Warner Brothers Partners with Video Sharing Site

Warner Brothers has entered a deal with YouTube-type site GUBA to offer users VOD, video-on-demand, as well as DTO, download-to-own, content. I think this is the first step towards a movie download site as Apple is rumored to be incorporating in a future iTunes release. There are currently only around 200 of Warner Bros.'s video titles but that is soon to expand if the sales look promising. Full length movies can be downloaded from anywhere between $9.99 and $19.99 where as select movies maybe rented (streamed) for one day around $2-3.

However, this is not without some obvious downsides. The content is in a highly proprietary DRM'd Windows Media Player format at a subpar VGA (640x480) resolution. I believe the price point for DTO films is too high for the restrictions posed to users. This type of campaign is an obvious nod to the direction of piracy but who will pay for a VGA-resolution movie with DRM at the price of a high-resolution DVD? Even the types of movies commonly pirated are at higher resolutions than VGA. Instead, I think GUBA might be more successful with VOD purchases. Paying $2 is rather trivial for most, so people can justify it for a 2 hour movie they didn't get to catch in theaters.