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Downloadable Movies from Amazon?
StrongGlad writes "Screenshots of what could be an Amazon.com video store in the making surfaced Friday on the Web. Alan Taylor, who claims to have worked for the online retailer more than two years ago, said he discovered the screenshots while poking around an area of Amazon.com used by developers. The screenshots can be seen on Kokogiak.com. The pictures show a service called 'Unbox Video' that offers first time users a free TV show or $1.99 off the first movie they download. Instructions are given for downloading the player and buying movies and video that can be played on a PC, TV or portable media player. Amazon.com has declined to comment."
Movies is one thing as opposed to music is one thing I prefer just having on a disk. On the note I think the big win with file sharing in bittorrent is the free access and unlimited downloads. A per month fee, download as much as you want might make me pay more for my movies than I ever did before. I might watch more movies too but no one loses out of that right? Downloading them one by one and paying the fee in such a manner doesn't appeal to me.
Now all we need are reliable ISPs so we don't have to spend 12 hours downloading each movie.
Blerg.
> ...get a look now before the pics disappear.
You need to get out more.
Bezos says cities will have to be rebuilt to accommodate this new concept of "downloading" "movies". This changes everything.
I wonder what this means for the apple movie store..
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The average hour long TV show can now be downloaded for 1.99. This is fairly reasonable, and I only wish 30 minute shows were .99.
But these guys are making the same mistake as movielink. They are charging retail and in many instances for older movies more than retail. Sure you'll make money because some people have plenty of money and would rather not run out to the video store. The rest of us will only use these services when they are cheaper than the video store or they have movies that you can't find anywhere else.
Downloadable movies/TV shows are great, because this is one area where they won't have too much trouble combatting filesharing networks if they do it right. Chances are the downloadable copies are gonna be of better quality than the freebies, and if they're cheaper than an in-store DVD, then most people - especially anyone who's into movies or cares about the quality of rips - will happily take a legal middle ground.
.iso image that you can burn straight to a DVD if you choose? Should be interesting to see where they go with this.
The only thing I'm worried about is how proprietary this is gonna be. What's this download gonna be formatted as? Will it be some specialty format like Apple does with 'mp3s' you download from them, or will it be something standard, like an
Putting the 33k in G33k.
The screenshot shows this URL: http://www.amazon.com/gp/video/help/faq.html. It seems that this URL actually exists, because it gives 200 OK and a 48 byte response.
Plus they have "Batman Forever" listed for $10. I seriously hope this is just a mockup using current video pictures/prices or that they are considering paying me $10 to watch that movie.
These are artwork mock-ups not a final design even if they are genuine. No way Amazon is having its menu jump around like that.
I have no doubt that Amazon will do this service, however I seriously hope 5GB is not enough to store all my downloads (though if they stick to Windows 0GB would do).
Just thought I'd day that, despite not wanting to use this service, I wish it ran on Linux.
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Klerk's page-widening post (or it would be if if weren't for the dam' lameness filter)...
on DownloadSquad - here
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"Although it hasn't been officially announced, Amazon is set to launch its long-anticipated movie site this month, people familiar with the matter say. The company's biggest advantage is the trust it has won from millions of households over the years, which may help it gain the trust of customers who still associate downloading movies with piracy, lawsuits and shady software. Amazon may also gain an advantage by launching its site before most of the competition. A spokeswoman for Amazon declined to comment."
$1.99 per show? Most of the unwatchable, moronic, crap on television is so horrifically bad, that I wouldn't watch it if the producers paid ME $1.99 per show to watch it. I'll pay to see this garbage when hell reaches absolute zero.
Stick to selling the movies. We'll use mplayer or xine or something to play them.
Oh, we can't? You mean these are in a weird new format, or have DRM? Sounds like you're getting out of the "actually selling something that people want" business before you start.
I'm overreacting, I guess. There's no real evidence that they're crippling it before they start, but the mention of a player, combined with "can be played on a PC, TV or portable media player" (why are you enumerating what all it can be played on?) sure makes me suspicious. Amazon sells music CDs too, but never so much as suggested how I might play them.
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Non-DRM is cool and all... but who will sell stuff to Amazon.com if they publish it without a DRM ?
Shurely it will have DRM and a total lack of intercompatibility. What happens in 10 years when the amazon movie player is no longer maintained? Do we still get to watch the content we bought?
I fear the Y2038 bug
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It's already supported in all the important media players, including open-source implementations. There is no DRM in H.264.
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There's been a distinct lack of reputable distributers of downloadable, commercial movies. With Amazon however, I know they're good. I've done business with them before and they're well established, so I can forsee using this service.
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All the places offering movie downloads are going about it wrong. The whole point of movie downloads isn't so I can get another mainstream movie release that is already on DVD... or a TV show I already get for free on cable... the whole point of movie downloads would be so I can get something obscure that wouldn't be easily available on conventional medium. There is an initial investment of packaging, manufacturing, promotion, etc. for DVDs that mean a lot of obsucre stuff just doesn't have a big enough market to warrent the initial investment. However, with downloads, the cost off adding another product is marginal - The data storage costs are not prohibitive at all.
YouTube is already doing this to a lesser extent (although I don't know how, exactly, YouTube plans to make money)... but services like that are the future, not an online imitation of the local video store.
They're offering something that's less valuable than a DVD for the same price or more. Yeah, that'll go far.
It's already supported in all the important media players, including open-source implementations. There is no DRM in H.264.
You mean like HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have H.264 and no DR... oh, wait. Or the way the iTMS music files are AAC and no DR... oh, wait again. While your answer is technically correct, the odds of them offering videos for download without a DRM wrapper around H.264 is slim and none and Slim is missing, presumed dead.
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I was talking exclusively about the video codec. Of course they likely attach DRM to whatever they'll sell or they won't be able to sell it - unless they move their base of operations to Russia. ;) For what it's worth, there has been pirated content in H.264 already, I doubt that came with DRM.
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If Amazon makes the deadly mistake of "exclusive deal" with Microsoft to distribute their Windows only (yes, NO MAC!) WMV 10 DRM format, it means nothing to Mac users.
Mac users are A+, A and AB class in terms of marketing. Anything ignores Mac is not to be taken serious at all. Especially paid media.
Remember iTunes was a huge success while it was Mac only. It is not a co-incidence. Mac user community pays for arts. They even donate to those "system themes" large amounts of money.
For people who got tricked by MS Windows Media for Macintosh: It is DEAD. They licensed a quicktime component (flip4mac) and recommend it instead. While Flip4Mac by Telestream is an excellent product, it can't do DRM thing. Billion dollar Microsoft couldn't (didn't) move their application to Uniiversal format which will work on Intel and PPC while $10 single coder shareware authors did.
That gives you the clue about how serious MS Media division or what their sick dream is from the start: Pure windows World.
We should be glad that Quicktime Division of Apple or Real Networks didn't die so there is Mpeg-4 everywhere now enjoying success of H264, a standard format.