It’s been a long time coming, but YouTube have finally signed a deal with Blinxbox that provides visitors from the UK – and currently, only the UK – access to a library of full length movies that net users can watch at their leisure. Before you get too excited though, it’s a very new service and while it include 400 films many of them are publically licensed and – by proxy – not all that great. We’re not really talking Hollywood quality here, and it’s nowhere near the full Blinxbox library.
It’s a start though, and perhaps with more support such a service might take off in the UK. However, it’s going to take more than a bunch of random old public licence films to excite people. When Spotify launched in the UK it already had many major record labels onboard and offering music for free. If it had just shipped with a few thousand albums that you could probably find in the storage room of your local charity store, it might not have taken off in the way it did.
YouTube are a little more optimistic about their new library however, pushing it as another way the video service is extending its range:
“This is one of many efforts to ensure that people can find all the different kinds of video they want to see, from bedroom vlogs and citizen journalism reports to full-length films and TV shows. We hope film lovers enjoy the range of titles in this free library, whether catching up on a mainstream hit or delving into the vast archive of classic films from decades past.”
It might be worth having a look even if the titles aren’t big name films, just to see if the service might be something you’d be interested in, in the future. There’s a number of services in the UK that can offer a similar service for a price, though none have come close to being as good as US film streaming website, Netflix, which cancelled plans for a UK expansion in 2004.
If you do decide to partake in some of YouTube’s new masterpieces make sure you’ve got the bandwidth too support watch an entire movie online. Even in standard definition streaming video can eat through a monthly bandwidth limit with surprising speed!