AOL Serving Up Major Studio Videos

AOL, unlike everyone else is going right to the top to get their videos for a new video service they are launching.

Getting a deal with 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group, video.aol.com is going to be a download to own service.

Costing between $10 and $20 US a video, with no option to rent, you can expect the service to be met with a bit of trepidation. The AOL Video site currently offers free short video clips and user generated video.

As usual TechCrunch chimes in, and feels much how I do...a lack of excitement.

It’s hard for me to get excited about this in terms of creativity, there’s not much new here - but at a time when AOL is giving so much away, it’s an interesting play to make themselves the dominant download-to-own portal on the web. Competitors MovieLink and Cinemanow both offer rentals as well as purchase, Guba wins on price to own and Sony’s newly acquired Grouper P2P technology may win on speed of download. Amazon has a forthcoming desktop video on demand client as well. But for now at least, if you’re looking to own and it’s selection from major studios you seek, then AOL may be the place to go when these partnerships come online. I’m still waiting for someone to partner with the studios and do something truly innovative, we’ll see how long that wait lasts.

It will be interesting to see if any of the services that all these major companies are investing in, really last for the long haul.

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AOL Serving Up Major Studio Videos

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