YouTube holds talks with studios on movie rentals

Online video site YouTube is in talks with several major movie studios about renting movies to users by streaming the movies over the internet.

It would mark the first time the world's most popular video site would charge its users to watch videos.

YouTube, which is owned by internet search giant Google, has held discussions with Lions Gate Entertainment Corp, Sony Pictures, a unit of Sony Corp, and Time Warner's Warner Brothers about online movie rentals, said the person.

In many cases, the movies would be available for rental for a fee in a system similar to web rental programmes from Apple's iTunes, Netflix and Amazon.com with newer movies. YouTube would likely charge a similar fee about $3.99 a rental.

YouTube, which is the world's No1 video website, currently offers video for free, on an advertising-supported basis.

It currently has a range of archive movies, TV shows and promotional clips from the three named studios and other partners on its site.

"We hope to expand on both our great relationship with the movie studios and the selection and types of videos we offer our community," said YouTube spokesman Chris Dale.

YouTube is in the midst of talks and negotiations with a wide range of media content partners as it ramps up efforts to build a substantial library of current and archive professional movies and videos that it can monetise.

The site, best known as a place to seek out fun videos uploaded by users that feature themes such as skateboarding dogs and dancing babies, recently started to emphasize a growing amount of professional videos.

Advertisers are believed to favour professionally made videos over those of users. Hulu, a video site owned by News Corp, Walt Disney and NBC Universal, has had relative success attracting both users and advertisers with a range of full-length TV shows and older movies.

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