Amazon Opens On-Demand Video Store

g0dsp33d writes "Amazon opened the doors on its new video on demand service. Some promotional videos are free and the quality seems to be good. You can preview the first 2 minutes of any of the offerings. Episodes of TV shows cost $1.99 and movies are $14.99. Movies can also be 'rented' for 24 hours for $3.99. Purchasing allows download to two machines and unlimited viewing online. The service claims 14.5K movies and 1,200 TV shows including pre-purchasing the rights to upcoming seasons. Considering alternative, ad-based, free online video sites such as Hulu, is Amazon's service too pricey?"

Comments

Mandatory short answer:

[dword]

Considering alternative, ad-based, free online video sites such as Hulu, is Amazon's service too pricey?

Yes.

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[Ctrl-Z]

The correct thing to do is to tag it "yes".

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgive me for being an idiot, but how would a non-subscriber do that exactly? They never used to be able to and I cannot find the feature to do so anywhere...

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[dknj]

click the grey arrow and type it in the box. if you're not a subscriber, however, your tag means nothing.

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[MikeDirnt69]

rly?

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[Hatta]

Here's a somewhat longer answer: of course it is.

If you watch 2 hours of TV a night, that's almost 8 bucks a night on amazon. Over the course of a month, that's something like $240 just for TV. Are they out of their minds?

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[Rude Turnip]

This isn't for mass-consumers of television. It's geared for people that might watch a couple of hours per week. If this could stream to a TV via Media Center to my 360, it would be great for me. As it is, I'm more psyched about being able to stream Netflix to my 360 for a FLAT FEE this fall.

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[dpf44]

$2 for a TV show? I'd pay that if the quality is as good as you'd be able to download from TPB (ie. hidef - ~1GB for 45 minutes of video).

However, like most of these useful ideas, I can't get it in the UK. I can see no mention of this service on Amazon.co.uk. and the .com site blocks access outside of the 48 contiguous states.

Ah well, free wins!

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[Korin43]

Considering you can only download it on two computer, all of their videos should be considered "rentals".

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[sricetx]

I can see no mention of this service on Amazon.co.uk. and the .com site blocks access outside of the 48 contiguous states.

Really? Why would Amazon.com block access to Alaska and Hawaii? I could understand charging more to ship to these states, but would think Amazon would still want to sell there. Of course, you have said that you are in the UK and do not have access to the US Amazon.com site so maybe you just don't know what you are talking about.

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[Endo13]

And this demonstrates exactly why the MPAA is struggling against piracy. $14.99 to DOWNLOAD a movie that comes crippled with DRM? Are they really that disconnected from reality? (Yes, that is in fact a rhetorical question.)

Sadly, I guessed this is exactly what they would try to force if/when someone actually tried to offer such a service. And anyone here on /. could have told them it will be an abject failure.

If they actually want to be relevant in the digital age, they will need to sell their products at real market prices. Which would probably be about $8-10 for hot new releases, $5 for most movies, and $1-2 for older bargain-bin dross.

At $15 each they won't even sell enough to pay the electric bill for running the servers.

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[anexkahn]

Hell Yeah!!!

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[Anonymous Coward]

I like to do the math a little differently.

A 24 minute show on Hulu is free, but incorporates a little more than 1 minute of ads. The same show on Amazon costs ~$2 but has no ads.

So, per hour, the options are Hulu with ~2.5 minutes of ads for free or Amazon with no ads for ~$5. Avoiding wasting that 2.5 minutes works out to ($5 / 2.5 minutes) ~= $120/hour when extrapolated out long term. Basically (assuming only those two options) Hulu is buying my time at $120/hour when compared to buying the episode through Amazon. Because I value my leisure time watching TV shows at less than that rate, I'll continue to watch the ads on Hulu.

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[maniac/dev/null]

Who would watch 2 hours of on-demand programming every night? If I missed an episode or something, I could see paying a few bucks to catch up. Who would really use this as their only TV viewing, instead of watching normal broadcasting every one in a while?

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[CottonThePirate]

This can stream to a 360 via Windows media 11. Yes you need all the DRM bells and whistles to make it happen, but maybe not a bad deal if your in for it anyway: http://www.amazon.com/gp/video/ontv/ontv/ref=sv_atv_2 Has all the details for you.

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[dpf44]

Actually I do have access to amazon.com from the UK - I just can't access this particular service.

You're quite right about my error, however - I did miss out the extra note about these other states. I'd been trying to quote it from memory.

