←back to thread

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

(tedium.co)
641 points shortformblog | 1 comments | 05 Feb 25 14:47 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
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.

replies(12): >>42950694 #>>42950872 #>>42950880 #>>42951141 #>>42951145 #>>42951447 #>>42951871 #>>42952649 #>>42956486 #>>42956621 #>>42960083 #>>42962040 #
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.
replies(12): >>42950809 #>>42950826 #>>42950879 #>>42951020 #>>42951166 #>>42952128 #>>42953063 #>>42953304 #>>42954303 #>>42957205 #>>42964930 #>>42965743 #
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.

replies(9): >>42953291 #>>42953557 #>>42958927 #>>42959986 #>>42961969 #>>42965417 #>>42965563 #>>42965935 #>>42970104 #
1. mfrommil ◴[06 Feb 25 19:20 UTC] No.42965563[source]▶
>> I'd say the biggest cost is probably hiring a decent Engineering+Product+Test team

Part of it is cost, but a lot is culture and leadership. Streaming (especially live) is one of the toughest areas to maintain a good user experience. I've led Streaming Product teams for years. Product teams almost always needs to deliver growth, which comes in the form of new features, monetization, and other changes. But the user cares most about the core experience - did the video start playing without a delay? Were there buffering issues? Audio playback out of sync? Issues are very noticeable, and sometimes very difficult to test proactively for. Product needs to find this balance, and can not go 100% all in on growth and neglect the not sexy stuff. If the whole Product/Engineering/Test org is not aligned on stability/QoE being a top priority, it can degrade very quickly after a few releases for a streaming app.