IMDb: one-button streaming for all films

Col Needham, the founder of IMDb (Internet Movie Database), outlined his ambitious plans for the website this week, with movie streaming very much at the forefront.

Speaking at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival, Needham said that he eventually wanted to stream every movie mentioned on the site.

IMDb, which is owned by Amazon, currently has information on around 1.3 million movies and TV shows and its makers are looking to cash in on this mountain of info.

"Our strategy is to allow people to click the play button and they will be able to legally watch an entire movie for free," said Needham.

Many not available

Currently the website does offer video streaming of a "a couple of thousand" full-length movies and numerous TV shows, but Needham thinks this will improve drastically and it's all down to the technology that the website is using, explaining: "we're most excited at the moment with our video component."

However he was cautious that plans for movie-streaming domination may not come to complete fruition, as "many of the films may not exist anymore and many may not be available for streaming."

While there was no time limit for this movie-streaming vision, Needham did explain that it was the website's biggest goal for 2009 and beyond.

TechRadar is currently out at SXSWi 2009, so make sure you check out all our coverage of the festival.

Via Indie Wire