The exact message that's displayed to me is as below:

We have detected that you are not located within the US. Due to licensing restrictions Amazon Video On Demand customers must located be in the United States (the 48 contiguous states, Alaska, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia) when viewing videos online.

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[thetartanavenger]

Ah wonderful, thanks. An amazingly well advertised feature of slashdot ey..

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[Dan541]

$2 for a TV show? I'd pay that if the quality is as good as you'd be able to download from TPB (ie. hidef - ~1GB for 45 minutes of video).

However, like most of these useful ideas, I can't get it in the UK. I can see no mention of this service on Amazon.co.uk. and the .com site blocks access outside of the 48 contiguous states.

Ah well, free wins!

I can't access it either, and setting up a United States endpoint just to watch TV seems silly.

Looks like ThePirateBay wins again.

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[srussia]

I can see no mention of this service on Amazon.co.uk. and the .com site blocks access outside of the 48 contiguous states.

Really? Why would Amazon.com block access to Alaska and Hawaii?

Secession risk.

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[sricetx]

The way Amazon has that worded is a bit odd: customers must located be in the United States (the 48 contiguous states, Alaska, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia). I'm not sure why they would define the United States with that wording. Maybe they are wanting to exclude territories such as Guam or Puerto Rico for some reason? Sorry if I came across as critical of your post dpf44, I was merely baffled by the comment about limiting it to the 48 contiguous states.

Re:Mandatory short answer:

[dpf44]

Not a problem, Sricetx. It had seemed odd to me at the time to only be referencing 48 states, but it was the word "contiguous" that had stuck in my mind.

Mac!

[fluffykitty1234]

Yay I can watch on my overpriced Mac! Unlike Netflix. :(

Re:Mac!

[wattrlz]

Yay I can watch on my overpriced Mac! Unlike Netflix. :(

Or you could sell your overpriced mac, buy a computer that can view amazon and netflix; and still have money left over for a pony.

Re:Mac!

[AKAImBatman]

Or you could just use iTunes. Which is what I will continue to do now that I realize that Amazon's service is the same price with the same content, but with more hassle than the fully integrated iTunes interface.

Re:Mac!

[Darundal]

The big thing for me is that you can view (online at least) in Linux.

Re:Mac!

[LandDolphin]

Mmm a Pony, Now, I'm hungry...

Re:Mac!

[speedtux]

I find the iTunes interface to be a big hassle, actually. Also, iTunes coverage of movies is rather limited.

Re:Mac!

[popeye44]

OMG! Ponies???? Really!!!!! :D

Re:Mac!

[CheshireFerk-o]

id hope so, i word at amazon and all our crap runs linux =D heh so id atleast they support it in their products =P i smiled when i noticed we dont give m$ a cent =D

Re:Mac!

[TheModelEskimo]

What's the word at Amazon?

Re:Mac!

[davester666]

"The big thing for me is that you can view (online at least) in Linux."

If you are one of the lucky few to get Flash working on your particular install of Linux.

And given that this business model has already been tried [WalMart, Google], how is Amazon's service different from these now-defunct services. For bonus points, explain the point of 'purchasing' a video stream given the relatively high chance that this service will also be defunct in the next couple of years.

Re:Mac!

[AKAImBatman]

Amazon and iTunes carry the EXACT SAME MOVIES. One cannot complain about the selection of one without also complaining about the selection of the other.

Re:Mac!

[blueZ3]

What's the problem with Netflix and Mac? My wife watches the streaming NetFlix in a VM.

Re:Mac!

[keytoe]

Or you could sell your overpriced mac, buy a computer that can view amazon and netflix; and still have money left over for a pony.

Are you crazy? Have you priced a pony lately?!

Re:Mac!

[Firehed]

If you're rich enough to afford a Mac and these rentals, you can afford a copy of VMWare and XP.

Unfortunately my Mac bankrupted me so it's off to TBP.

Re:Mac!

[MBGMorden]

Hmm. Unbox Video store downloads don't work in Linux - or in Windows half the time. I decided I'd go ahead and buy a couple episodes of BSG from Amazon last season. After getting thoroughly bitten by their DRM to where those videos I purchased are pretty much useless at this point (they won't play on my main machine), I've decided that I'll not be bothering with any Amazon video services.

Their music services are MP3 based and so I support them over iTunes. Hopefully these companies will get the hint eventually that DRM doesn't prevent pirates from getting stuff (what are they aware that, GASP, a copy of this show/movie/song might show up on a P2P network? Who woulda thunk it?), but rather hinders legit users.

Re:Mac!

