The uploader has not made this video available in your country.
I take it as a message that they want me to pirate.
“Rocky” was a great movie (Score:3)
Thank goodness Stallone and his team didn’t succumb to avarice and produce any cookie-cutter sequels.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Not available in your country." (Score:2)
I.
HATE.
Geoblocking.
Just saying.
At Last (Score:1)