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UK Channel 4 Putting Full TV Shows On YouTube
from the don't-need-another-site dept
mowgs points out that Channel 4, over in the UK, has done a deal with YouTube to put all its shows online. Not just clips -- the entire shows. While many people still seem to think that YouTube is just about individuals uploading stuff, it seems like the company has focused on getting a lot more official content on the site as well. While Hulu has some nice features, YouTube still destroys Hulu in traffic -- and unlike Hulu, YouTube doesn't block out visitors from other countries. Recently, even I can't get to Hulu. Because I use a VPN for security purposes, Hulu claims that I'm trying to sneak in from another country, even as I sit here in California (home of Hulu). Why does the entertainment industry always default to "you must be a criminal unless you can prove otherwise" thinking?
Reader Comments
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Kudos to Channel 4 for realizing that YouTube is not "The Enemy".
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loon is a fag
loon is a fag, youtube does block by country and even blocks mobile phones from some content
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Get off my computer son!
Snooze, this is your mother. Get off my computer, I told you about this! Once I get home, your ass is mine! and not like the other night which we can both agree was a mistake and really pretty pitiful, somewhat painful for us both.
BTW, its true, youtube does block by country.. so its not really any better than Hulu. Criminals!
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Actually it's usually not YouTube, but countries and mobile providers doing the blocking.
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Also kudos to channel 4, but YouTube is as useless as Hulu, lately. Half the videos are blocked because of location/DMCA complaints. Or they have music removed. There is a message stating that, also: "YouTube has blocked this video because of your location" (paraphrasing). Absurdly, they even have local videos (from Argentina) blocked because of DMCA complaints. As if Argentina had that!! When I need to actually watch something, I generally google it and avoid YouTube. Your absurd laws are killing YouTube, and Google is letting it die (which is, I know, an absolute overstatement).
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Same anonymous as 5, here. It's really weird. I did some of the searches that made me leave YT (the Alien Song, some webisodes, some local shows) and it's all there. I clearly remember a week when I couldn't see anything, and I had all these annoying "You're not welcome here" messages. They must not be notifying (and simply deleting) anymore, and the number of uploaders must be beating the number of downloaders. It's kind of like a wikipedia effect. The change gets "reverted" so fast you don't even notice. So I take that back: YT is useful, and Google is still letting it die but since it's so strong now it won't. Hulu I could never actually use, so for me it's useless.
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From channel 4, when trying to see Skins: "The service is not currently available in your area". Cool.
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VPN
Just out of curiosity where is the endpoint of your VPN? All the website should see is the client IP (in the case if a VPN the endpoint), not that there is a VPN feeding it. So if you are coming out of the US it should never know the difference.
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Re: VPN
Just out of curiosity where is the endpoint of your VPN? All the website should see is the client IP (in the case if a VPN the endpoint), not that there is a VPN feeding it. So if you are coming out of the US it should never know the difference
That used to be the case, but in the last few weeks, suddenly I started getting a message from Hulu saying "It appears you are using a proxy for anonymizing, and thus we cannot establish your location." And then says I can't watch..
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Already online
Just to be clear, channel 4 already puts all this stuff online for free in the UK as part of its 4od service, http://www.channel4.com/programmes/4od
The news here is simply that it is also putting them on youtube. As such this is just a logical next step, even if google was paying nothing for all this content, channel 4 is just getting a shit load of free video hosting for content it has online for free already. It's a no brainer really.
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Blocking sites is a pain
I absolutely hate it when sites are regionally blocked. I was deployed to Iraq but couldn't watch Hulu or other sites because of the blocking. The only way I could watch shows was to download them via bittorrent or other "illegal" method. Though, I don't think Iraq had laws against it at the time, so maybe I wasn't really being illegal.
All these sites do is minimum the number of viewers they get, hence reduce the number of potential customers and ad viewers. Cross-border copyright restrictions are simply stupid, but I realize that companies must protect their intellectual property at all costs.
On another note, YouTube just isn't the best for watching videos. I haven't looked in a while, but the last few times I tried to watch something on there, the video was so horribly compressed as to be essentially unwatchable. Are the "professional" videos better or do they suffer from the compression/bandwidth issues too?
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Really strange, I cannot get hulu content because i am in Sweden but the VPN provider i use still gets Hulu content...
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Hulu's blocking is for economical reasons
The official justification for Hulu's blockings is economic. Unlike Youtube (though its owner Google), Hulu doesn't own zillio-meters of optic fibers all other the world.
Video bandwidth is expensive, and it is worth paying it only if the viewer is a potential customer for the advertisement market. Viewers from most countries outside US might not be as frequent buyers than customers from the US, for several reasons (increased prices of shipping, tariffs, delays, risks of transactions with a company very far away...).
By limiting their users' base to the US, they also limit the ad-viewers' base to a well-described and a more buying-prone population. This way they can market their ads at a higher price.
I don't mean it should be like this, marketing to the world is surely a better strategy. Just they do what they believe is better for their business—cut the costs and select a good customer base. We can just sit there and let the future prove them wrong.
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All I can see on youtube is short clips, generally less than 2 minutes. Big fucking whoopee.
If I follow the link for watching full programs I get the following message:
This service is not currently available in your area.
Click here to access our help section.
And I can tell you right now it is NOT my internet provider in New Zealand blocking this. It's channel4.com refusing to give me anything. In fact if I click on the "Click here" link it tells me this:
Can I watch 4oD in another country?
Rights agreements mean that our 4oD service is only available in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, (although C4 does not always have rights for programmes in ROI). Even if you are a citizen of the UK or ROI you cannot access the service from abroad.
Sorry Mike, why am I supposed to be impressed with this? It doesn't seem the slightest bit different from Hulu to me.
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