[slarrg]

Yeah, but it doesn't work with my Apple TV. :(

Re:Mac!

[khellendros1984]

Lucky few? A couple clicks in Ubuntu, or a couple CLI commands in any other distro.

Re:Mac!

[ClosedSource]

I don't know how nice iTunes is on a Mac or an iPod, but Amazon's Unbox video downloads are of much higher quality on Windows than iTunes's are.

Re:Mac!

[nullchar]

Actually, the price of hay is so high that some people are giving ponies away for free!

Re:Mac!

[speedtux]

Interesting. Evidently, it's the Amazon-Apple-Microsoft axis of evil.

Re:Mac!

[speedtux]

The Mac morons are obviously out in force again today, using the moderator accounts to beat down anything that disagrees with their corporate masters.

Get a life guys. Oh, and here's a dime, buy yourself a real computer.

Re:Mac!

[g0dsp33d]

Yay I can watch on my overpriced Mac! Unlike Netflix. :(

Holy crap! Macs don't even play DVDs?

Wrong question!

[bigtallmofo]

Considering alternative, ad-based, free online video sites such as Hulu, is Amazon's service too pricey?

This should read:

Considering open access to ad-free shows and movies via BitTorrent, is Amazon's service too pricey?

I firmly believe that if content owners and distributors charged a reasonable rate to download a TV show (maybe 10 cents), piracy would be a thing of the past. For 10 cents, very few people would choose black or gray market distribution channels. Of course, that would have the negative effect of MTV's Cribs not being quite as exciting. Instead of 5 Bentleys and 2 Cadillac Escalades they'd have maybe a Ford Taurus and a Honda Accord.

Or we can just continue with this charade. Personally, I'd like to start charging people for looking in my direction. If you look at me without paying me, it's stealing. Because I say so.

Re:Wrong question!

[mweather]

Torrents take time. On-demand video does not. You can't really compare the two anymore than you can compare TV with a DVR with on-demand TV.

Re:Wrong question!

[ByOhTek]

> Considering open access to ad-free shows and
> movies via BitTorrent, is Amazon's service too
> pricey?

When compared to that, anything is too pricy, if you ignore the potential legal hassles. This is for people who want to minimize their worry about the legal hassles (and would prefer to provide some compensation to the artists).

> I firmly believe that if content owners and
> distributors charged a reasonable rate to
> download a TV show (maybe 10 cents), piracy
> would be a thing of the past. For 10 cents,
> very few people would choose black or gray
> market distribution channels.

Who determines reasonable? What about different rental prices? What about the fact that credit card companies (which are about your only options charge so much to the vendor for using their services)? These things aren't free (even if they aren't as expensive as some of the retailers would like you to believe.

10 cents for a limited watch of a show, 30 cents for an unlimited download, say, 30 cents for a one-time of a movie, $1.00 for an unlimited download. That seems the lower end of reasonable to me (to allow the distributors and creators to both recover their costs AND get a little money for their efforts), while still making things cost effective for the end users.

> Of course, that would have the negative effect
> of MTV's Cribs not being quite as exciting.
> Instead of 5 Bentleys and 2 Cadillac Escalades
> they'd have maybe a Ford Taurus and a Honda
> Accord.

How can droll and boring be any less exciting?

Re:Wrong question!

[gnick]

If you think that the asking price to view/read/listen to copyrighted content is too high, then don't pay it and don't view/read/listen to it. But don't try to justify your illegal activities because you're trying to help the industry revise their business model. The truth is that you want what they have to offer, you don't feel like paying for it, and you don't want to admit that you're a criminal. The way to combat their broken business model is boycott, not copyright infringement. Piracy tells the industry that you want what they have to offer but want to avoid paying.

In short, pirates are the reason that we all have to deal with DRM BS. Pirates are not Robin Hood - They're just people too cheap to pay for what they want and too weak to just go without it.

Arrgh! Pirates with mod points off the port bow! Ack - I've been struck with a -1 Troll!

=)

Re:Wrong question!

[maxume]

If the tv shows and movies were ~$0.25-1.00, it wouldn't give me a real big belly ache to buy Amazon bucks $10 or $20 at a time, mitigating the credit card transaction costs.

Re:Wrong question!

[iniquitous]

I pay $16.99 a month for Netflix's 3 at-a-time plan, enabling me both to rent as many physical copies of movies and TV shows in a month as I possibly can and watch an unlimited amount of their online content as I desire. I could pay $8.99 a month and achieve near the same thing--only giving up 2 at-a-time physical rentals.

