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Unbox Too Restricted and Too Expensive?
abb_road writes "Businessweek takes a first look at Amazon's new video service and walks away unimpressed. Between the high cost of downloads, the sometimes-poor video quality and the restrictions required by movie studios, they're not predicting a huge hit. From the article: 'Amazon finally launched its long-awaited online video service on Sept. 7. But it's no sure thing that it will catch on with the masses. The service, called Amazon Unbox, offers downloads of movies and television shows, as well as digital movie rentals. But like all its rivals, it's shackled by a raft of viewing limitations imposed by movie studios.'"
What do you expect? The movie industry is full of greedy suits that will try and squeeze as much out of the consumer as possible before the consumer just flat out says no. It worked for the music industry, but I seriously doubt this will ever take off with the movie industry. It's far easier, and cheaper, to just torrent movies and get better quality videos from cams. That's right, I said it, cams.
More expensive than other legal methods (just buying the dvd used), with more limitations (can't backup, can't play in normal dvd players). I can't understand why it won't do well!?
We knew this was the case, to much drm and not worth the money. What I fear is MPAA spin saying "Oh, well we tried to sell downloadable movies, but no one wanted them. People would rather pirate instead." I think they could work, just not this way.
When your content is DVD-quality, S-Video cable is plenty sufficient for carrying the signal.
paintball
People fail to realize that Netflix is making money on what some would call an old-fashioned profit model: mail DVDs to people and they mail them back. They may spend millions and millions of dollars in postage (and impacted by postage hikes, but they do not have these limitations. People also do not realize that YouTube is losing loads of money every month. Online video has a place, but it is not in replacing DVDs with DRM.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
...but I can't watch it on my TV.
I get to watch it on my monitor, which is fairly small.
In my office, where there's room for one, maybe two people.
On an uncomfortable chair instead of my couch.
And I get to pay more than an excellent condition DVD off of ebay, often as much or more than the DVD from Amazon, and probably more than the WalMart B&M down the road.
In return I get to avoid waiting the 2 days for shipping (which I get "free" from Amazon Prime), or driving the 4 miles to a local store.
I'm sorry, was there something I was supposed to enjoy about this transaction?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I don't get at all. Why are companies so bent on copying failure instead of success?
...is time-limited, and costs about the same as straight DVDs.
DIVX disks played on ordinary DVD players, were time-limited, and cost less than straight DVDs. And failed.
FlexPlay disks played on ordinary DVD players, were time-limited, cost less than straight DVDs, and failed.
Amazon Unbox WON'T play on ordinary DVD player, won't play on my almost-spiffy almost-new Mac Mini, won't play on my wife's PC (Windows 98), wouldn't have played on the Hewlett-Packard PC my daughter's family uses (WIndows 2000 Home Edition) before it crapped out a few months ago, won't play on the spiffy new Mac Mini she replaced it with, apparently won't play on any portable video device...
And up to now I thought Jeff Bezos was a smart guy.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I don't go in for what most of the whiney slashbot crowd does, but this one brings some glee to my cold little heart that a fairly popular magazine is helping to relabel DRM appropriately. I don't care what movie studios do to their products, but it offends me as a consumer when they try to lock my purchases up and tell me what to do with them after I own them.
I don't support the dirty theives that are too cheap to pay for music and movies, but it's also not my problem and if you're going to make me suffer because they're scumballs, I'm not going to buy your stuff either. Not only will the jobless wonders keep stealing from you, I'll just stop buying on top of it.
As a previous poster pointed out, they can claim that they tried to go online with a legit service and it didn't work.
"So now, Mr. Congressman, you have no reason not to pass our new "Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act". Yes, I know that it requires the death penalty without due process for suspected infringers, and yes yes, the new Corporate Copyright Storm Trooper section of the bill may raise a few eyebrows but we need this to protect the artists so just sign it if you want your check."
