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Google Businesses The Internet

Google Video Store Announced 271

Posted by Zonk from the when-will-they-be-unveiled-as-the-illuminati dept.
acid06 writes "Engadget and BusinessWeek covers Larry Page's talk at CES regarding the much anticipated Google Video Store. The rumours proved to be true and they're really going online with CBS to sell commercial-free episodes of their series. Deals with NBA, Sony BMG and Greencine.com were also announced." From the BusinessWeek article: "The video providers have the option of offering content on a download-to-own or download-to-rent basis. In a sign that content owners will likely pursue different approaches through Google Video, the National Basketball Association will sell broadcasts of its games one day after the event for $3.95. Meanwhile, public television staple Charlie Rose will post his interviews the day after a broadcast, allowing a free streaming for the first 24 hours then making it downloadable afterward for 99 cents each. Meanwhile, CBS is selling episodes of its popular 'CSI' and 'Survivor' series at the standard iTunes price of $1.99 per download."
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Google Video Store Announced More

Google Video Store Announced

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  • What about Google Pack? (Score:3, Informative)

    by wordisms ( 624668 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:52PM (#14414614)
    Have you seen this?

    http://pack.google.com/ [google.com]

    Info here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]

    Busy day for Google.

  • Availibility (Score:3, Interesting)

    by heavy snowfall ( 847023 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:55PM (#14414631) Journal
    Will this be availible outside of the US too?

    I hope so, a lot of the good shows never make it over here while a most of the run of the mill sitcoms do.. :/
    • Yes but unfortunately they will all be region-coded.
    • In australia, for example, The Nine Network has the rights to CSI and Survivor through a deal with CBS.
      Part of that deal is gaurantees that the content wont be available on video formats in australia untill after the production or after the first australian airing (at least thats what I assume would be there).

      If CBS were to allow google video to release these to australia before Nine has aired them (which is what people would be looking for), Nine would have grounds to sue CBS for breach of contract (I su

    • Re:Availibility (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Pollardito ( 781263 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @03:19AM (#14415570)
      this BBC article [bbc.co.uk] addresses this just a little :
      Details about the service outside the US are sketchy. Mr Page said he expected different content to be available in different parts of the world, depending on rights issues. "The rights for video are really complicated so generally you are going to see video that is licensed for particular countries," he said.

  • Now we know (Score:5, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:56PM (#14414636) Homepage Journal
    We now know the answer to the previous slash article:

    If DVD Is Dead, What's Next? [slashdot.org]

    google Video store!

  • talk about a head start... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:56PM (#14414638) Homepage
    So Apple, and now google, have video offerings. Video blogs are popping up all over.... and microsoft is just getting around to launching a music store [urge.com] (that, by the way, isn't even open yet).

    ] I realize that Microsoft expects to be able to dominate by competing brutally on price, and by leveraging the xbox platform, but how much of a head start are they going to give Google?

  • Welcome... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Spytap ( 143526 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:57PM (#14414647)
    Welcome to the REAL cable a-la-carte, where I don't even need a connection to watch my favorite shows, just download them for 2 bucks a pop. If you normally watch 5 or 6 shows with any regularity, over a full 22 episode season, that comes out to 264 bucks a year. How much are you paying for cable yearly?

    • Re:Welcome... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @11:08PM (#14414697)
      If you normally watch 5 or 6 shows with any regularity, over a full 22 episode season, that comes out to 264 bucks a year. How much are you paying for cable yearly?

      $600 per year for cable. However I watch a lot more than just 5 or 6 shows. The cost per show has to drop significantly before this would be attractive for me, especially considering the poor video quality compared to my TV.

      • Re:Welcome... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by msobkow ( 48369 )

        ...poor video quality compared to my TV.

        That depends entirely on the technology being used. DiVX at 5-700MB/hour produces some damned fine video.

        And you'd probably be rather annoyed to realize that the digital feeds your cable provider distributes are only a higher bit rate because most of the feeds are still using older MPEG formats instead of MPEG4.

        • And you'd probably be rather annoyed to realize that the digital feeds your cable provider distributes

          I use my cable provider's (Comcast) analog feeds because there digital feeds are of poorer quality.