Yes, Amazon's service is too expensive.

Re:Wrong question!

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the fact that credit card companies (which are about your only options charge so much to the vendor for using their services)? These things aren't free (even if they aren't as expensive as some of the retailers would like you to believe.

10 cents for a limited watch of a show, 30 cents for an unlimited download, say, 30 cents for a one-time of a movie, $1.00 for an unlimited download. That seems the lower end of reasonable to me (to allow the distributors and creators to both recover their costs AND get a little money for their efforts), while still making things cost effective for the end users.

I can buy a season's worth of a TV show on DVD and it costs LESS than $2.00 an episode... Yeah, I'd say this is a completely unreasonable price. You can buy a season (23 or 24 episodes) of most TV shows for $45 to $48. I could have a nice DVD case, the DVD itself and some extra footage thrown in. Or I could download the show with a bunch of restrictions on how and where I watch it. The studios don't have DVD mastering fees, DVD pressing fees, DVD menu / extra footage design fees, box art design, box art pressing fees, and shipping costs. Still they want to charge MORE for these files than they do a tangible product.

This is a total rip off and an attempt to ratchet up profit margins by the studios. $1.00 is reasonable and more than enough considering their reduced expenses. Also, these digital purchase services are competing with DVRs which which have a cost of $0.

Re:Wrong question!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

In short, pirates are the reason that we all have to deal with DRM BS. Pirates are not Robin Hood - They're just people too cheap to pay for what they want and too weak to just go without it.

So, when hollywood paid congress to enact retro-active copyright extensions, essentially stealing from the public domain, that's OK because hollywood is not too cheap to pay for what they want, eh? But when little guys take the matter into their own hands instead of paying off congress they are just a bunch of gutless bastards.

Yeah, you've been drinking the kool-aid alright.

Re:Wrong question!

[PainKilleR-CE]

I've gone off and on watching TV shows streaming from the various websites of the networks, and, for the most part, it's ok. If they were in HD resolution and didn't chop the videos up into multiple streams with forced ads it'd be a decent alternative.

As it is, I mostly prefer renting the series on Netflix when it becomes available or setting it up on my DVR. I'm really pleased with the quality of Netflix' streaming, though I'm not so happy with having to open an IE window to do it.

Re:Wrong question!

[SanityInAnarchy]

If you think that the asking price to view/read/listen to copyrighted content is too high, then don't pay it and don't view/read/listen to it. But don't try to justify your illegal activities because you're trying to help the industry revise their business model.

It's not about what I think, or what GP thinks. It's about the fundamental reality.

So long as the industry treats piracy as an evil to be fought, they will lose. As soon as they start to treat it as a competitor, they might have a chance -- because believe it or not, it is possible to compete with free. You just have to provide better value.

Pirates are not Robin Hood - They're just people too cheap to pay for what they want and too weak to just go without it.

Apple cites an 80 gig iPod as holding 20,000 songs. At $1/song, that's $20k to fill. That's more than a year's salary, at minimum wage. And they make 160 gig iPods.

So no, it's not that they're cheap. It's that there's more available, more readily, and we have broader musical tastes -- and as a result, the perception of any one song has changed.

Re:Wrong question!

[SanityInAnarchy]

Torrents take time. On-demand video does not.

Torrents, I can save, copy to a laptop (or a portable device), etc. DRM'd video, I can't.

And are you saying the on-demand-ness of it is worth $15/movie and DRM?

Re:Wrong question!

[abigor]

The availability might be. There are many, many movies not available via BitTorrent, which tends by its very nature to only offer what's currently popular.

Re:Wrong question!

[Princeofcups]

Considering alternative, ad-based, free online video sites such as Hulu, is Amazon's service too pricey?

I firmly believe that if content owners and distributors charged a reasonable rate to download a TV show (maybe 10 cents), piracy would be a thing of the past. For 10 cents, very few people would choose black or gray market distribution channels.

Would $0.10 per show pay for disk storage, network bandwidth, accounting work to collect all those piddly amounts? It would probably be a money loser. iTunes $10-$20 for a complete TV show season is about right.

Re:Wrong question!

[Peeet]

I live on the west coast and I can download via torrent and start watching a TV episode 15 minutes before it starts airing on cable / broadcast out here. All of the "on-demand" services I've seen don't even put the show up until the next day.

Re:Wrong question!

[nine-times]

I firmly believe that if content owners and distributors charged a reasonable rate to download a TV show (maybe 10 cents), piracy would be a thing of the past.

