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UK Channel 4 Putting Full TV Shows On YouTube

from the don't-need-another-site dept

Fri, Oct 16th 2009 3:33pm — Mike Masnick

mowgs points out that Channel 4, over in the UK, has done a deal with YouTube to put all its shows online. Not just clips -- the entire shows. While many people still seem to think that YouTube is just about individuals uploading stuff, it seems like the company has focused on getting a lot more official content on the site as well. While Hulu has some nice features, YouTube still destroys Hulu in traffic -- and unlike Hulu, YouTube doesn't block out visitors from other countries. Recently, even I can't get to Hulu. Because I use a VPN for security purposes, Hulu claims that I'm trying to sneak in from another country, even as I sit here in California (home of Hulu). Why does the entertainment industry always default to "you must be a criminal unless you can prove otherwise" thinking?

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Filed Under: channel 4, shows, uk, youtube
Companies: channel 4, google, youtube

22 Comments

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Anonymous Poster, 16 Oct 2009 @ 3:38pm

Kudos to Channel 4 for realizing that YouTube is not "The Enemy".
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snooze, 16 Oct 2009 @ 3:43pm

loon is a fag
loon is a fag, youtube does block by country and even blocks mobile phones from some content
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Snooze's Mom, 16 Oct 2009 @ 3:46pm

Get off my computer son!
Snooze, this is your mother. Get off my computer, I told you about this! Once I get home, your ass is mine! and not like the other night which we can both agree was a mistake and really pretty pitiful, somewhat painful for us both.

BTW, its true, youtube does block by country.. so its not really any better than Hulu. Criminals!
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John, 16 Oct 2009 @ 4:29pm

Actually it's usually not YouTube, but countries and mobile providers doing the blocking.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Oct 2009 @ 5:22pm

Also kudos to channel 4, but YouTube is as useless as Hulu, lately. Half the videos are blocked because of location/DMCA complaints. Or they have music removed. There is a message stating that, also: "YouTube has blocked this video because of your location" (paraphrasing). Absurdly, they even have local videos (from Argentina) blocked because of DMCA complaints. As if Argentina had that!! When I need to actually watch something, I generally google it and avoid YouTube. Your absurd laws are killing YouTube, and Google is letting it die (which is, I know, an absolute overstatement).
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Oct 2009 @ 5:48pm

Same anonymous as 5, here. It's really weird. I did some of the searches that made me leave YT (the Alien Song, some webisodes, some local shows) and it's all there. I clearly remember a week when I couldn't see anything, and I had all these annoying "You're not welcome here" messages. They must not be notifying (and simply deleting) anymore, and the number of uploaders must be beating the number of downloaders. It's kind of like a wikipedia effect. The change gets "reverted" so fast you don't even notice. So I take that back: YT is useful, and Google is still letting it die but since it's so strong now it won't. Hulu I could never actually use, so for me it's useless.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Oct 2009 @ 5:59pm

From channel 4, when trying to see Skins: "The service is not currently available in your area". Cool.
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BearGriz72 (profile), 16 Oct 2009 @ 6:14pm

VPN
Just out of curiosity where is the endpoint of your VPN? All the website should see is the client IP (in the case if a VPN the endpoint), not that there is a VPN feeding it. So if you are coming out of the US it should never know the difference.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 16 Oct 2009 @ 6:55pm

Re: VPN

Just out of curiosity where is the endpoint of your VPN? All the website should see is the client IP (in the case if a VPN the endpoint), not that there is a VPN feeding it. So if you are coming out of the US it should never know the difference

That used to be the case, but in the last few weeks, suddenly I started getting a message from Hulu saying "It appears you are using a proxy for anonymizing, and thus we cannot establish your location." And then says I can't watch..
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Ben Robinson (profile), 16 Oct 2009 @ 7:02pm

Already online
Just to be clear, channel 4 already puts all this stuff online for free in the UK as part of its 4od service, http://www.channel4.com/programmes/4od

The news here is simply that it is also putting them on youtube. As such this is just a logical next step, even if google was paying nothing for all this content, channel 4 is just getting a shit load of free video hosting for content it has online for free already. It's a no brainer really.
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Cody Jackson (profile), 17 Oct 2009 @ 5:01am

Blocking sites is a pain
I absolutely hate it when sites are regionally blocked. I was deployed to Iraq but couldn't watch Hulu or other sites because of the blocking. The only way I could watch shows was to download them via bittorrent or other "illegal" method. Though, I don't think Iraq had laws against it at the time, so maybe I wasn't really being illegal.

