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.
Their busiest day was December 10th, on which they sold 5.4 million items, that's 62.5 items sold per second. Amazon also shipped items out to over 200 countries this season. Here's some more interesting facts and bestsellers that Amazon shares with us.
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It has been my theory for a little while that sometime in the near future, we are going to see the downfall of physical discs for watching movies. A lot of companies are moving towards a downloadable model. Most notably, Apple sells downloadable movies through its iTunes store and even pipes them through to its own set-top box. Microsoft also sells movies through its Video Marketplace on the Xbox 360 in both standard and high definition.
In March of this year, TiVo decided it wanted to jump into the game. It was a really logical move since it has a ton of set-top boxes already out there and the ability to push out software updates to its boxes. TiVo partnered with Amazon Unbox and lets you buy movies on its Web site to watch on your TiVo. Even though that was a great move, it was still a little tough for people who aren't experienced users. Well, hopefully the problem of usability will be alleviated with today's announcement that Amazon Unbox's catalog will be browseable right on your TiVo. A New York Times article by the AP says "...'Buy on TV' allows TiVo users to search Amazon's video catalog and rent or purchase titles using their TiVo's remote control." The new feature will only be available on Series 2 and 3 TiVo boxes that are connected to the Internet.
This is a big step forward for this partnership and for downloadable media in general. TiVo already has a huge install base and that will help it push this service out to a lot of people. It is unfortunate that the rumors about TiVo and Netflix offering downloadable movies didn't pan out since Netflix's library is huge. Seeing things like this come down the pipe really makes the whole "next-gen format war" between HD-DVD and BluRay seem more and more irrelevant.
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