I don't think you're going to get as low as 10 cents, but I do think the pricing on TV shows is stupid. For one thing, assuming this is like iTunes, they'll let you rent movies, but make you buy TV shows. Sure, the TV shows are cheaper, but they still seem to be justifying the $2 per episode with the idea that you're buying it, and you get to keep it. But with most TV shows most of the time (with only a few exceptions), I just want to watch them once and be done with it.

I don't mind DRM so much when the whole idea is that it's a rental. If they charged something like 50cents per show and I had 24 hours to view it, I'd probably use something like that.

My real goal in any kind of VOD Internet service would be to replace cable TV. So that should be the marker for measuring their pricing schemes: will an average customer be able to watch all the TV shows they want and still pay less than an average cable TV bill? By that measure, I'm sure $2 an episode is too much.

The problem is that this whole system is controlled by people who don't want you to be able to cancel your cable, so that's why the pricing stinks.

Re:Wrong question!

[gnick]

So, when hollywood paid congress to enact retro-active copyright extensions, essentially stealing from the public domain, that's OK because hollywood is not too cheap to pay for what they want, eh?

That was pretty sleazy. I guess that, as long as you're downloading material that was re-copyrighted under the Copyright Term Extension Act, it seems just fine. But if you're downloading anything made in the last 50 years, that argument seems pretty unrelated.

But when little guys take the matter into their own hands instead of paying off congress they are just a bunch of gutless bastards.

I never said that they were gutless, although I fail to see how it takes any amount of guts to download a movie. I'd respect someone much more who had the conviction to just refuse to deal with the industries they're objecting to rather than partaking of their wares, refusing to pay, and trying to puff themselves up as a "little guy taking the matter into their own hands". You're not striking back at the industry - You're expressing interest and encouraging them to inflict DRM on the rest of us. I also never said they were bastards - I know nothing about the average pirate's parental lineage.

Yeah, you've been drinking the kool-aid alright.

No - I really dislike the RIAA/MPAA and they get very little of my $$ - Most of what they put out isn't worth what they're charging for it IMO. But it does sound like you're deluding yourself into thinking that you're somehow striking back and standing up for the little guy when in fact you're just too cheap to pay for what you want and too weak to just do the right thing and go without it.

Re:Wrong question!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah the timeless battle between consumers and providers, landlords and tenants, buyers and sellers. Neither side is morally superior here; each side simply wants to maximize its own economic gain. Of course maximizing your own gain is not an argument that is especially persuasive to the other side so you have arguments by buyers that if the seller would only lower prices the seller's business would increase (or piracy decrease) enough to make up for it. And sellers often complain that taxes and regulations force them to have higher prices than otherwise. In normal circumstances with many buyers and sellers pricing is determined by traditional supply and demand market forces.
In the specific case, if Amazon pricing is too high than competitors will jump in at a lower price because there is a low barrier to market entry for selling items on the internet.

Re:Wrong question!

[roc97007]

>> Considering open access to ad-free shows and
>> movies via BitTorrent, is Amazon's service too
>> pricey?

> When compared to that, anything is too pricy, if you ignore the potential legal hassles.

Not at all. For example, $19 for a CD is too much. I will not purchase any CD for that price. I'm more likely to pay $6.99 for a CD, (used) and even more likely to pay 89 cents per song for the songs I want.

With a few minutes research, I can almost always find the title I want for a price I'm willing to pay. For the stuff that's not available for a reasonable price, wait a month or so and it pops up on the used market. (This assumes you can resist the temptation to be first on your block to own a new title.)

Under those circumstances, piracy is unnecessary and unappealing because the price is in line with the customer's perception of value. When price is forced to be substantially above perceived value, piracy becomes more attractive. I firmly believe it's not about balancing the potential of legal hassle against getting something for free, it's about paying a fair price. And $19 for 9 songs, 7 of which are filler, is not a fair price.

There's always going to be a hardcore group that pirates music for the challenge or excitement or just because they can. That yields good stories for the press but (going out on a limb here,) doesn't have a measurable effect on the bottom line. When the rank and file think they're being skinned, (...and perception is everything...) that's when piracy is more likely to happen in monetarily significant numbers. Especially since the hardcores have developed all those nice tools in the meantime. :-)

Re:Wrong question!

