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

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

#301

Post by babypuncher »

Retric wrote: post #192
mrandish wrote: post #189

There was a time fairly early in Netflix's streaming era when all the studios were just dumping their old back catalogs on Netflix to get some revenue from 'dead content' that I thought "Wow, someday soon pretty much all the old content will just be available on a central streaming service. The future will be good." Then the stock market started inflating the value of streamers because of ARR projections and studios…

Most things are on Amazon if you’re willing to pay for them individually. It’s more buffet style streaming services that splintered. Per movie may seem expensive, but at the low end of hours per month watch time streaming services are a bad deal.

I don't like buying DRM-encumbered digital copies. I'm OK with streaming subscriptions because their catalogues are fundamentally ephemeral, but if I buy a movie I want to know I can keep it forever, even if the platform I bought it from disappears entirely.

To that end, I only buy physical media that can be copied and have its DRM removed. On the plus side, Blu-Ray turns 20 next year and still provides better image quality than your typical 1080p stream.

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

#303

Post by greiskul »

bongodongobob wrote: post #209
t-writescode wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early US copyright was something like 20 years + 20 years if they were still alive. Under that, everything before 1985 would be free of copyright already. I think the majority of Americans would greatly prefer that model; but, The Mouse had other plans and has extended copyright to approx 100 years.

I'm not saying that shouldn't change. But you're right! Just change copyright law! Easy. Brilliant.

Apparently it was super easy to change copyright law to extend it over and over again.

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

#304

Post by echelon »

cogman10 wrote: post #300
echelon wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect. You're on! :) No special category, and I'm even willing to bank on it being a category that isn't the moral equivalent of VFX. Let's remember to check back.

> Let's remember to check back. :D Probably the hardest part of this wager.

Absolutely, haha :P

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

#305

Post by canucker2016 »

akovaski wrote: post #35
jerf wrote: post #23

For your searching convenience, they do seem to have all their full movies in a playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5Y4rNBCLaU&list=PL7Eup7JXSc... That will pop up to The 11th Hour but the playlist has them all.

A link to just the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5h... From IMDb: The 11th Hour (2007, Documentary, 7.2) The Wind and the Lion (1975, Adventure Epic, 6.8) Mr. Nice Guy (1997, Martial Arts Dark Comedy, 6.2) City Heat (1984, Buddy Cop, 5.5) Michael Collins (1996, Docudrama, 7.1) The Adventures Of Pluto Nash (2002, Space Sci-Fi Comedy, 3.9) Chaos Theory (2007, Comedy Drama Romance,…

"The Year of Living Dangerously" is a surprising one to show up. Reasonably profitable and successful film for the time.

Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver - she usually doesn't get the romantic role.

She became so enamoured with Mel Gibson that the man whom she eventually married resembles Gibson.

Linda Hunt won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (her character is male in the movie), she played the "boss" on NCIS-LA TV show for several years.

wikipedia page says 88% on Rotten Tomatoes.

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

#306

Post by TuringNYC »

sfilmeyer wrote: post #269
Suppafly wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>With the exception of Netflix, these other companies' apps are similarly buggy and painful to use. Yeah it's really annoying that they all recreated the wheel instead of just playing ball with netflix or paying netflix to license their technology. The only feature I miss from another service is that x-ray view stuff that Amazon has to let you know who is in a scene.

>or paying netflix to license their technology Does Netflix license their technology to anyone? I know of examples like BAMTech, although I don't even know if they still take on outside clients or just do Disney now. I get that their might be good options to license and that fewer companies should build crappy in-house products, but is Netflix one of them? From Netflix's perspective, it's not clear to me that the pay…

>> From Netflix's perspective, it's not clear to me that the payment for licensing technology to e.g. NBC is worth it, versus hoping that they end up with an inferior product, especially when they're competing with each other for customers and licensed content.

Apple and Amazon Prime and Youtube seem to enable other services via their platforms, presumably for a cut. If the cut is large enough, seems like a good business move for Netflix also -- let the content owners focus on their business rather than some random broadcasting company trying to hire AWS infrastructure engineers and 3rd party platform testing experts.

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

#307

Post by LordDragonfang »

bongodongobob wrote: post #187
giancarlostoro wrote: post #122

Anything from before the 1980s should just be on YouTube, its easy cash for them on films that are sitting idle otherwise. Anything they aren't licensing to anyone anywhere should just be on YouTube. Or any sort of streaming platform that has sane ads, and anyone can see. It is really sad to me there's no genuine YouTube competitor.

"you should just do X" generally means you don't have the full picture. You're completely disregarding all the union stuff that needs to be considered. You're forgetting all the little guys that make movies happen. Yeah the directors and actors probably don't care, but the other 100s of other people involved in making films probably do. Edit: You're right. Just disregard any laws and contracts in place. HN knows best…

> You're forgetting all the little guys that make movies happen. Yeah the directors and actors probably don't care, but the other 100s of other people involved in making films probably do.

We're talking about movies that are 45 years old at a minimum. The majority of the people "involved in making the film" are dead at this point.

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

#308

Post by Mindwipe »

lxgr wrote: post #30

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 j…

It didn't take them this long.

Several studios have done this for years. Paramount literally did it more than a decade ago.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/...

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

#309

Post by m_ppp »

iancmceachern wrote: post #277
m_ppp wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting, how did you find these guys?

They found me. I found public domain old black and white military training videos on a public resource on the internet and put them in YouTube. Then they did the YouTube strike thing and I called them and the guy was a total jerk on the phone. Like Jerry McGuire or that other guy Tom Cruise played in Tropic Thunder.

They put a strike on you because they had the film themselves and were claiming copyright?

Were you putting up those films just as a public good service or was it for something else?

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

#310

Post by Retric »

babypuncher wrote: post #301
Retric wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most things are on Amazon if you’re willing to pay for them individually. It’s more buffet style streaming services that splintered. Per movie may seem expensive, but at the low end of hours per month watch time streaming services are a bad deal.

I don't like buying DRM-encumbered digital copies. I'm OK with streaming subscriptions because their catalogues are fundamentally ephemeral, but if I buy a movie I want to know I can keep it forever, even if the platform I bought it from disappears entirely. To that end, I only buy physical media that can be copied and have its DRM removed. On the plus side, Blu-Ray turns 20 next year and still provides better image…

I get you, but to be clear I was referring to renting movies rather than purchasing them.

It’s not a service I use, but it’s surprisingly close to the anything anywhere anytime ideal.

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