YouTube to unveil movie rental service by year-end

Google is reportedly in talks with movie studios to launch a pay-per-view film section on YouTube. This project fist in nicely with the Google TV platform, and would make Google a major digital distributor, competing with Amazon, Netflix and Apple.

The YouTube rental service is expected to be announced by the end of the year, it will enable you to stream a rented film for $5 or less, depending on the age and popularity of the movie.

Google has realized that for Google TV to take off they will need to be able to also provide users with as much content as they can. On the computer side, YouTube has to compete with Netflix, who already stream many movies and TV shows, although not the most recent episodes. Amazon.com and iTunes both allow you to view video on-demand, and Amazon.com's product allows for instant streaming as well. Hulu also offers the ability for streaming recent TV episodes and a selection of movies. Google clearly has their competition cut out for them.

Next week Apple is expected to introduce its new Apple TV set-top box, along with a new content model that will enable customers to rent TV shows for 99 cents per episode.

Source: Neowin