          But your point is taken.

          • their, not there. I do know grammar, it is just that sometimes it takes too long to get to my typing fingers. :)

          • Re:Welcome... (Score:5, Informative)

            by msobkow ( 48369 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @12:11AM (#14414960) Homepage Journal

            Err, you miss the point.

            Cable providers get the majority of their feeds via digital satellite nowadays, not analogue. They run it through hardware that reduces the MPEG blocking artifacts and blast it down their analogue pipes. In some cases, the digital-analogue conversions are done rather close to your house with a digital main trunk.

            Of course the average consumer doesn't realize that, so they make arguments like yours, thinking it's similar to the old vinyl vs. CD argument. I remember vinyl audiophiles insisting their records sounded better than CDs even for groups that were using CD-rate digital mastering back in the '80s. They simply refused to accept that the "improvement" was signal smoothing that is now done in the digital domain by high-end audio players.

    • Re:Welcome... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by prockcore ( 543967 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @11:10PM (#14414706)
      If you normally watch 5 or 6 shows with any regularity, over a full 22 episode season, that comes out to 264 bucks a year. How much are you paying for cable yearly?

      Definitely more than that, but I also have about 15 shows in my TiVo Season Pass list. Not to mention all the little shows on History Channel and Discovery that I watch randomly.

      I also get them from the cable company at 720x480, not 320x240.

      It's a far better deal to buy those shows on DVD anyway.. it's cheaper, you get extras like behind the scenes and commentary, and it's better resolution.
    • And the best part is no ads.
    • The first season of Lost (24 episodes plus extras) lists for $60. That's $2.50 an episode. You can find it a lot of places for around $40. That drops down to $1.67. I guess people are willing to pay this for a show they liked, so are they willing to pay $2 to get the show right now? One issue I see is it's on network tv. It's free so why would I pay for it. When it comes out on dvd, people switch in their minds, that they're paying for a dvd, not to watch tv.
      CSI and Lost are their big shows. So how much are
    • i think 132 hours of TV a year would be quite low compared to your typical viewer, but i guess the question really is how 132 hours of cable content + unlimited hours of local content compares (i.e. if you maximized value and bought only cable content with your 132 hours, do you typically only watch 20 minutes of cable TV a day?).

    • Re:Welcome... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Xugumad ( 39311 )
      Here's the thing... I'm much more interested in being able to get these shows on some sort of watch twice DRM. I don't tend to watch TV shows more than once anyway, so outright buying most of them is a waste of money for me. I want the DRM to give me the ability to watch it twice so that if there's a power cut the first time through, or there's something I want to go back and check, it's not an issue, and I don't want to be time limited either (the other alternative here).

      In the meantime, I rent DVDs from A
    • If you never had cable, you would never really be aware of those shows. Maybe it's not so bad.

      Now the cost of entertainment ought to drop so cable just has to provide more bang for the buck. Personally, it's always been too expensive and distracting, especially with so much info available in the written word. The ante has been raised - let's see whether cable will bring something I can't help buying.

      What I really like is the ability to watch something I like any time I want. Having the ability to buy video

  • Don't be ridiculous. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    People won't pay for things unless they have to, irrelavant of how one person may have higher moral standards, there are at least 100 for that one who think that, hell, people shouldn't have to pay for music unless they really like it.

    I, personally, think that MP3 file-sharing should be legalized as a type of on-demand radio. Similar to radio or TV, people can browse and listen to the stuff they like, and if they really like it they can go out and buy CDs or Box Sets of their shows.

    This is how it appears to

  • Google entering the entertainment distribution business while Microsoft parts with MSNBC [slashdot.org]

    The distinction is that google's is internet based.

    -metric

  • beyond American shores? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nighty5 ( 615965 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @11:00PM (#14414659)
    There is a whole world out there, and I just hope that Google comes to the party and starts selling videos beyond American shores .

    We're dying out here in Australia, our local content providers suck arse. They swabble over stations, muck about the times, cut shows mid season, cancel whole seasons, are usually up to 18 months behind the US in delivery. Its beyond contempt.

