IMDb now serves full-length videos

It would make sense that IMDb, the leading provider of movie and TV information on the Internet, would offer video on its Web site. After all, IMDb is a huge point of discovery of new movies for a lot of people, so the instant gratification of streaming that new movie that you just found is a big draw.

Previously, IMDb only offered videos in the form of clips and trailers. On Monday, IMDb took a step in the right direction and launched a selection of 6,000 full length films and TV episodes, available for streaming right now. All users have to do is click the big gold "Watch It" button as they are browsing through movie and TV pages.

Most of the content available is coming from Hulu, with a smaller portion from CBS, Sony, and independent filmmakers. (CNET is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.)

While it's anyone's guess as to why it took IMDb so long to realize the potential of streaming full length movies and TV episodes on their site, at least it's getting into the game now. This addition should keep users on the site longer instead of losing them to Hulu or similar sites as they search for the content that they just discovered.

This is really the first move that IMDb has made into the Web 2.0 space. VentureBeat's MG Siegler describes IMDb's user experience as being, "trapped in the 1990s." Being largely unchanged in a decade, there is a huge opportunity to introduce experience enhancing features to the Amazon.com-owned site here and it looks like they are moving in that direction.

Mentioned above, IMDb is also letting independent filmmakers showcase their movies on the site. This could provide for some much needed exposure for the indie crowd as IMDb drives people down the long tail of movies. Like the video content available from Hulu, IMDb's streaming service is limited to the U.S.

[chinarut--2008]

I am not convinced adding video makes IMDB catch up with the times.

Admittedly, I tolerated their arcane UI back in 2004 to put my movie lists together.

As soon as the flixster app came out on facebook - this was groundbreaking and dropped IMDB cold turkey. Data was resident on flixster.com yet it was possible to work with the data and build your network completely inside the facebook architecture - this is my definition of embracing 2.0 on the movie front.

That said, I'm curious how long the "wiki-like" features for movie synopses been around? I would say this is a move in the right direction in making the database "editable" by the masses just like Wikipedia.

Now I want to see them make the *entire* database editable!

[Painterroy]

I have just checked out IMDB, & maybe I'm missing something but it doesn't look like theres 6000 available...yet. I only noticed about 100 choices of movies & TV together, nothing different than the choices on HULU.com In fact right now I think Hulu has more choices. Hopefully, this will change as this is only the first day on IMDB. -Roy

[gomer43]

Um, this is the SAME content that's on Hulu - only less. I don't get the big deal.

[Riquez-001]

I went to IMDB, logged in & visited the "Some like it hot" page in your example.
I see the "watch it" button but its greyed out - there must be some thing blocking me from using this feature, but I cant find any info on why??

[Riquez-001]

OK, my mistake - you already mentioned at the end "limited to the U.S."
so pretty much useless to the rest of the world, never mind.

[ckought]

You'd think that since Amazon owns IMDB and also owns it own streaming site (Unbox) that they'd just pull streams from their own service and make it ad-supported (by embedding the ads). It just seams weird that they'd pay competitors for content they already have.

[atldsl]

I believe Hulu is run by Jason Kilar, who was with Amazon for 9 years previous. Unbox has recently begun using different encoding technology than Hulu, but they are not strangers with each other. You look at IMDB and much of the content as you point out is embedded Hulu. Amazons point is why re-encode, when they can embed their friends content and drive video traffic to Hulu, but keep the people on IMDB where they can drive sales directly from there.

Please check your grammar next time you post a blog entry. It was rather painful reading.

[helroth]

Don't say anything bad about my grammar - she'll clock you one.

[ckought]

Please check your grammar THE next time you post a blog entry. It was rather painful reading.

It's certainly a sensible move, but doesn't add much to the video options out there. Would be great to see more innovation around the viewing platform - e.g. Lycos Cinema lets you socialize while watching movies and TV episodes, and others allow you to make and share mash-ups.