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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.'"
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.
Not Mac compatible. No good. I'll wait for Apple. It'll be a more elegant solution anyway.
...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'm surprised nobody mentioned this. As a hearing impaired person, I rely on subtitles extensively. Basically, you don't even get the basic "features" of the DVD, or even regular cable show.
I'll stick with my Tivo and Giganews subscription, thank you very much.
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.
That URL is so obvious and easy to remember there was little need to post it.
Developers: We can use your help.
How can I try it?
It won't work on my computer (Mac Mini), my wife's computer (Windows 98), my son's computer (Windows XP... over dialup), my daughter's old computer (WIndows 2000 Home Edition), or my daughter's new computer (Mac Mini).
Will Amazon also give me a free trial of a brand-new PC (with 2.4 gigahertz processor, and a gig of RAM, and a "DirectX 9.0 complaint Video" [sic]?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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?
At the price they want its not providing me a unique or value added service to warrant it. The roll out sucks, they still lack a delivery mechanism that makes it gee-wiz as well. I basically want my money back from the one purchase I made.
If they had an itunes-like client I already used which could download at bittorrent or even segmented multi-part speeds. I would be all over it.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
So kind of you to post the link with your own referid.
Here's a non-referral link for people who couldn't type in www.amazon.com/unbox.
"If they had an itunes-like client I already used which could download at bittorrent or even segmented multi-part speeds. I would be all over it"
;) and recorded TV or movies could be torrented to other such players so you could download shows from other iTunes DVRs saving Apple bandwidth.
Exactly. This sounds like iTunes all over again. For years there were sketchy mp3 downloading services charging outrageous prices for songs or free p2p programs battling with MPAA.
Then Apple came along and changed everything. They found a way to sell mp3s at a price people were willing to pay and with the power of the iPod became the 800-lbs gorilla of the whole internet music provider service.
I predict Apple will do the same thing again. It'd take very little effort for them to come out with a iTunes enabled DVD media player with hard drive for ~$199 that connects directly to your TV and has built-in wifi to connect to your existing broadband router that enables the downloading of full movies for a few bucks, or at least less than what Netflix and competitors charge (cheapest plan = $5.99/mo, 1 dvd at a time, limit of 2 a month). You can also transfer them to your iPod and watch them on the go.
Might even be DVR capable, or that could be the $299 model
This would be huge and carry Apple far beyond just a music provider, now they'd be in control of viewable media too, a new content provider, and with a direct broadband connection they could insert their own commericals at the beginning before playing movies, etc.
Apple would be unstoppable.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow for $13.99 is a positive bargain!
I'd say that Apple would absolutely love to do that. But at the end of the day, they still need to deal with whatever contracts the studios want, or else they have no content. Apple would love a flat $9.99 per movie with fairly liberal DRM (that's to say, unobtrustive, but still locks you into Apple hardware and software, as Fairplay does now). But the latest word is that the MPAA absolutely refuses to do a pay-to-own model, and won't take less than $14.99 for the newest films, or so was my impression of the soon-to-come iTunes Movie Store. As much as I hate iTunes for the DRM (well, moreso the DMCA for making it a worse offense than assaulting an officer or possessing child porn to break it), it's really managed to handle the entire digital music distribution thing extremely well. Sure, I prefer AllOfMP3 for a number of reasons, but if I'm going to pay for my music, I want all of the profits to go to the artist, at least within reason (Steve gets his distribtion costs back plus a couple cents, everything else to the artist and not a dime to the f'ing RIAA).
In effect, my concern about mine and others' online rights as completely stopped me from getting my music legally. And, by and large, movies as well (and that's only because a 1080p projector and 50.1 surround is a bit out of my price range, not to mention how it's not too compatible with a college dorm). My father used Rhapsody some time ago (I think, one of those WMA ones), and the DRM made his player useless. He's not stupid when it comes to computers - he eventually found out that burning and reripping his songs would strip off the restrictions. And it was a massive pain in the ass. Guess what - he buys NO music online anymore. Mind you, this was before PlaysForSure, but everyone knows that device lock-in is bullshit, and the moment that you start to notice DRM, it's not working properly. I love my iPod and use it all the time for music, and almost always use iTunes when I'm at the computer. But I watched a 30-minute video on my iPod last night, and I came away with a sore wrist like never before.
At least with audio, I just need to have speakers nearby, and have a standard 3.5mm jack. iPod-quality video really looks crappy on any decent-sized screen, and the notion of being forced to use iTunes or my iPod for iTVS(?) content is insane, especially with the absolutely horrible video playback capabilities of iTunes (the windows are completely counter-intuitive, not to mention slow to respond). While I'm sure that a video store would bring about iTunes v7, that doesn't mean it'll handle video playback any better. I HAVE to use QuickTime to watch movies in my iTunes library, just because the playback is so messed up within iTunes. Then, just the limited resolution and audio quality, not to mention a possible rentals-only method. Only the MPAA could be dumb enough to think that we'd pay just as much for a time-limited rental (and no late fees, it'll just dissapear) that you have to spend quite a while downloading, with only stereo audio and resolution that's probably half of what DVD has to offer. It's almost as if they're trying to prove to themselves that people aren't interested in digital distribution. My DVD-quality files are generally 2-2.5GB in size, which will take an insane amount of time to download over most home broadband connections.
What's the point of all of this? Apple could easily pull off an extremely successful iTunes Video Store. They know how to do it, and have a pretty damn good idea of what people want. But they're being bound to restrictions forced upon them by the MPAA (no contract, no content, after all, so it's their way or the highway), which they probably know are going to really piss people off. Sure, Apple might strike a deal with Youtube that'll work with the parent's concept box (which wouldn't surprise me - Youtube has all rights over their content unless the uploader pulls it, and they of all companies know that people don't want to put up with stupid restrictions and just want cheap cont
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
I've had enough of a failure rate in HD's to be very concerned about my ability to back up data on a HD