I worked from home today, looking after Robin who’s sick with a cold, but also to try and get some more work done on a piece I’m writing about YouTube Rentals. YouTube Rentals is by far one of the stupidest things YouTube have done lately — going against all their good work in the area of web standards and accessible, free formats for the masses and shoveling an ill-conceived rental program to try and compete with… someone.
I get most of my entertainment from Netflix and the web. I don’t want to rent a video I can watch on my laptop — I’d happily pay pretty much anyone a dollar to own a DRM-free copy of a movie, maybe 35 cents for a TV episode. I recently experimented with Hulu Plus, but cancelled only a day into my free trial due to their butchering of Peep Show episodes — with adverts cutting in haphazardly, and even in the middle of sentences.
I am also addicted to the web version of Angry Birds.