Film fans can now watch full-length movies on the video-sharing website YouTube.
Around 1,000 films are available on the site, which is owned by internet search firm Google, after it signed a deal with studios including Warner Bros and Universal.
Among the available titles are Reservoir Dogs, Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, and Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels.
A spokeswoman for YouTube said: “Today we announced another step in the direction of becoming an entertainment destination for all things video. In addition to the short form, user and professionally produced content that you know and have come to expect from YouTube, full-length feature films have been added to YouTube in the UK.”
Films will cost from £2.49, will normally be rented for 30 days, and viewers will typically have 48 hours to finish watching the film once they have started. The scheme was introduced in the United States in May and Canada in September.
Google boss Dr Eric Schmidt told this year’s Edinburgh International Television Festival that programme makers should use YouTube to try out shows to see if they will be hits before putting them on television. The firm has faced criticism in the past and has been accused of “trying to take over the world”.
Google is locked in a lawsuit with Viacom, which owns MTV, over what Viacom says is “rampant infringement” of copyright on YouTube.
Dr Schmidt said the television industry should use YouTube to test its products. He said: “The stuff you do is very expensive and you do pilots and trials and so on.
“Wouldn’t it be better if you could release inexpensive versions on YouTube and see if they took … let’s say you could build something for YouTube for 100,000 dollars, it was 10 minutes long and it was fun and it was interesting and then the cost of the proper production for a half-an-hour show was a million dollars, so something where there is an order of magnitude, or some difference.
“You could have 10 different shots at, if you will, trying an idea, trying a star, trying a construction and then measure what happens on YouTube.”
Source : Orange News