[drakethegreat]

Ya cause boycotting it really sends a message. If everyone did that then the movie industry would just assume less people want to watch movies not that their prices are too extreme. There have been almost no changes to pricing since the emergence of online media. With pirating you at least give them solid numbers in terms of people interested but just not paying their prices. Now if they were to drop that price they could easily see that the number pirating their content will go down and the number buying goes up. Now they can't get everyone to start buying their content but they don't have to, they just need to get more people buying to the point where they actually make more money. This is economics 101, if you don't understand what an equilibrium price is then I suggest you avoid talking about economics all together.

Re:Wrong question!

[infinite9]

The truth is that you want what they have to offer, you don't feel like paying for it, and you don't want to admit that you're a criminal.

I seem to remember a story about a group of people dressed as indians illegally throwing tea into Boston harbor.

My point is that just because something is illegal, it's not a foregone conclusion that it's immoral or unjust. I wonder how people would respond if tickets to the Louvre in Paris were $1000 a head. Many would stop going. Many would protest. And many would just view copies of the paintings.

Re:Wrong question!

[geekoid]

It tells the industry there price is too high.
boycott doesn't work.

"pirates are the reason that we all have to deal with DRM BS"

Bullshit.

People can get every song they want via bittorrent, yet apple sold 2 billion songs.

Clearly piraicy isn't hurting the indutry.

Personally I see three types of copyright infringers:
Home users distributing some digital copy.
Home user making a CD and sharing it with friends
Orginization printing 10s of thousands of copies and selling the diska.

The last one is the only one they has any significant impact.

Please show me where in the copyright code where it applies to anyone except distribution? it doesn't. Receiving material the happens to violate a copyright is not a violation.
This makes sense. If you record a TV show, your not violating copyright. You distribute that video and you are.

Re:Wrong question!

[geekoid]

Downloading isn't copyright infringement, distribution is.
They like to call it 'piracy' and lump them all together, but read the code. Distribution is what it is about.

Re:Wrong question!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's to bad netflix online is the biggest piece of crap ever and doesn't offer any new movies making it non comparable.

Re:Wrong question!

[gnick]

Equilibrium pricing doesn't enter this equation at all. People typically want to get the most for their money. If a movie costs $X in the store or $0 online, many people will save themselves the trip to the store and download it. If the store can provide it faster, gives the purchaser some premium content, if the consumer just likes the pretty box, or if the consumer has some aversion to acquiring the movie illegally, it may be worth it to them to pay the $X and buy legit. Otherwise, $0 is less than $X so they'll download. The equilibrium pricing only comes into play when there's some advantage to the store version - Often not the case to many consumers.

This is economics 101, if you don't understand what an equilibrium price is then I suggest you avoid talking about economics all together.

Re:Wrong question!

[ByOhTek]

I never said Amazon's prices were reasonable.

I simply was trying to make a point that the suggestion of $0.10 was just as unreasonable to distributors as $14.99 is to consumers.

Re:Wrong question!

[Sancho]

Pirates are not Robin Hood - They're just people too cheap to pay for what they want and too weak to just go without it.

Apple cites an 80 gig iPod as holding 20,000 songs. At $1/song, that's $20k to fill. That's more than a year's salary, at minimum wage. And they make 160 gig iPods.

So no, it's not that they're cheap. It's that there's more available, more readily, and we have broader musical tastes -- and as a result, the perception of any one song has changed.

I don't understand the connection here. What does Apple citing an iPod as holding that many songs have anything to do with "So no, it's not that they're cheap..." And what do you mean by "the perception of any one song has changed"? I'm not being a jerk, I just truly don't get what you're trying to say.

If you're pointing out that it's unreasonable to fill 80 gigs with legitimate music, I would disagree. Plenty of people have built up rather large CD collections over the years, and putting all of that on an iPod could be realistic.

It's also marketing. That's an average of 4 megs per song. When I rip music, the songs usually come out to be twice that. But it certainly helps sales to say 20,000 songs--most people don't even realize that they'll probably never fill that up.

And none of that even begins to consider freely downloadable content, or commercial content which is cheaper than $1/song. I'm pretty sure that between the CDs I already own, freely downloadable music that I like, and my few downloaded purchases, that I could fill up 100gigs easily. All completely legitimately.

Re:Wrong question!

[nmos]

Who determines reasonable?

In most markets that would be the customer. We'll know when they've hit a feature/price combination that is reasonable when piracy becomes the exception rather than the rule.

Re:Wrong question!

[Karlt1]

[quote]
Apple cites an 80 gig iPod as holding 20,000 songs. At $1/song, that's $20k to fill. That's more than a year's salary, at minimum wage. And they make 160 gig iPods.

