YouTube is adding more than 3,000 movies for its users to rent starting on Monday, along with the millions of free user-created videos the popular website is best known for.

Google Inc-owned YouTube is offering a mix of older Hollywood blockbusters, independent and foreign movies for 99 cents up to $3.99 each. Most of the movies on the site are priced around $2.99. Many movies, including some offered before the latest launch, are available for free viewing as with other clips.

YouTube has spent the last couple of years redeveloping the popular site, to tweak its image as a site for grainy 2-minute clips of users' pets and kids.

The goal for YouTube is to drive more views of its videos which, in a fast-evolving Web content sector, need to offer better production values to compete against paid professional offerings from the likes of Hulu, Netflix Inc and websites of broadcasters like CBS and Walt Disney Co's ABC.

(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke; Editing by Richard Chang)

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