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
But are there really a significant number of people with the computer-large screen integration to make this program useful? The article brings that point in at the end, but I wonder how much overlap there is between the Media Center crowd and the non-P2P'ing-everything-anyway crowd.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
And the counter-argument:
More expensive than other legal methods (just buying the dvd used): well, it's not more expensive than buying on Amazon itself as it calculates the savings for you and displays them. Yes you could buy the DVD used but so what, the convenience is worth it for some - I don't plan evenings when I feel tired and want to watch some TV weeks in advance, it just happens. And when it does I want to watch some episodes of 24 right there and then, if I can. I'm willing to pay more than getting a used DVD off eBay for that convenience.
With more limitations (can't backup, can't play in normal dvd players) - can't backup .... and? You couldn't backup DVDs for the first few years of their life either due to DRM and that didn't stop them taking over the world. I hypothesise that most people don't care; I know I never backed up any of my DVDs and I wouldn't care about backing up these movies either. I'd probably rent them instead. Don't play in normal DVD players ... yes this will have an impact and stop some people using the service. But lots of people already watch TV on their computers, it's no big deal.
I can't understand why it won't do well!? - video on demand probably will do well. Will it be Amazon Unbox? I do not know, and I don't care to predict based on the feelings of Slashdotters which is basically "doesn't work on a Mac/Linux, must suck". It might succeed, it might fail, but apart from being restricted to the US (moving there soon anyway) I haven't seen anything that'd stop me using it.
Now it may fail for other reasons ... too hard to use, poor quality, too slow or whatever. But I don't think the masses care about DRM. For many years you couldn't copy CDs; the CD-R and MP3 was not yet invented. Yet CDs did very well and didn't die. iTunes music store is doing very well despite being ridden with DRM and locking you in to Apple (one software player, one hardware player, one store, one company) far more than Windows Media does.
The nice thing is, they did it. Even if it fails, someone else will try again. Eventually it will work.
It's simple. People want to download movies. Paying for it is not the issue, as many people will say. It's just plain old availibility.
The companies would love it if noone could watch a movie outside of a theatre, and would only sell long dead movies. The people think theatre's are a nice experience, but that is added on top of viewing the movie itself. And, if you don't like the theatre, or going to a theatre is cumbersome or not feasable, or even watching the entire movie in one shot is not desirable, the movie needs to be availible elsewhere. Also, people are willing to pay a premium to watch it the first time, but not the second, third, or more. Being many people who download movies have already seen it in the theatre, charging a premium at home would alienate that subset of potential buyers.
That's where this service comes in. They set up a mini-theatre in your house with some control (although, they own the process and restrict its use). This is what people don't like. But, it also means its happening. For Amazon to get this far, means that the industry recognizes the need. It's a large step, though perhaps not large enough for the consumers. The point is, it will happen. Eventually. And the more the industry holds back, the more piracy will pound them on the side.
So be happy. The child has taken his first step.
Have you read my journal today?
Arguments about price and DRM limitations aside for a moment, it occurs to me that Internet-based movie downloads won't really take off unless there's a piece of hardware accompanying the thing. Tivo, for example, should have partnered up with Amazon or someone else doing this and said "Ok - we'll send down a free firmware upgrade to all of our users, and then our boxes will be able to browse your movie catalog and order up content on-screen, saving it to the hard drive in the unit. Meanwhile, the user will be free to watch existing content while it downloads in the background."
The overall business model works a lot better for music downloads, because A) They're smaller and take a lot less time to download, B) Every single user of a portable digital music player has to learn to sync it with a PC in order to load it up with music, so a PC is a logical "starting point" for receiving that type of content, and C) Many more people are comfortable burning a standards-compliant audio CD from a PC for use in their home or car stereo than are comfortable burning DVD movie content that plays properly on their stand-alone players.
If it was really commonplace for people to use their computer as a media center attached to a TV and surround sound stereo receiver, then this might go over a little bit better. But it's not! Half the people buying new computers with "Windows Media Center edition" preloaded on them don't even use the TV playback and recording capabilities of it. They just went with it because the whole bundle was on sale....
I know you were being funny, but I just had to show how cheap this really is.
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