So no, it's not that they're cheap. It's that there's more available, more readily, and we have broader musical tastes -- and as a result, the perception of any one song has changed.
[/quote]

And we all know....
1. Everyone buys all of their music from iTunes one song at a time.
2. The iPod only holds music, not video, podcasts, games, etc.
3. No one had a CD collection prior to buying an iPod.

Re:Wrong question!

[tiananmen tank man]

In short, pirates are the reason that we all have to deal with DRM BS

You say "pirates" are the reason for DRM, but "pirates" don't have to deal with DRM. So, who has to deal with DRM? Legit users have to deal with DRM.

Let's see what DRM can do and the consequenses for legit users:
* restrict users from format shifting thus forcing a user to buy same content for a differnt media device.
* restrict users from reselling, thus removing the resale market and forcing new potential customers to buy new at retail price.
* restrict users to viewing/listening to content only when some server is up and able to authorize you.
* restrict a user to only a limited set of software/hardware that can play the media that supports the DRM.

There are probably more but you get the picture.

Re:Wrong question!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's to bad netflix online is the biggest piece of crap ever and doesn't offer any new movies making it non comparable.

It's true, no new movies -- but while there's plenty of dreck I've found a lot worth watching (the user ratings help when exploring the offerings). Regarding quality, I have the cheapest (slowest) DSL that my provider offers, and the quality is adequate. I always have plenty in my "watch instantly" queue to tide me over until my next DVD arrives.

Re:Wrong question!

[Taibhsear]

Torrents take time. On-demand video does not. You can't really compare the two anymore than you can compare TV with a DVR with on-demand TV.

And yet it's the same video, same filesize, using the same cable lines. Funny how that works, huh?

Re:Wrong question!

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM is here for two reasons. Primarily, the industry is stupid enough to think that they can actually slow down piracy. Second is to try to sell multiple copies although nothing stops you right now from reselling original CD/DVD media.

Re:Wrong question!

[Anonymous Coward]

In all fairness, I'm not sure 10 cents would pay for the bandwidth/distribution cost alone.

Re:Wrong question!

[mxs]

In short, pirates are the reason that we all have to deal with DRM BS. Pirates are not Robin Hood - They're just people too cheap to pay for what they want and too weak to just go without it.

Sorry, but that's bullshit. The reason we have DRM is not a logical consequence of pirates. Hell, pirates are just about the only people who do NOT have to deal with DRM.

DRM has not hindered a single "pirate" in "pirating" their video. Ever. It won't ever, either. It may take one proto-pirate to figure out how to break the DRM (or rerecord it or obtain the stuff from a different source), but that's it -- one guy. In all likelihood, this one guy uses software made to be used so easily (point and click) that a baby could use it. DRM does absolutely NOTHING to curb that kind of "piracy" -- and it sure as HELL won't curb commercial piracy (where people actual have financial incentives to break stuff, fast).

Anybody who thinks DRM is just there because there are pirates and would not be there if there were no pirates has drunken the kool-aid. You've been had.

Re:Wrong question!

[mweather]

I never said it was worth the money, just that is has more value. And FYI, I can copy anything on my DVR. Problem is, If I want to watch it, I have to record it first. Not so with on-demand, at least once I have enough video buffered.

Re:Wrong question!

[mweather]

Different transfer technologies. Though with a fast enough torrent and the right prioritizing you can get something analogous to streaming via torrents. It's just not very likely. I get 1080i video over the same cable, yet not in my wildest dreams would I be able to stream that. At least not for free. That's a serious chunk of bandwidth.

Re:Wrong question!

[Anonymous Coward]

gnick, great argument, and eloquent, too. I agree with you 100%. Sadly, I know how easy it is to believe otherwise. I used to rampantly download mp3s and thought I was sticking it to the man. It took a very level-headed advisor of mine to one day point out to me the logical fallacy I was believing.

Re:Wrong question!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, really? I already paid for their (MPAA) stupid content. See, I used to use CD's. Mostly for data backup, these days mostly just for new Linux installs and n-Lited Windows builds.

A few years ago I found out that I was actually paying the fucking MAFFIAA for every single CD - even though I don't ever listen to their crappy music they were charging me for it.

Fuck that. If they're going to charge me for content I don't use, I'm going to help deprive them of revenue streams.

I don't even listen to/watch the crap I download, but I'm sure as hell going to help people that want it get it.

Re:Wrong question!

[Kjella]

The availability might be. There are many, many movies not available via BitTorrent, which tends by its very nature to only offer what's currently popular.

