Guba: The Good Stuff's Not Free

The movie rentals make this online video site stand out from its rivals, but don't cancel your NetFlix membership just yet

by Catherine Holahan

Editor's Rating:

The Good: Easy to navigate; convenient movie rentals and downloads

The Bad: Hit or miss user-generated content; limited rental and purchase choices; copyright protection limits how you can view videos

The Bottom Line: There is some amusing stuff on the free site, but for real entertainment download a movie rental—just don't try burning it to a DVD

Reader Reviews

Guba is paying ordinary computer users to promote its site. For every 100 people you refer, the video site will pay you $25. So I guess I have a financial incentive to tell you Guba is the best thing in entertainment since high-definition sports (or Project Runway, depending on your interests). But I won't.

What I will tell you is that I spent some time kicking the tires on Guba as part of a series of reviews of online video sites. When it comes to content that's uploaded by users, Guba doesn't stand out much from rivals. I was more impressed by the content you can purchase from Guba—but there, you'll have to contend with software that limits what you can do with rented videos.

First, a word on user-uploaded content, which I found to be pretty similar to what's available from well-known rival YouTube (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/3/06, "YouTube: Entertainment for Everyone").

THE UP AND UP.

It features the same seemingly endless supply of strange, interesting, and vaguely amusing clips ranging from teenage talent shows to Britney Spears' latest leaked home video. Like most video sites, the user-created clips are hit or miss and a high rating doesn't necessarily mean you won't want your three minutes back.

Where Guba stands out is in the area of programming available for purchase. Guba aggressively keeps copyrighted material from its pages using a filter that scans videos for known copyrighted images and blocks them. As a result, users won't flock to Guba in hopes of catching pirated popular sitcoms, stand-up comedy reels, or ESPN highlights. Unless Guba has a relationship with the copyright owner, the clip won't be there.

This might turn off computer users who have grown used to enjoying free pirated content on other sites (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/7/06, "Whose Video Is It, Anyway?"). But the vigilance does pay off in the delivery of video rentals, downloads, and other content. Copyright guarantees are a major selling point for the content providers when they decide whether to strike deals with sites like Guba.

A-LIST.

As far as I'm concerned, the premium content is the main reason to go to Guba. In June, the site began selling videos from Time Warner's (TWX) Warner Bros., including Best in Show, a brilliant faux-documentary about dog shows, and Babylon 5, a Trek-esque science fiction series (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/26/06, "Guba Debuts Online Video Store with Warner Bros.").

In July, Guba signed a second distribution deal with Sony (SNE) Pictures (see BusinessWeek.com, 7/11/06, "Hollywood and Online Video: Guba Keeps Rolling").

In all, Guba has several hundred titles that include relatively new releases such as V for Vendetta, just released on DVD Aug. 1. New movies typically cost $19.99 to buy. Older flicks, such as Stanley Kubrick's disturbing, acclaimed classic A Clockwork Orange, go for $9.99. The company did, however, begin a promotion in August to sell movies for $9.99 the same day as the DVD release.

As part of the promotion, catalog movies cost $4.99, TV show episodes are 49 cents, and rented movies cost 99 cents (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/21/06, "Pricing Cuts Hit Nascent Online Video Market").

EXCLUSIVE CLUB.

While the promotional prices are next to impossible to beat, regular prices are higher than ordering a DVD from Amazon (AMZN), where new releases go for $14 to $20. Still, there's something to be said for the instant gratification you get from a site like Guba. Or almost instant, anyway.