Guba starts price war on movie downloads
Neil Kjeldsen
35 comments »
Guba, who recently added professional content from Warner and Sony to its user generated lineup, announced today that it’s dropping prices on rentals and purchases.
View-On-Demand (VOD), a 24 hour rental priced from $1.79 to $2.99 will drop to $.49 for catalog titles to $.99 for new titles. Download-To-Own (DTO) will go from a range of $9.99 to $19.99 to $4.99 for catalog titles and $9.99 for new releases.
Guba’s CEO Tom McInerney said Guba is making this decision to test the demand impact and build the brand: “I think what’s interesting here is actually trying to get at what prices for a digital download make sense for consumers. No one has done a reasonable test here. We’re losing money but the data will be very valuable to bring back to the studios. I’m quite curious myself.”
McInerney further indicated that demand has been higher for ownership than rental which is contrary to previous consumer research, so it will be interesting to see if these prices tilt the mix towards rental. $.49-$.99 is pretty darn cheap.
DRM still limits the number of devices and copies, the content still plays on a Windows Media Player on a 640 * 480 screen, so the overall offering has not changed save the price. But more titles continue to come online and MCInerney indicated it will reach 1,000 within 3 months, so at least there’s a broader selection than when first previewed here.
Was it a sign of desperation? “Things are selling well,” McInerney said. Whatever ‘well’ is, they could be higher. Obviously, you don’t drop prices if product is flying off the virtual shelves and it’s a lot harder to go back up. So it’s a gamble on Guba’s part that it will drive some serious demand and help goose the studios to lower their wholesale prices. At least, it’s further evidence that Guba has the trust of the studios, which will help its potential exit opportunities somewhere down the road.
Comments on the initial post here indicated TechCrunch readers were unimpressed with the initial offer for the price. Is it more attractive now?
Great price, I will consider trying it. However it sounds like they’ll be losing some serious coin on every transaction, not sure how that will affect the health of their overall business, as their main brand attachment becomes price, which they will eventually have to raise.
Also, is it possible to create a strong brand around something called “guba”?
of course, it’s more atractive. They are starting to understand that we aren’t going to pay $10 to watch a film. The prices (0.49-0.99) are pretty good. However what i want is to see the film on my TV and my computer is far away from it, so i’ll not rent any film.
I think Hollywood should offer this kind of services & prices with thousand of films through cable & telcos companies, or allowing to copy a film to see on the Home Cinema.
They are on the way… they are learning, the don’t want to be like the music companies,
fesja already made the point: As long, as i can’t watch the movies (rented or bought) on a TV without cabling my PC to it, i don’t see the slightest reason, why to spend money for it.
What about sound? Do they offer plain stereo or multi-channel as well?
However, the pricing seems fairer, compared to the offerings from the music download stores.
Does it work on a mac?
“We’re losing money but the data will be very valuable to bring back to the studios.”
Lose money and get data? Sounds like a problematic business model. How about MAKE money and get data.
Something is fundamentally wrong. Guba might just be a goober.
>> We’re losing money but the data will be very valuable to bring back to the studios
you’re already our of business…
No(t yet - according to their FAQ) - it’s Windows Media only…
@ lemon and joe: so companies that spend money on market research (losing money to gain data) are doomed? They’re not saying it will stay this way, but they want to see if demand will increase for lower prices, giving them leverage to negotiate wholesale prices with the studios. At least, this is how I understood it from Neil’s post. It’s a gamble, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves…
my .02 is that online rentals are definitely worth .49-.99, even at lower quality like this. It would be nice to be able to watch on my tv, but I end up buying most good movies that I want to watch in DVD on a decent system.
No matter the price (unless it’s free), I have a hard time seeing a large number of people paying money to go through the inconvenience of having to download a movie (and its required player/codec) just to watch it on a computer screen. Netflix’s ease of use and portability easily justifies the extra cost in my opinion.
>>so companies that spend money on market research (losing money to gain data) are doomed?
you should know your market before you decide to lower the price of your product to see if that is the price people want to pay.
second, i know this game; …no one wants to buy videos off the internet b/c 1) you can get better service/quality from a) netflix, b) cable…and 2) watching video through your computer, or a small device sucks…only true die hard geeks do that…then they stop doing it and go back to dvd…3) DRM…WTF is this crap. No reason to ham-string you customers…
video wise…its YouTube…thats what people want…teenage girls, and they want it for free.
I know how hard this is, b/c my company is trying to start its own media revolution…create a new market; and it is tough….and if you do not understand your customer, and be extrememly realistic…you’re going to fail…froma technology perspective….our technology is one of a kind, state of the art…Gaba is the same ole 1999 crap…and can be duplicated extremely fast. Give me $1,00,000 and i’ll hire five guys and bang it out in three months.
i have no idea why VCs give most of their money to companies like this, except from my experience the CEO and the VC are friends; probably both graduated from standford.
oh yeah…and a major CEO blunder…you don’t say what he said; and then expect to have poptential investors foaming at the mouth. Everyone can read between the lines.
Very nice. This is way easier than dealing with BitTorrent and cheap too. Hopefully they’ll be able to convert some of that black market piracy into actual $.
Does Guba have VC money? I’m sure they were making plenty of money in the many years that they were a usenet porn site.
