Word: rental
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YouTube hopes its users will be just as willing to watch full-length feature films as they are clips of laughing babies. Beginning Friday, the video-sharing site will dip its toe into the movie-rental business, starting with five films from the past two Sundance Film Festivals...
...Details about how exactly the service will function are scarce, and YouTube didn't respond to requests for comment. What is known is that users will pony up a rental fee of a few dollars and have 24 to 72 hours, depending on the film, to watch the movie as many times as they want. The initial slate of offerings includes Homewrecker, Bass Ackwards, Children of Invention, One Too Many Mornings and The Cove. (See the top 10 viral videos...
...advertisements (served by corporate parent Google) that run along with the video clips. But the site, which incurs massive bandwidth costs from millions of simultaneously streaming videos, has yet to turn a profit. YouTube has long had an interest in partnering with major studios for a foray into the rental business, but at this point it is late in the game: Apple's iTunes began offering movie rentals in 2008, and Amazon.com has a movie store as well. The 800-pound gorilla in online cinema remains Netflix, whose on-demand streaming system lacks new releases but offers unlimited streaming...
...private equity funds seized on the rental market in major cities in recent years, all this was jeopardized by the need to generate fat returns of 15%-20% per annum. Worse, this business model was based on a dirty secret - expelling as many existing tenants as possible. This is the thuggish reality behind otherwise respectable-sounding prospectuses offered to investors to explain how they could service high debt on mortgage-backed securities. "The borrower anticipates to recapture approximately 20%-30% of the units [roughly within the first year] and 10% a year thereafter," explained a prospectus for a portfolio...
...think it is a problem ... and that's why we are putting our resources to bear to try to correct the problem before it becomes a bigger problem than we can tackle," says Rafael Cestero, commissioner of New York's Department of Housing Preservation and Development. "Ownership of rental properties in New York City is a long-term proposition, and if you do it right, you can make a fair profit, but trying to make a short-term investment is where you can get yourself in trouble...