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Major Hollywood Studio Quietly Starts Its Own Streaming Service Featuring Old Movies and TV Shows

Apr 3, 2013  •  Post A Comment

A major Hollywood studio has "quietly launched" its own streaming service featuring older library product. "According to the website, it enables subscribers who pay $9.99 a month opportunities to watch what the company calls ‘rare and hard-to-find’ content," writes our good friend David Lieberman at Deadline.com.

The studio is Warner Bros. and the service carries the awkward name Warner Archive Instant.

Currently there are only 113 movies and 5 TV series available on the service.

The TV series are "Jericho," "The Adventures of Superman," "Cheyenne," "Hawaiian Eye" and "77 Sunset Strip."

Some of the movies include "The Bad Seed," "Cat People," "A Face in the Crowd" (which is an excellent movie about TV) and, from 1926, Lillian Gish in "The Scarlet Letter." Of this last rarity the late movie critic Pauline Kael once said that Gish’s performance in it "is one of the most beautifully sustained performances in screen history — mercurial, delicate, passionate."

Currently the service is only available for computers (though it’s not compatible with Internet Explorer 7) and through Roku. And only through Roku can subscribers currently see the service in HD.

The library product shown on Warner Archive Instant will be culled from movies and TV shows originally produced by "Warner Bros., MGM, RKO, New Line, Monogram, Allied Artists, Lorimar and more," acording to the website.

The website also has these questions and answers:

Is this any different from the other streaming services?

Aside from having TV shows and movies that are hard to find elsewhere — including many titles from the Warner Archive Collection — we will offer extra, enhanced content as well as our special "Showcase" sections.

What is the "Showcase"?

Our special Showcase section features a monthly festival-style list of streaming movie marathons. They’re carefully curated selections of motion pictures and/or TV programming built around a common theme or interest. It’s like having a repertory theater in your living room!

One Comment

  1. Great Ideal, but price is to high for old movies. Buy selling directaly to the consumer the price should be a lot lower. We can only watch so many movies in a day, and if we have to pay the same price for old movies as new movies, we’re going to watch the new movies. $10.00 a month should be more like $4.00 a month or a flat rate per movie. That way you pay for what you watch.

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