
Movie rental page on YouTube - anigbrowl
https://www.youtube.com/user/movies
======
nakedrobot2
"This video is not available in your country.

Sorry about that."

No problem. The Pirate Bay is still available in my country.

~~~
Brajeshwar
Now, I'm surprised. My country is supposed to be the one that has to always
encounter, "Not available in your Country."

But these movies are available in Indian Rupee and they're cheap. ₹100 ($1.63)
for Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

I'm India. :-)

~~~
prawn
Captain America is listed at AU$19.99 here (US$18.56)...

It's not clear whether you're "buying" or "renting" at that price on the
index. If I click on a buy button, it gives me a message about a Google+
account page and won't let me proceed. Google's account arrangement is
absolutely terrible.

~~~
quaunaut
It's been one singular account across their entire system for well over a year
now. C'mon.

~~~
sesqu
I get an error stating that I can't use my Youtube account, I have to use my
Gmail account. When I do that, it automatically creates another Youtube
account for me.

Or something like that. I've given up on understanding their accounts logic,
it's hard enough to keep up with the changes to the player and site.

~~~
markbernard
You can link your old youtube account to your gmail account.

~~~
sesqu
Yes, that's why I now have approximately 4 youtube accounts.

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codemac
Things seem to be more expensive than amazon, and then of course even more
account fuckery from Google:

    
    
        > Purchases are not available
        >
        > Channels linked with a Google+ page, such as codemac, can't make purchases on YouTube.
        >
        > To watch this video, you'll need to switch to your codemac@gmail.com account.
    

I'm not even sure what that means.

~~~
akurilin
Semi-seriously, knowing G+, part of me wouldn't be surprised if there was a
list of real people's names publicly available somewhere indicating who bought
what movie.

~~~
pjc50
Which is one of the few things that the US actually has privacy laws against:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act)

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tachion
'This video is unavailable in your country'. As long as that happens, things
like PopcornTime or any other human approachable piracy _will_ continue to
exist. Hopefully, the mentioned PopcornTime will 'disrupt the market' enough
for the people to understand that the problem isnt in the fact wether I want
to pay for the content or not, because I want to, for a long, long time now,
but in the fact that I want it now, not tomorrow, not in a month, not when I
am in the blessed land of this or another country...

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adnam
I would love to use this, but in Spain it only offers films overdubbed into
Spanish and no subtitles.

~~~
vinc
My browser is in English, and so are all my Google/YouTube settings, yet the
movies are also dubbed in another language based on my current IP address.
YouTube should respect my language setting.

~~~
fla
Please Google, fix this. In Switzerland we have 3 main languages over a very
small territory. Some Google services respond with content randomly in German,
Italian or French, sometimes even mixed (ex: Playstore shows different
language for titles than descriptions. Youtube loves to show me German videos
... ).

I'd be very interested on why they choose to guess the language based on IP.
What could be the advantage ?

~~~
freehunter
This is annoying to me in the US as well. I'm trying to stay fluent in my
other language, and finding good non-English content on Amazon, iTunes,
Netflix, Spotify, etc is close to impossible. No matter what my language is
set to.

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loomio
$12.99 to rent a digital movie? As we say here in New Zealand, "Yeah, nah."
Considering most people here also have capped data, we'd essentially be paying
twice.

~~~
jasonkostempski
It's probably to buy. The way they're presenting pricing is horrible.

------
SG-
I'm not sure how the US pricing compares, but CAD rental and purchase prices
seem a bit higher than iTunes Store ($1 more per rental and $5 more for a
sale).

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lsv1
$20 to rent the Amazing Spiderman 2? Are you fucking daft? It's not worth $20
for the blu-ray or god forbid a DRM free download.

What a farce.

~~~
melvinmt
It's probably only available "to own", not to rent.

~~~
lsv1
To own until the studio pulls it ಠ_ಠ. [https://torrentfreak.com/amazon-pulls-
access-to-purchased-ch...](https://torrentfreak.com/amazon-pulls-access-to-
purchased-christmas-videos-during-christmas-131216/)

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psykovsky
€7,99 for a movie rental? right...

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yzzxy
This feature is several years old, IIRC?

