Slashdot Mirror
Amazon To Launch New Streaming Video Service
The New York Times reports that Amazon has begun a limited testing of its new Video on Demand service, which will replace its Unbox store. The significant difference between the two is that the new service will stream movies through your browser rather than requiring you to download them and use Amazon's video player. Users will also retain access to movies and shows they're previously purchased. The service is not expected to be particularly profitable; Amazon is most likely looking to the future.
I've used it and it is so much better than the old version. There is no buggy client to install and it works on Windows or Mac. When you view a detail page, the video starts playing automatically, which is a little annoying, but it is nice to get a preview of the show you are considering watching. If you decided to buy it, just click purchase in the viewer and the video extends seamlessly, it doesn't pause at all.
The new video library is way better than the old client. All the videos show up in a tiled view. You click the show you want and it flips around to reveal the options. Click play and the show starts in the current window, and is very fast to start.
The video quality seems to be lower than the download versions of the same shows. While the downloaded movies were approximately DVD quality, I can really see the artifacts in the streaming version.
Is this service going to open to the world market? Or just the US? There's a huge disconnect with the purported ideology of business, that is, globalisation and the free-market, not to mention the WORLD wide web, but pretty much every service (like iTunes and Steam) charge one price for Americans and another price for everyone else. This is noticeable here in Australia. Our dollar is almost at parity with the US dollar, so it's obviously to our benefit to purchase things from the US or from companies based in the US. But tracks on iTunes cost literally twice as much and we're forced to buy games from the "Australian Steam brochure" which are again, up to twice as much.
So while I see this as a good move, I hope Amazon will buck the current trend, and as a company that's based purely in the online realm, will understand that arbitrarily forcing different prices because they come from different countries is stupid when we're talking about the WORLD wide web.