[tombert]

Is storage space for this significant?

I doubt they're deleting the master copies or the master renders or anything, so the only thing that would be offloaded would be the "consumer" renders. A Blu-ray movie with no additional compression added is between 15-40 gigs.

A consumer like me has a 300 terabyte storage array, presumably Warner Bros has even more than that (and certainly could afford more than that), so it feels like 40 gigs per movie is basically nothing.

[pwg]

The 'offload' might be "building an entire streaming infrastructure".

This way, they get to ride Youtube's streaming system rather than have to build one out.

[vel0city]

They already have built one out, it is called Max.