Some of these movies seem quite new. Snowpiercer is still in theaters I
believe.

~~~
notatoad
Snowpiercer has been widely released already. it's one of those movies that
struggled to find distribution and went to DVD and streaming before it hit
most theatres. it's been on available on torrents for almost half a year now.

------
rohitarondekar
Probably a precursor to Play Store Movies:
[https://play.google.com/store/movies](https://play.google.com/store/movies)

~~~
mynameisvlad
Pretty sure Play Store Movies just use Youtube for Browser streaming, so it's
all the same system just different frontends for it.

------
Multics
I tried this about a year ago. Or at least some considerable time ago.

Next I'll be seeing a story about this newfangled 'Bitcoin'!

Here's a news article from 2011:
[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/oct/07/youtube-
on...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/oct/07/youtube-online-movie-
rental-service)

Anyway, the movie I streamed worked well. Instant, and easy!

------
kungfooey
Purchasable movies have started showing up in search results lately (ex:
search for 'shaun the sheep' or 'earnest and celeste'). That's fine, but it's
rather disappointing (inconvenient?) that there doesn't appear to be a filter
that limits the search to "free" content.

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akurilin
Haven't tried this yet, but I'm curious: will this work on stock Ubuntu Trusty
Firefox or Chrome without having to go into ricer mode? Amazon rented movies
don't work, Netflix doesn't work by default, have to resort to using the iPad.
Yes yes pipelight, I know.

~~~
dkns
Yes, it works for me on Firefox on Ubuntu 14.04. This is just normal youtube
page. No special plugins needed (except for flash, of course).

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kolev
This is some patchwork page (/user/movies) and authors being the movie studios
(/user/sonypictureshomeent). As somebody mentioned earlier, this is precursor
to the Play Movies page. I'm not sure why it's still around.

------
probably_wrong
I'm only being shown free and/or cheap movies. I guess there must be some sort
of system in place that doesn't let me see whatever you are all talking about
(Germany).

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shmerl
How do they implement the "rental" part, with some sort of DRM? Rental is a
nonsensical practice for digital media really. Being bent on this idea leads
these renting services to employ DRM. It's not only stupid, there is no real
reason for applying the renting approach to begin with. Digital goods aren't
limited like physical ones are, so there is no point in renting them out to
get them back for reuse.

Simple pay / purchase approach works for digital goods the best, and that more
naturally can remain DRM-free.

It has the "Buy" option there by the way. Is it DRM-free? Why can't they just
make one option with lower price for "Buy"?

~~~
Navarr
The movies are only streamable, so yeah completely DRM. Buy or rent. It's
essentially just Google Play Movies.

------
jankeromnes
Overdubbing is the worst. Original languages, please!

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pan69
Get a Chromecast and it'll make sense.

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witty_username
Isn't this from Google Play movies?

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cylinder
Are there any ways to access Google Play rentals via LGTV Smart TV interface?

------
fred_durst
Top Selling: Dead Poets Society

): Nothing sadder than profiting off death.

~~~
pestaa
It's a great and touching movie, and people thought they would watch it again.
There are no hidden motives.

~~~
fred_durst
But when you realize that these moments are built into the profit model when
deciding to fund films, it is a bit sad.

~~~
k-mcgrady
You seriously believe that when they made that movie they though, "we can
allocate a little more to the budget because it'll get a bump when he dies in
25 years."???

~~~
fred_durst
I've actually been in that meeting where it was discussed about when someone
would die. So I wouldn't be surprised. Either way, I can assure you it's part
of the revenue forecast.

~~~
k-mcgrady
I could see that being true if it's an older actor (a legend in their 70s
working on a movie guaranteed to be a hit) but he was in his 30's when that
movie came out. Predicting that far in to the future would be stupid
considering how much the entertainment industry has changed in the last 25
years (VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, Digital, Streaming) and the fact that the production
and distribution companies may not even be around anymore (I think in this
case they are but that's a big prediction 25 years out). Also, if the internet
hadn't come along the number of people rushing out to buy this on DVD would be
much smaller. It's unlikely it would be in stock and by the time it was
stocked people would have moved on.

So if you are factoring the actors death into your budget when creating the
movie you're either a total idiot or willing to predict:

\- An instant-seamless distribution system, aka the internet

\- Your company will be around 25-50 years from now

\- Robin Williams will become an immensely popular actor

\- This movie will be so good lots of people will want to watch it in 25 years

Edit:

I can see this being more likely in the music industry as I think people are
much more likely to go back and listen to an old album: they see an artist
die, they think, "I used to love that band" and they buy the album. With
movies, until the digital era arrived, I don't think people did that as much.

