Chinese Video Site Adds Warner Bros. Features

BEIJING: Chinese Internet content platform Youku has signed a deal to add between 400 and 450 Warner Bros. titles to its online premium VOD service.

The three-year deal was signed with CAV Warner Home Entertainment Co., Ltd., Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group’s joint venture in China. It allows Youku Premium to deliver access to a host of Warner Bros. titles, including Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The deal builds upon a relationship that started earlier this year when Youku worked with Warner Bros. to offer online on-demand access to Inception.

Youku Premium has been operating in beta since October 2010 and has notched up 200,000 paid transactions with a slate of 300-plus movies and 3,880 educational programs.

"Over the past year we’ve seen Chinese Internet users become more sophisticated in terms of what they’ll spend money on," said Dele Liu, Youku’s CFO. "People are increasingly willing to pay for high quality content, and we take the growth of Youku Premium as a sign that the market is improving for paid services. We spent the time when Youku Premium was in beta making sure that we had the technology to power the service. Now we’re working to make sure that we’ve got the content that will set Youku Premium apart from the competition, and our new agreement with Warner Bros. is a major step in that direction."

Earlier this month, Warner Bros. Entertainment announced a deal that will make its new release and catalogue films available on China’s first national pay-per-view and VOD platform, YOU On Demand Media, which is expected to be accessible to 3 million homes by the end of this summer.