4 ms·

Warner Bros. to Rent Movies Digitally on Facebook, Starting With 'Dark Knight'

34 points by mjfern 16y ago

aditya 16y ago
Link to watch: http://www.facebook.com/darkknight http://www.facebook.com/darkknight Fascinating move by both Warner Bros. and FB. I wonder if this is streaming from FB datacenters or Warner Bros? No wonder Apple hates FB, they just went up against Apple, Netflix, Amazon and Google/Youtube (EDIT: Also, Hulu) in the video rentals space, and social is one aspect that affects movie watching the most. Very smart. EDIT: Ooh, they also launched an iOS app that allows you to buy the movie: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-dark-knight-app-edition/id401016418?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-dark-knight-app-edition/i... Also, Imagine being able to use facebook credits earned in Farmville to rent movies...
- jamesjyu 16y ago
  I'm seeing an embarrassing SSL is not enabled message from their heroku app :) https://img.skitch.com/20110308-8ps8aam6fx8fw1eqhp67tnyss.jpg https://img.skitch.com/20110308-8ps8aam6fx8fw1eqhp67tnyss.jp...
iuguy 16y ago
Sadly my region doesn't support credits for Milyoni's payment system. Still, this is very very interesting. It's times like this when I'm sure the movie studios must at some point think, "Streaming all this bandwidth is expensive, if only there was some way we could put all this on the user, maybe split the film up into chunks and have them stream it from each other in some sort of friend-to-friend way."
ryall 16y ago
Hold on just a minute, all this time/money should be spent on more lawyers and drm. Replacing an antiquated business model, now that's just crazy!
naner 16y ago
Out of curiosity, can anyone describe the experience for the rest of us: How well does it work? Does it require Silverlight or some other plugin? How is the resolution? Etc. I think this is pretty huge. Facebook is obviously exploring several avenues for platform use and WB can pull in a ton of demographic information from this.
namdnay 16y ago
TIL it is correct in American to use the verb "rent" for both parties.
mgrouchy 16y ago
Hate this. Still region specific and on Facebook. The Last thing I need in my life(or at least one of the last things) is more apps/companies/etc. trying to make me use Facebook.
- jobu 16y ago
  Agreed. And $3 to "rent" a movie online for 48 hours is outrageous. Netflix killed this idea before it happened.
  - mgrouchy 16y ago
    I'm not so sure about that. Apple rents HD movies for up to 5.99$ or 48 hrs, I'm sure people buy them.
  - smackfu 16y ago
    Netflix has a pretty weak first-run movie selection.
    - georgemcbay 16y ago
      That's true, but compared to a single nearly-3-year-old movie, they're way up on this new venture.
  - naner 16y ago
    My parents pay $7 to rent a movie for 48 (or 24?) hours on demand through Comcast. People pay for convenience.
jadeprincess23 16y ago
It's amazing how the internet allows people and companies to tap into different markets, almost seamlessly, making the "indirect competitors" from Porter's five forces, truly the ones with the most potential to attack a business.

34 points by mjfern 16y ago

Link to watch: http://www.facebook.com/darkknight http://www.facebook.com/darkknight Fascinating move by both Warner Bros. and FB. I wonder if this is streaming from FB datacenters or Warner Bros? No wonder Apple hates FB, they just went up against Apple, Netflix, Amazon and Google/Youtube (EDIT: Also, Hulu) in the video rentals space, and social is one aspect that affects movie watching the most. Very smart. EDIT: Ooh, they also launched an iOS app that allows you to buy the movie: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-dark-knight-app-edition/id401016418?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-dark-knight-app-edition/i... Also, Imagine being able to use facebook credits earned in Farmville to rent movies...

jamesjyu 16y ago
I'm seeing an embarrassing SSL is not enabled message from their heroku app :) https://img.skitch.com/20110308-8ps8aam6fx8fw1eqhp67tnyss.jpg https://img.skitch.com/20110308-8ps8aam6fx8fw1eqhp67tnyss.jp...

iuguy 16y ago

Sadly my region doesn't support credits for Milyoni's payment system. Still, this is very very interesting. It's times like this when I'm sure the movie studios must at some point think, "Streaming all this bandwidth is expensive, if only there was some way we could put all this on the user, maybe split the film up into chunks and have them stream it from each other in some sort of friend-to-friend way."

ryall 16y ago

Hold on just a minute, all this time/money should be spent on more lawyers and drm. Replacing an antiquated business model, now that's just crazy!

naner 16y ago

Out of curiosity, can anyone describe the experience for the rest of us: How well does it work? Does it require Silverlight or some other plugin? How is the resolution? Etc. I think this is pretty huge. Facebook is obviously exploring several avenues for platform use and WB can pull in a ton of demographic information from this.

namdnay 16y ago

TIL it is correct in American to use the verb "rent" for both parties.

mgrouchy 16y ago

Hate this. Still region specific and on Facebook. The Last thing I need in my life(or at least one of the last things) is more apps/companies/etc. trying to make me use Facebook.

jobu 16y ago
Agreed. And $3 to "rent" a movie online for 48 hours is outrageous. Netflix killed this idea before it happened.
- mgrouchy 16y ago
  I'm not so sure about that. Apple rents HD movies for up to 5.99$ or 48 hrs, I'm sure people buy them.
- smackfu 16y ago
  Netflix has a pretty weak first-run movie selection.
  - georgemcbay 16y ago
    That's true, but compared to a single nearly-3-year-old movie, they're way up on this new venture.
- naner 16y ago
  My parents pay $7 to rent a movie for 48 (or 24?) hours on demand through Comcast. People pay for convenience.

jadeprincess23 16y ago

It's amazing how the internet allows people and companies to tap into different markets, almost seamlessly, making the "indirect competitors" from Porter's five forces, truly the ones with the most potential to attack a business.