All these sites do is minimum the number of viewers they get, hence reduce the number of potential customers and ad viewers. Cross-border copyright restrictions are simply stupid, but I realize that companies must protect their intellectual property at all costs.

On another note, YouTube just isn't the best for watching videos. I haven't looked in a while, but the last few times I tried to watch something on there, the video was so horribly compressed as to be essentially unwatchable. Are the "professional" videos better or do they suffer from the compression/bandwidth issues too?
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www.eZee.se (profile), 17 Oct 2009 @ 9:18am

Really strange, I cannot get hulu content because i am in Sweden but the VPN provider i use still gets Hulu content...
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jerome (profile), 17 Oct 2009 @ 3:39pm

Hulu's blocking is for economical reasons
The official justification for Hulu's blockings is economic. Unlike Youtube (though its owner Google), Hulu doesn't own zillio-meters of optic fibers all other the world.

Video bandwidth is expensive, and it is worth paying it only if the viewer is a potential customer for the advertisement market. Viewers from most countries outside US might not be as frequent buyers than customers from the US, for several reasons (increased prices of shipping, tariffs, delays, risks of transactions with a company very far away...).

By limiting their users' base to the US, they also limit the ad-viewers' base to a well-described and a more buying-prone population. This way they can market their ads at a higher price.

I don't mean it should be like this, marketing to the world is surely a better strategy. Just they do what they believe is better for their business—cut the costs and select a good customer base. We can just sit there and let the future prove them wrong.
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zcat (profile), 18 Oct 2009 @ 7:11pm

All I can see on youtube is short clips, generally less than 2 minutes. Big fucking whoopee.

If I follow the link for watching full programs I get the following message:

This service is not currently available in your area.
Click here to access our help section.

And I can tell you right now it is NOT my internet provider in New Zealand blocking this. It's channel4.com refusing to give me anything. In fact if I click on the "Click here" link it tells me this:

Can I watch 4oD in another country?
Rights agreements mean that our 4oD service is only available in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, (although C4 does not always have rights for programmes in ROI). Even if you are a citizen of the UK or ROI you cannot access the service from abroad.

Sorry Mike, why am I supposed to be impressed with this? It doesn't seem the slightest bit different from Hulu to me.
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brassballs (profile), 21 Feb 2010 @ 9:07am

Just use a VPN server to bypass the blocks
The whole issue of internet censorship and geographic blocking is easy to overcome with a VPN server. You can watch Hulu, BBC iPlayer or 4oD from anywhere in the world for $55 a year. www.vpntelevision.com
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aberstan, 23 Feb 2010 @ 12:31pm

VPN - great investment for better entertainment
I got VERY VERY tired of free VPN services not working. I finally caved in and set up a VPNTelevision account. www.vpntelevision.com

Thanks Brassballs for your advice!

The basic package costs $55/year and allows you to choose between IP addresses in San Francisco, New York, and London. I generally test at about 28Mbps to the VPN server, which is not bad at all. Setup on my iPhones and iPod touch was very simple, as was setup on my Mac. Once you set up your VPN account details on the iPhone, a VPN toggle appears in the Settings app, between the Wi-Fi and Carrier settings, allowing for quick enabling of the VPN service whenever you need it. So I now have access to Pandora on the iPhone (which is, in a word, AWESOME), Hulu at home (again, VERY cool) and also Google Voice. With my jailbroken iPhone running GV Mobile + and Skype, I'm now able to make outgoing calls to anywhere in the U.S. free of charge, no matter where I am.

So if anyone is on the fence about going the VPN route, after trying it out myself I can definitely say it's well worth the cost. Hulu and Pandora alone are worth more than $55/year to me (that's about how much a single month of cable costs!!) and the added bonus of being able to set up a Google Voice account is just icing on the cake. If anyone has any questions about how to set everything up, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer!

Hope this helps!

Aberstan
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Andrei, 7 Mar 2010 @ 12:32pm

In my experience, YouTube not only blocks stuff, it manipulates its video ratings quite substantially too (based on the content of the video).
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Andrei, 7 Mar 2010 @ 12:33pm

In my experience, YouTube not only blocks stuff, it manipulates its video ratings quite substantially too (based on the content of the video).
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Mar 2010 @ 12:34pm

Re:
With a clear political overtone.
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John Terry, 23 Oct 2010 @ 6:40am

I manage to "bypass" and watch Channel 4 on You-tube . I got a vpn account from http://www.whatsonthebox.net Been using it for 3 months and so far so good. Quite happy with the speed & network.
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