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Amazon's Online Movie Service

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the friday's-right-for-fighting dept.

ebresie writes "According to the NYT, it looks as though Amazon is going to start competing with iTunes movie downloads." From the article: "So far, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Brothers are engaged in the talks, said one person close to the talks who, like the others, asked not to be identified because the negotiations are continuing. Although it is not clear when it might begin, an Amazon downloading service would be sure to send waves through both the media and retail worlds. Players in both industries are racing to offer new ways to give technology-savvy audiences instant access to their favorite shows and songs, in a field crowded with potential rivals using Internet and on-demand technologies. "

5 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. And some people express surpise... by zubinjdalal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... when box office sales keep declining!

    Others are realizing that it's just not worth the effort to rush, pay more and stand in line to watch a movie when they can just download it online or buy it on PPV and watch it in the comfort of their homes a couple of months later.

    1. Re:And some people express surpise... by DrXym · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Others are realizing that it's just not worth the effort to rush, pay more and stand in line to watch a movie when they can just download it online or buy it on PPV and watch it in the comfort of their homes a couple of months later.

      The problem is that to download at anything like cinema quality for home viewing, you're talking about files of many gigabytes. Even discounting bandwidth limits, that's still a lot of hours worth of downloading to grab all of that. And it's not just a problem for the consumer - Amazon or whoever would have to have the hardware to be pushing out tens of thousands of movies in parallel AND still make some money from the service after the studios have taken a cut. You hear the RIAA whinging about iTMS selling 4Mb tracks for .99. Now imagine trying to make money pushing 150x the data for for (say) $6.

      That's a tough proposition.

      So tough in fact that the first casuality of online movies is quality. Broadcast quality takes too much bandwidth. You'd be lucky to get something which was remotely comparable to a DVD or even satellite. You'd be lucky to get something that compares to your average DIVX encoded movie. And of course whatever you bought would also be DRM'd up the ass, ensuring that unless you had WMP with the proper rights, that your movie is as useful as a CD snapped in half.

  2. Burnable DVDs? by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In the article they say that customers will be able to download the movies and burn them to DVD. I don't imagine they'll let us download full DVD5 or DVD9 ISOs of the movies. More likely, it will be some highly compressed MPEG-4 variant, along with some Amazon-branded "preparation/conversion" app that outputs a burnable DVD5 or 9 ISO image. Even this sounds like it'd be a bit much for the average computer user to get a handle on. They'd better make sure this whole process is fairly idiot-proof or it's doomed to failure.

    --
    This guy's the limit!
  3. This could benfit some of their services... by Slipgrid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From TFA:
    If the advanced negotiations are successfully concluded, Amazon's service would position itself in the media world alongside rivals like Apple Computer's iTunes as a place where people go not just to order goods to be sent by mail, but to instantly enjoy digital wares as well.

    I think that Amazon competing with Apple iTunes or Google Video is a bad idea. It seems that Amazon's power is in it's large (physical, not digital) distribution system. But, I think they may be half way to something good. Maybe this would help them compete with the box stores. Say I want to buy a video from Amazon, because it's cheaper than Sprawlmart, but I want to watch the video that night, and not wait for the mail. That would be a great service and Amazon might be able to provide this. Let me stream it tonight, and get the dvd in the mail next week. Will Amazon move in this direction?

  4. Cool Amazon digital delivery by jaysones · · Score: 5, Informative

    I ordered a cd 2 weeks ago that was released this past Tuesday. After I pre-ordered it, Amazon let me stream it from my "digital locker" a full week before the physical cd was available. I thought that was really cool and would encourage me to pre-order from them again. I don't know of any service that has a comparable pre-release listening policy.