    We are entering a brave new world in video delivery content, finally, a medium that puts the consumer in charge of the loungeroom. Lets only hope that offshore countries are also in for the ride.

    • This is where "pirated" video content shows its most major benefits over the typical delivery medium chosen by the gods: international distribution. These content providers are still stuck in the twentieth century blindly assuming that there is no way to physically deliver content to all parts of the globe simultaneously. That may have been true a few years ago, but there has been this new-fangled "Internet" becoming more and more popular, and many have already found the low cost and ease of publishing an
    • US channels also mess with program times, cut shows mid season, cut content from shows to fit more ads in, cut content from shows to make them fit a 3:2 screen better, cancel whole seasons... and 18 months behind is nothing, here in the US we're not going to get Dr Who at all.
    • Yep the global whiteboard still has plenty of nationalistic uses, I live in Oz and respect the BBC as a source of news but they only download their video to the UK. I understand that it was paid for by the UK but still can't help being a little dissapointed. As an Aussie I find little to watch on the commercial channels, I also find it embarassing that Rupert Murdoch is identified as an Aussie. Most of my viewing time is spent watching the ABC or SBS, both (in my opinion) are world class broadcasters and we

  • I just hope (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @11:00PM (#14414661) Journal
    that they're not going to be in Flash Video (FLV) format

    You can download it off video.google.com, but it's a pain
  • Perhaps they are already in discussions with google?

  • Resolution? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WatertonMan ( 550706 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @11:03PM (#14414679)
    It isn't clear what the resolution is. The big problem with iTMS is that their resolution sucks. I can't imagine paying for those videos.
    • One of the big problems with the iTMS is that the resolution sucks. Another big problem is that the content sucks (it's mostly US major network TV). A third problem is I can't watch it on my portable video device, or on my TV, because of the DRM.

      Illegal downloads have none of those problems.
      • It's sad how "piracy" is the only "legitimate" way of getting quality content. If piracy charged money for the content which then went to the original creators, it'd be a great business model, but the content providers don't want to work for the consumer...

  • I have an uneasy feel about this (Score:5, Informative)

    by Psionicist ( 561330 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @11:04PM (#14414681)
    TFA doesn't say anything about DRM on the videos you can buy. I quote:

    ne of the more interesting aspects of the Video Store, however, is the fact that they're also making their non-copy-protected content available for download DRM-free encoded for the iPod and PSP (though there's also no word on what it is we're going to have to deal with in terms of DRM on purchased Google Video content).

    According to Wall Street Journal ( http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB11364381456 4838423-wGEG4V5bN3Q0Pm7bvt0ceWXfYjQ_20060112.html? mod=blogs [wsj.com] ):

    Some details of Google's online video service remain unclear, such as how much content owners might charge consumers to download their videos. Google last year had said it planned to allow content owners to charge for videos, but it hadn't activated that feature. Interest in delivering video over the Internet has surged since October, when Apple began offering downloads of popular TV shows through a partnership with Walt Disney Co. Google has developed its own digital-rights-management software to protect downloaded videos from piracy.

    So Google is now creating their own DRM. And they have a partnership with Walt Disney. Anyone else feel a conflicting interest here? Yeah, business is business, but I really liked the "do no evil"-mantra. At least I liked Googles _taste_. Buying AOL of all companies AND creating DRM is not what I'd expect from Google.

    On the other hand, Apple did it, and most people still like Apple. It's a sad world when the best we can do is hope for the lesser of all evils to win...
    • It's looks like the DRM wars are going to be the 00's version of the videotape format wars of the mid 70's. Google's bandwidth vs. Apple's hardware vs. Microsoft's monopoly power. Not sure what the consumer gets out of it, though.
    • Perhaps you should re-read that part about Disney again, because your quote is simply refering to Apple's deal... It says nothing about Google and Disney.

      While I do see Google's DRMed videos as a step in the wrong direction, I don't think you will find any studios willing to sell there works without it. Unfortunately content restrictions are the wave of the future. Economic Darwinism will find the closest balance between the restrictions the studios feel will earn them the most money, and the amount of BS c

    • I don't. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by acid06 ( 917409 )
      If anyone can possibly make a good and fair DRM system, it's Google.

