Technology All The Way

The world's most popular video streaming site Youtube is soon going to become a means to watch your favorite TV series as a paid service. Google is planning to enter into the pay-per episode deal with the TV industry. And as it can be seen right now, both sides seem to be 'optimistic' abou the deal.

Similar services have exised for Apple products since a very long time. However, yuotube offers a different offer to the consumers by asking consumers to pay for the streamed episodes which will not be stored on their local system. Thet means, if you stream an episode of your favorite TV series to your local system, you would only be able to view it once for the price that you pay (which is rumoured to be aprox $1.99).

Whereas Apple and Amazon allow users to download the episode and watch it on a number of apple devices so that it can be viewed any number of times, by paying a one time payment of $1.99.

It's possible that YouTube may skirt the issue by launching a TV rental business without the big hits that Apple and Amazon offer. One possibility: It could start by moving immediately to long and mid-"tail" shows and videos that aren't available other places, and don't have to match existing prices.

Youtube has been around for quite a while now and in spite of being one of the most heavily visited sites on the internet, it has been unable to generate profits for Google in the same proportion. Presently Youtube alows users to view a smattering amout of videos for free, with the only source of income being the small advertisements.

One of the biggest obstacles that youtube might face is from the consumers. The major reason that people come to yotube is because it allows them to watch tonnes of video content for free. But will they be willing to pay for watching TV shows that will become available on youtube one day after they are aired on television?

Talks for the pricing model are in preliminary stages. Since the streamed videos are not available as a permanent download, TV networks have to still do a lot of thinking before finalizing such a deal as they would like to sell the streamed videos as the same price as the downloaded ones.

No matter what, TV streaming is going to be the part of the web in the future. And youtube is only going to be one of the many players in this arena. The others include 'Apple', 'Hulu' and 'ABC', which are already working out a subscription service plan for rental TV shows.