Damion Chaplin
07-11-2006, 03:30 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6092465.html' target='_blank'>http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6092465.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Video-sharing site Guba has signed its second distribution deal with a major studio in less than a month, another sign the little-known company is quickly becoming a hot property in Hollywood. Sony Pictures has agreed to offer 100 of the studio's feature-length films on Guba's online store, the companies said Monday. Among the growing number of video-sharing sites, Guba is the only one offering a means to legally download movies over the Internet. Warner Bros. Entertainment began selling 200 movie titles on Guba two weeks ago. Video sharing on the Web is one of the hottest trends on the Internet and big entertainment companies are sidling up to market front-runners. NBC began recently promoting TV shows on YouTube. However, few video-sharing companies have proven they can make money. Guba is profitable, said Guba CEO Thomas McInerney, and that's one of the things that attracted Sony, said Sean Carey, Sony's executive vice president of digital distribution. "Most (user-generated video sites) are at the moment lacking a revenue model," Carey said. "Some of them are starting to embrace advertising, but Guba is the first to add premium studio content to their mix.""</i><br /><br /> <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/logo_guba.gif" /> <br /><br />I checked out GUBA and found it to be quite promising. <i>The Matrix</i>, for example, is $1.99 to rent and $9.99 to own. All files are DRMed and can only be played in WMP (and only in Windows XP/2000 in the U.S.), and what you can do with each file is determined by the licensing of that particular file. You can expect to be able to play the videos only on the PC you bought them with and make a couple DVD-R backups. They can of course be synched with a PlaysForSure PMP, but no details on how many PMP licenses you can have could be found. Also, I found no information whatsoever on file resolution and bitrate. This is one of my major gripes about sites like this. I'm not going to pay $10 for a restricted file if it's not even DVD quality. And will the TV shows be HD? Doubtful, but again, no information is available. Has anyone tried GUBA? What did you think? Would you recommend it?