      I don't know if they'll end up screwing this one up and end up just playing along the content providers game but there's a chance that a new breed of fair DRM will emerge from Google.

      I think that the DRM concept isn't necessarily the problem. The problem lies in its current implementations.

      Well, at least, most of them.

      It comes to me that a very nicely implemented sorta DRM system is Valve's Steam [steampowered.com]. It actually adds value, IMHO. I don'
      • I think that the DRM concept isn't necessarily the problem. The problem lies in its current implementations.

        The DRM concept is the problem. DRM is impossible and downright absurd. You know the old quote, "if you can see or hear it, it can be copied." DRM is a complete waste of time, money, and effort to create an artificial scarcity in a digital product. People will pay for an unencumbered product, but at the moment, "piracy" is the only way to go when it comes to getting unencumbered video content.
    • What is the likelyhood of any of the networks agreeing to work with Google on this if it didn't have DRM? Google has to abide by the content supplier's rules if they want to provide a way to distribute that content to people, and that's that. So long as they don't pull a Sony and install a nice friendly rootkit with it, I see no evil here.
  • Cable for TV watching is a "nice to have". Cable for internet access is a the real reason I have it.

  • PSP (Score:2, Informative)

    by BarryNorton ( 778694 )
    Glad to see that, according to the BBC [bbc.co.uk], unlike Apple, they're tackling both iPod Video and Sony PSP as mobile devices.

  • So, what about... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rpdillon ( 715137 ) * on Friday January 06, 2006 @11:10PM (#14414703) Homepage
    ...Linux support?

    For a company that is internet based and uses Linux heavily on the backend, I'm kind of surprised they don't support Linux more in their product lines to give back something to the community that helped them start up.

    I browsed through pack.google.com but didn't see any mention of a Linux offering now or in the future. I'd love to see Google Earth and Google Desktop on Linux, not to mention the video stuff.

    Anyone heard anything about this?
    • Yeah but the people who write the software that they're running, Linux, are a very small subset of the people using linux, me and presumably you. So if it's not gonna make them money, then why should they do it? I'm not saying they shouldn't, but just because they use linux doesn't mean they should develop software for other people that also use linux.

      They're still a business, they still need to make money and they are not always going to be "not evil".
  • It was a mathematical inevitability, eventually one of the google rumors on slashdot would come true :P

    I actually went browsing the iTunes video section, and it was sadly pretty bare. If these guys had a clue, they'd offer up twilight zone episodes; I'd blow my paycheck in a week. All in all, though, I'm pretty stoked.

  • Too expensive by an order of magnitude (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jherek Carnelian ( 831679 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @11:16PM (#14414732)
    Most tv shows have a budget under a couple of million per episode. Most tv shows do not make a profit until they hit syndication, which usually requires around 100 episodes in the can.

    TV show downloads have the potential to make first run TV shows profitable up front, no need for syndication. But pricing levels of $1 or $2 per show for non-niche shows are beyond reasonable.

    Take a look at "Lost," one of the most expensive shows on TV today, they've been doing around 20M viewers per episode in the USA alone. If only 10% of those viewers go to pay-for-download that's $4M per episiode, which is already turning a profit never mind the commercial fees for the remaining 18M viewers still watching it over the air with commercials. At 20% of the audience or just 4M viewers, the revenue becomes $8M which is probably significantly more profitable than any show ever in the history of US broadcasting.

    Thus these big-name, big-budget shows should tend to be priced closer to 20cents per episode if there was real competition. Similarly, the shows with smaller audiences often have much smaller budgets (for example an episode of anime usually costs $200K-$300K to produce) and should still be inline with pricing in the 15-30 cents/episode range.

    Don't even get me started on video quality - itunes video is far too low resolution, I believe a pseudo-HD resolution of around 960x540 ought to be an absolute minimum considering that MPEG4/AVC1/H264 can do that reasonably well in about 500MB.
    • I was going to say you need to factor in transfer costs, but actually they're very low.

      At serverbeach [serverbeach.com] you can get 2TB down the wire for $119. That's only $0.03 for each 500MB program. And I didn't even shop around.

