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Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

(tedium.co)
641 points shortformblog | 2 comments | 05 Feb 25 14:47 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | source
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lxgr ◴[05 Feb 25 15:40 UTC] No.42950057[source]▶
Old movies have been available on various "free ad-supported streaming television" for a while now, so I'm actually more surprised it took copyright holders that long to realize that Youtube also shows ads and doesn't require people to install some wonky app that might or might not be available for their platform.

Of course, region-specific copyright deals are incredibly complex etc. etc., so I could imagine it was just a matter of waiting out until the last person putting up a veto retired or moved on to other things.

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SteveNuts ◴[05 Feb 25 16:17 UTC] No.42950694[source]▶
I assume that bandwidth is by far the biggest cost for running your own streaming service, so letting Google take that hit makes a lot of sense.
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TuringNYC ◴[05 Feb 25 18:37 UTC] No.42953063[source]▶
>> I assume that bandwidth is by far the biggest cost for running your own streaming service, so letting Google take that hit makes a lot of sense.

Judging from the clunky, buggy, nonsensical experiences on 2nd tier streaming services (i.e., everything except Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Disney+, Max), I'd say the biggest cost is probably hiring a decent Engineering+Product+Test team. There are complexities here, like making these things work on different TV brands, versions, older models, etc.

Pushing all the complexity to YT seems like a total no-brainer.

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dade_ ◴[05 Feb 25 19:11 UTC] No.42953557[source]▶
don’t forget the burning paper bag of shit that is Paramount+ on PS5. There is no shame anymore.
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1. organsnyder ◴[05 Feb 25 21:40 UTC] No.42955592[source]▶
Paramount+ on iOS was terrible the last time I used it, too. I tend to binge Star Trek on flights, so I like to download a bunch of episodes. Paramount+ had such a terrible experience (at least 10% of the time videos would be downright corrupted), I ended up cancelling my standalone subscription and getting it through Apple TV so I could use the Apple TV app.
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2. KerrAvon ◴[06 Feb 25 00:38 UTC] No.42957487[source]▶
The Apple TV app is 100% the only way to cope with Paramount+. Of all the streaming services I use regularly -- Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Peacock, YouTube -- it's the only one that doesn't work for me more often than not when using the app directly.