14 DAY TRIAL // Among the many Android announcements on the first day of the 2011 Google I/O conference, Google revealed that movies are now available for renting in the Marketplace. If the announcement feels like deja vu it's because YouTube has just announced the very same thing, Hollywood movie rentals on the site.
In fact, the same movies are available in the Marketplace as are on YouTube. The Android service is also powered by the YouTube backend.
The integration goes further, movies rented from YouTube will be available on Android devices, phones or tablets, and the other way around.
Google isn't making too much fuss about this, since it wants to position it as an Android product, but what the company has launched is just an extension of the YouTube service.
Not that it's a bad thing, while YouTube already offered plenty of movie titles for streaming and renting, it's only now that it struck a deal with several Hollywood studios as well as major distributors that the site can present an appealing lineup of movies.
The service doesn't really stand out in any way, the same movies are available on other services as well, from the likes of Amazon and Netflix. But Android didn't have a great offering for movie streaming.
Being able to rent a movie on the go from the Market and, soon enough, from a dedicated app should be a great boon for the platform, especially for tablets.
Users are also able to cache movies on their phones and tablets, enabling them to watch it even if they don't have connectivity. This is great not only because they'll be able to take their movies with them where ever they go, but also since wireless connections may not be able to sustain the bandwidth necessary for video streaming, even if its in standard definition.