    • Quite a few people are happy paying $0.99 for a 3 minute song.

      I find it hard to believe that fans of a TV series will not pay $2-3 for a show or movie, especially when many are already paying that to rent it from their local video store.

      Considering the convinience of downloading your shows onto your video IPod or other portable device (if DRM permits it) and you've got yourself a great stream of revenue.

      Then also consider those of us who don't want to pay upwards of $100/mo for cable TV. Soon (hopefully) w
      • Then also consider those of us who don't want to pay upwards of $100/mo for cable TV. Soon (hopefully) we can just pay $2-3 per show and get our fill of just the shows we want for maybe $10 or $20/mo.

        At $2/ep, watching just a single show per night will take you to $60/month. Those bucks add up real fast when you start to get anywhere near the average amount of american television that joe-sixpack and his family watches.

        If this business model is going to be successful it has to appeal to joe-sixpack at leas
      • Then by your math people should happily pay $40 for a 2 hour movie. Except they aren't and won't because they don't watch a movie dozens of times the way they listen to a song. More than that, it doesn't make financial sense to pay $50 for a season of a show at $2 per episode when the DVD will be $35. Except that at least the consumer gets the shows as soon as they air.

        Or they could just Tivo the shows, and save money even with the Tivo costs.

  • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I'm not surprised. Larry and Sergey always seemed like the type of guys that would work in a video store.

  • First the Google Pack is a brilliant bit of marketing. My guess is the Google Desktop hasn't been the fastest installed bit of software ever devised even though it is an excellent edition for windows. Let's call it Mac OS X Spotlight for Windows. They can now slip it in by trading on the positive Google image, an image that is trusted by the public. Now that is smooth.

    While some of the product choices are weak, partly because they needed something to round out the offering, in the long term this could be ho
  • Comcast has their video on demand infrastructure in place. Free & pay movies & shows.

    What's available?

    The same old tv shows over again(no new shows put in), incomplete seasons of shows, z-grade movies, ie nothing anybody would want to watch.

    If Google can get top-rate shows that people would actually want to watch(either just-aired or classic), more power to them. Comcast, even though they are a mega-corp, can't seem to get any decent programming on their VOD.

  • NBA (Score:5, Funny)

    by Paradise Pete ( 33184 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @11:41PM (#14414831) Journal
    National Basketball Association will sell broadcasts of its games one day after the event for $3.95.

    Day-old basketball for four bucks. Oh yeah, that'll be a million-seller.

  • From the Slashdot story: "Charlie Rose will post his interviews the day after a broadcast, allowing a free streaming for the first 24 hours then making it downloadable afterward for 99 cents each."

    This is excellent. Charlie Rose interviews are often the only way to know more about the leaders who affect our lives so much.

    In the past, Charlie Rose interviews have been available in transcript form, for a lot of money, and the transcripts are not guaranteed to be accurate. Videotape cost maybe $30, with
  • It seems odd that just one post ago [slashdot.org] we were debating the future of digital media, and now we're talking about downloading TV shows from the internet, and will then have the ability to burn them to DVD.

    So, who still cares about Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD? I know that what little inkling of opinion I had before doesn't really seem to matter anymore. As long as I have the source programming that I've downloaded and paid for, I can put it on whatever media I want to - or don't want to. Guess I'll have to build my o

  • Google is shipping DRM? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anthony Liguori ( 820979 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @12:23AM (#14414995) Homepage
    Google ships DRM.

    DRM is evil.

    Therefore Google is doing evil.

    Liars.
  • Now why would I want to pay several dollars an hour to download DRM encumbered content that probably only plays once and definitely will only play on your computer(s). You even have to provide your own bandwidth. The only player that will play the content might or might not run under WINE, and will be sluggish if it does run.

    Lets sum of the pros and cons of pay per view over internet (what Google is doing) and P2P:

    Pros of P2P:
    - Vast selection, including things intentionally kept out of circulation l
  • On my local news, they were saying the new video service will only be available on the new google pc's. I haven't seen much of an outcry out there, but I'm curious if anybody else has heard such a reference? (LA channel 9)
  • Click here [com.com] to watch the 9 minutes and 8 seconds keynote.

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