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Home»BlackBerry News»News & Rumors

Google announces movie rentals for Android, BlackBerry PlayBook already capable of playing them

by Bla1ze on 10 May 2011 04:26 PM
32
 
Google Movies

You've no doubt by now heard some news about Google today considering they are holding their annual Google I/O conference. One of the larger announcements from their keynote, as noted by the fine folks over at Android Central was that the Android platform now has a movie rental service available to them from Google and YouTube. Major studios have signed on and the content being made available is rather broad and should be of interest to a lot of people.

Google however neglected to mention one thing about the actual services -- it works for other platforms as well. BlackBerry PlayBook owners can already access the content right from within the BlackBerry PlayBook browser. You see, the offerings are powered by YouTube and visiting the YouTube movie site from your BlackBerry PlayBook allows you to login, rent and view movies with ease.

In fact, you can even access it directly from the Android Market as well all from within the BlackBerry PlayBook. Pointless step, yes when you can just go to YouTube -- but the fact it allows you to do so is funny. So yes, Hulu and Netflix may be out for now -- but would YouTube really block the services? Not likely. Go ahead and give it a shot, let us know how it works for you. Keep in mind though, only available free videos can be played in Canada. Free and paid are available in the U.S.

Check it out via YouTube

Filed Under: News & Rumors; Tags: android, BlackBerry Playbook, Youtube
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32 Comments

Posted by hellnback76 Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

It is about freaking time, this is great news.

 
 
Posted by feldmen01 Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

Canada always gets boned.... stupid Copyright laws and such!

 
 
Posted by diegonei Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

Just be thankful you're not in Brasil... ¬¬

EDIT: Chrome managed to access it, there 12 free videos I can watch.

EDIT 2: OI! Now playing: Land of The Little People on my Bold 9780. o.0

Yep, just point the browser to http://www.youtube.com/movies .

 
 
Posted by san4berry Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

is this streamed or can it be downloaded to the device to be played offline?

 
 
Posted by diegonei Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

Streamed

 
 
Posted by BaconMunch Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

Here is an interesting comparison of how different mobile browsers handle Google's Movie Service: http://zd.net/ig5Xkb
•PlayBook broser: Access through www.youtube.com/movies
•Default Android browser: Doesn’t work, seems to just hang after pressing play.
•Firefox Mobile on Android: Doesn’t work, reports not compatible.
•Dolphin Browser HD: Works decently, reports it is not optimized for mobile.
•Opera Mobile for Android: Doesn’t work, “error occurred please try again later.”
•Skyfire: Works decently, reports it is not optimized for mobile.
•Symbian browser: Yeah, right, it can barely browse standard websites.

 
 
Posted by Bla1ze Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

That report is inaccurate, it works fine in the Android browser itself (and some of the others listed) if you have a flash enabled device.

 
 
Posted by Gerii Wednesday, May 11, 2011 379 days ago

It works fine in the Symbian browser on my N8..

 
 
Posted by mkye86 Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

this is great is the content HD quality?

 
 
Posted by luqman24 Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

Will it work in Canada if i make a new youtube account but change the country to the US or is it based on ip address?

 
 
Posted by dcabuckeye Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

Just use the YouTube app and start watching. VERY easy. Snap!

 
 
Posted by shingi_70 Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

How is it funny? I mean its nit like your using ir deom the honeycomb maerket but the web market so logic would tell its common sense to be able to watch it.

 
 
Posted by jonty12 Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

Has the "Pin" functionality been launched? If so, does it work on the PB? I'm not in a WiFi zone right now, so can't check myself.

 
 
Posted by c_ram1256 Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

I was excited as hell until I actually tried to watch a movie on my Playbook. Seven attempts to watch a free movie and seven times I received the explanation mark in a circle. It looks as though it would work well but as of yet has not. Does anybody have a clue as to why this is happening. All other Youtube vids play fine. Is there a setting that I have to change? Thanks n advance

c_ram

 
 
Posted by TheMarco Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

Same thing here just now when I tried it. WTF?

 
 
Posted by dresz Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

It works just great for me.

 
 
Posted by sf49ers Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

refreshing the page/video is the work around whenever you see a exclamation mark on the flash player.

 
 
Posted by jcv822 Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

try closing all windows and apps and restart browser..if that doesn't work, restart the playbook.works fine with me. every time I get that exclamation mark, i do these steps.

 
 
Posted by naturesguard Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

I am streaming on the PB as I speak and it is working great.

 
 
Posted by shaolinfinest Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

watching now on my Playbook as well, no problems.

Off topic: why can't RIM update the spell checker in the Playbook to accept the word "Playbook"

 
 
Posted by branflakes Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

Plays fine in my Torch browser by going to www.youtube.com/movies link.

 
 
Posted by santi29402 Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

works great for me. Just dont like that the free movies have an ad running about every 15 minutes or so.

 
 
Posted by enzo07i Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

it seems that google is now blocking anyone from accessing youtube.com/movies, the error said that Http/1.1 Service Unavailable

 
 
Posted by paulvr01 Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

Not just movies but the you tuble site in general from the browser

 
 
Posted by enzo07i Wednesday, May 11, 2011 379 days ago

google taking some risks just to deny playbook user in accessing their movies, it seems that they blocked the youtube movies in desktop,

 
 
Posted by enzo07i Tuesday, May 10, 2011 380 days ago

youtube/movies is back for now,

 
 
Posted by enzo07i Wednesday, May 11, 2011 379 days ago

google maybe trying to block playbook user but they are having hard time to find a way. hahaha thats the power of playbook, desktop like power in tablet

 
 
Posted by zensen Wednesday, May 11, 2011 379 days ago

very underwhelming service especially coming from Google.

I also find it ridiculous that companies find it useful to deny services because its not a desktop computer. considering these services thrive more on consumers getting on board and buying their stuff which is reasonable to expect that playbook could possibly do that sort of thing.

 
 
Posted by conheo11 Wednesday, May 11, 2011 379 days ago

Can you leave the browser running or the playbook will go in standby mode ?

 
 
Posted by jw168 Wednesday, May 11, 2011 379 days ago

If you are a Amazon Prime member, you can watch free movies using Playbook.

 
 
Posted by Gamesdmc3 Thursday, May 12, 2011 378 days ago

Nice!

 
 
Posted by CinciBerry Thursday, May 12, 2011 378 days ago

I am having absolutely NO success renting movies. I get as far as entering my payment information and then can't get past that point. It's not as if I tried once and gave up. I've tried several times and I just end up staring at the same screen hoping it advances. CAN SOMEONE PLEASE POST A COMMENT TO HELP ME???