Seriously, the real story here is how Guba went from being a seedy porn site to making headlines like this.
Of course they are lowering the price - their available movies suck almost as much as the lame DRM.
They need to go back to their core competancy - usenet porn. The reason they switched to movies is because usenetbinaries.com was burying them.
I heard the only reason they got a movie contract is that the president spent 18 months partyng in LA until he got someone to sign something.
>>the president spent 18 months partyng in LA until he got someone to sign something.
this is what sucks about the content business…its all LA and New York. All we get is Silcon Suits and San Francisco Hipsters.
>>Does Guba have VC money?
yes, from what i’ve heard.
I think renting a movie for a dollar is a great idea! However I have a few issues:
1)I’d have to wait for the download
2)to watch it on my TV I’d have to bring the laptop to the living room and go through the hassle of plugging it into the TV, and telling it the TV attached, and that the TV is the “primary” display, (windows will only show copyrighted material on one display). Also, my laptop is old and that’s a large portion of the hard drive I’d be using.
Really, I can go down the street and rent movies for $1 Canadian, ($1.50 for new releases), from my video shop that is 24/7 and fully automated. I can even reserve the video online. I get the movie on an actual DVD that I can watch on my TV and walking there takes less time than it would to download a movie from the internet. So, until Guba comes up with something that can beat that, (or I have a fiber-optic connection to the internet), I’ll continue taking teh 5 minute walk and enjoying the fresh air.
the pricing is finally right…for me anywayz. Since I seldom watch anything twice, paying for the DVD equivalent price for a DL is just insane. Don’t know about others, I would be quite happy to pay for a DL and watch it on my PC. Don’t even own a TV. But the selection is quite poor compared to BT or emule.
I just paid $0.99 to rent Underworld. After paying I had an option to stream it or download it… guess how big the download was… 900MB!! Holy cow, it almost feels like bittorrent where you have to have your PC up the whole time.
Now that I think about it..24hrs may not be sufficient. Because there’s a good chance I’ll pause the DVD and do some other thing in the mean time… as I often do… and come back to it a day later. I know that’s not a common case, but I tend to do it all the time… must be my ADD
i don’t want to be down on this company…but, why would i ever do this. I have Netflix, its simple, its easy, its my schedule…and i can rent as many esoteric video as i want. Tonight for example, i’m going to finish “Dead Like Me.”
The 900MB attitude is correct…i remember stealing vids from limewire; and i would let it download all night…then watch it on my computer…i just don’t really want to go back.
funny…my company sells video too; i think the difference is, we know no one really wants to see or buy the things they can get from somewhere else…easier and for better quality.
‘the revolution is not about buying/selling the same ole crap…its about making and selling it, and buying things you can’t get anywhere else; this is the internet (duh), trying to be a video store, or tv channel, or copying them is a loosing proposition…look at YouTube…totally different channel, and successful…yet, un-monitizable…cause as soon as someone smells money, someone gonna sue.
anyway…i’m goingto watch my video/dvd now.
Some stuff they need to get right:
- Mac version
- 640×480 is the bare minimum
- Needs to run full-screen
- Needs to download quickly (no streaming, I don’t want it stuttering if the connection has problems)
- If I buy it, I want to archive it to DVD and watch it on other computers (at least make it iTunes Music Store style)
- Buying must cost less than half of what a DVD costs
- If I can only rent it, make it extremely cheap
They got a few, but are missing out others.
Oh, and obviously:
- They need to have a wide range of new movies available
It has a rubbish name, and for me that’s a killer straight away! Hardly memorable. I think people are getting carried away with making things up…
It’s been said here a couple times already, but it bears repeating: content! The new prices are at the high end of “OK,” but look how many TV shows they have; FOUR. Granted, there are several episodes of each of the four shows, but then again, look at the shows they have: Babylon 5, The Dukes Of Hazard, The Jetsons, and The Flintstones. Stunning.
Alternatively, PeekVid.com has literally hundreds of TV shows available to watch online, for free (and with a little effort, downloadable). Oddly enough, just a few months ago, the videos at PeekVid were hosted by Guba…
These guys are so unprofessional.
The #1 page you have to test when you have a web site is your support/contact page. Else, how can people tell you that your goddamn site is fucking broken?
I’m asking them to clarify their bandwidth requirements because they wrote 300KBps in their FAQ like a bunch of n00bs (kilobytes? really? you mean kilobits, right?). Here’s what I get when I send a support message:
Missing PageYou have requested a page that no longer exists on our site. Our pages change so often that you really can’t bookmark any of them for long, aside from the front page or your user index. If you’re looking for a particular picture, you might try to search for it.
I like the kind of content these folks are getting but I still find downloading to be so archaic in this day and age…streaming should be the only way to go.
Ive checked out vongo, movielink, cinemanow….Ive had netflix…but I just stumbled upon this new company Reeltime. http://www.reeltime.com They are based here out of Seattle where I live. There site is brand new and still in beta and after I spoke with someone in the company they said there most important goal right now was adding solid content.
BUT…the thing I was impressed with was there technological platform…they have their videos streaming and the picture quality is awesome. Point, Click….Action! The way it should be….not all this downloading BS. Plus you can connect your computer to your TV…wirleless if you’d like and watch the movie right on your TV.
Anyway, when these guys get some top-notch content I think I will be their first subscriber.