YouTube is continuing to expand its video rentals store despite viewers having so far failed to bite in any big way. The latest move will see partners given the means to upload content to the site with the specific intent to rent it out to users.

YouTube Video Rentals

YouTube made the move into video rentals in time for the Sundance Film festival in January. Five independent films were offered during this trial period, with YouTube pulling in around $10,000 in total during that time.

Fast-forward to April and the YouTube video rentals store officially opened for business. Films and TV shows belonging to multiple genres can now be rented for 48 hours for a fee ranging from $0.99 and $3.99.

The store is still limited to the U.S., and still isn’t being promoted in any big way.

Continue Reading…

The third annual Indian Premier League cricket tournament has just ended, and all matches were available to watch, for free, on YouTube.

Flushed with that success, Google is now reportedly looking to do deals which will see other live sports shown on YouTube.

YouTube Diversifying

YouTube is now much more diverse in its video output than it was when Google took over. Sure, the vast majority of the one billion videos streamed every day are still user-generated content, but there are other options.

YouTube now carries TV programming, dedicated music video channels, and even movies, both free and to rent. And sport can also be added to the list, first with coverage of the Beijing 2008 Olympics and more recently all 60 matches from the IPL shown on the site.

Continue Reading…

Google seems to be obsessed with minimalism at the moment. Not content with fading away most elements of its homepage, it is also continually tinkering with YouTube to make everything but the video as unobtrusive and streamlined as possible.

YouTube Redesign

YouTube’s video pages have been given a major makeover in the last few months. What started as an experimental new look on TestTube, YouTube’s ideas incubator, last December, started being rolled out in January, with even more changes occurring in February.

The overall idea of the redesign was one of minimalism, with everything Google considered non-essential being removed. New features were also added, with video queuing and video comments integrated into the text comments two major new features.

But while the pages which framed and contained the videos were given a makeover, the actual video player was left alone. Until now.

Continue Reading…

YouTube has now officially opened its video rental store, with mainstream offerings joining the independent, documentary, and Bollywood films already available. But can it possibly compete with Apple iTunes?

YouTube Rentals

YouTube is slowly but surely expanding the boundaries of its business. As well as TV-on-demand, the other big rollout of the past few months is video rentals, intended to compete with the likes of Apple iTunes and Amazon Video On Demand.

This was first rumored last September, and a trial of the video rentals store took place in January around the Sundance Film Festival. Only five films were on offer, all of which were indie flicks.

Continue Reading…

One of the biggest and best Web video memes of the past few years is the one which sees Hitler’s final bunker speech from Downfall altered to make reference to the story of the day. But it could be all over, as copyright claims come a-calling.

Web Video Memes

Web video memes are quite numerous, but the really good ones, the gems, are few and far between. We try to sort the wheat from the chaff, to save everyone else the trouble of doing so, over at WebTVHub.

Rickrolling and its various different incarnations is one of the best-known, and the recent Nike commercial starring Tiger Woods and his dead father is another.

However, the cream of the crop has to be the Hitler Downfall meme, which has spawned a huge amount of video parodies since the release of the film in 2004.

Continue Reading…

As you’re no doubt aware, YouTube is immensely popular, with viewers around the world lapping up content from the online video service. Which is fine, except if you’re expected to pay the bandwidth bill.

You Watch YouTube

We all watch YouTube. Whether actually via the site or via one of the videos embedded around the Web, from our own WebTVHub, to Facebook, to blogs galore which use the service as the simplest way to show videos to their readers.

YouTube is by far the biggest online video service, delivering in excess of one billion views a day. And it’s used for both UGC and full-length premium content. All of which is available to watch at the press of a button.

Continue Reading…

Google has acquired Episodic, a smaller, lesser-known rival to Brightcove and Ooyala. Details of the deal have not been revealed, and it’s unclear what, apart from Episodic’s technology and staff being woven into YouTube, this means.

Google & Episodic

Google seems to be on a bit of a buying spree at the moment, with multiple companies being brought into the fold during the first few weeks of 2010. February saw Google finalize a deal to acquire video compression specialists On2, and now Episodic has been added to the shopping list.

Episodic is an online video hosting platform which helps publishers and marketers “stream, measure and monetize” video content to the Web or mobile devices such as the iPhone.

Continue Reading…