YouTube, after a dabble in renting Sundance films has expanded and made open a new video rental program at YouTube.com/Store.
The company did not find much profit in its earlier ventures into the rental space, meaning that expectations for its current product are low. Videos for rent cost between $0.99 and $3.99 for a 48 hour period.
While it is a nice addition to YouTube, expanding its content from free user uploaded streams to full feature films, the product suffers from a chronic lack of content. Before we delve into that, it should be noted that YouTube now supports HD streaming, which will render rentals rather high quality.
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Content Is King, YouTube Rentals Is A Pauper
I searched for three movies, each a major film that did over one hundred million dollars in box office revenue, (Lord of the Rings, 8 Mile, Man on Fire), and YouTube had not a one.
It seems that at the moment YouTube Rentals is a portal to rent a smaller selection of independent and Bollywood films, with the occasional major movie mixed in. Lionsgate, for example, has a mere 38 movies on YouTube for rent.
That could change of course, YouTube Rentals does have Google’s bank account and regular YouTube’s tens of millions of viewers. This could be a match made in heaven. For now, it remains what appears to be a smaller experiment without much polish.
For now, Netflix is still king of rentals. While they still mail them to your door, they have the ones you need.
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