Hmm, perhaps we need another way to share files, where people share files they already have in exchange for files they don't. We could call this novel concept a "shared folder", I'm sure noone has thought of that before. Or another ultrarevolutionary system from 1979, where I now have ~32000 movies available. Bittorrent isn't the solution to everything, but I'd say many of the other issues were already solved.

Re:Wrong question!

[bwcbwc]

Well, let's see. If a 25 minute TV program is $1.99, then a 150 minute movie should be about $11.99, and a 100 minute movie should be about 9.99. So the movie price is definitely unreasonable. $1.99 for a TV show seems to be about the going rate. When you compare it to 0.99 to 1.99 for a 4 minute song, it seems pretty reasonable. As a consumer, though, I think reasonable would be about 25 to 50 cents for a song, a buck for a TV show and 7 bucks for a movie. You can't make it cheaper than an actual movie ticket. That would just kill the movie industry completely. In fact that's probably why the movies are so expensive in the first place. They're being priced in comparison with theater tickets, not in comparison with TV shows.

Re:Wrong question!

[Anonymous Coward]

How much are your corporate masters paying you to write comments like this, shameless troll? Happy with the table scraps they're tossing on the floor for you as you sit there at their feet?

Got news for you: DRM would be here regardless. Remember Divx? Buy a movie, then pay endless rental fees to watch it? Yeah, great fucking idea. They actually thought they could pull that one over on us! This is the world they'd have us living in: a world where the RIAA sues single soccer-moms for everything they'll earn for the next 20 years, because they downloaded a few fucking degraded-quality MP3's. Brilliant.

Re:Wrong question!

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that, as long as you're downloading material that was re-copyrighted under the Copyright Term Extension Act, it seems just fine. But if you're downloading anything made in the last 50 years, that argument seems pretty unrelated.

You say that you haven't drunk the kool-aid, yet you read the previous poster's point in the most industry-favorable light. It isn't about stuff that was re-copyrighted, it is about stuff that was created and sold under one set of terms and then the terms were changed - even while they were still under copyright.

So no, it's not stuff older than 50 years, it is anything created up through 1998 which was just the most recent theft from the public domain.

But even that interpretation misses the real point - it isn't about taking what is rightfully ours. It is about the fact that they unilateraly broke the contract so we are no longer morally beholden to the contract in any fashion. In other words, multiple copyright extensions have established that the industry has a strong record of dealing in bad faith. Fool me once, shame on you fool me twice, shame on me. You are like Charlie Brown who never learns that Lucy will always yank that football away at the last second.

You're expressing interest and encouraging them to inflict DRM on the rest of us.

So what? If you ignore them and don't buy their product, DRM doesn't affect you either. Thus the only people on which DRM is being 'inflicted' are those who are silly enough to give their money to the industry in the first place - those silly fools are the ones who do the most to encourage the current system by putting up with and still parting with their money.

Re:Wrong question!

[Jherek Carnelian]

I simply was trying to make a point that the suggestion of $0.10 was just as unreasonable to distributors as $14.99 is to consumers.

Well distributors really shouldn't have much say in it because they are competing with free.
Distribution on the internet with bittorrent is free after some base fixed cost.

So, take that 10 cents, make 9.99 cents for the creators and 1/100 of a cent for distribution and then sell it to 50 million people. That's almost 5 million dollars which is what it costs for an episode of a top budget tv show. A typical sitcom is under $500K and anime, with english dubbing, is down in under-$200K/episode range.

So, with a world-wide market of over a billion possible customers, 10 cents an episode is completely reasonable.

Re:Wrong question!

[Anonymous Coward]

well I am no criminal but I am majorly pissed that I cant get streaming vid from hulu in Australia with out an invite. I can get spam from America even tho it is a criminal act to send the shit out to the world. oh not to mention that its ok for the NSA to hack my computer, bastards. if i tried i'm sure i could get a couple of bestiality streams, from America yeah not very happy i have been Regened by the Americans on the internet. Americas freedom at its best. tis is not "net neutrality". thx America for doing what you do best, piss people off. a big sorry to all the people that actually have been affected by there crap.

Re:Wrong question!

[spoot]

Interesting that this post comes up today. I was watching Hulu this afternoon and just checked out amazon. I am also a subscriber to netflix and sometimes watch the streamers. However... and this is a big however... Netflix quality is just awful. I have to use a virtual machine to run windows just to watch the netflix streamers and the quality is just awful compared to hulu and amazon. I'm lucky if I can get "basic" streaming quality on netflix, however hulu and now amazon at full screen is more than acceptable while netflix is just a mess of pixels. WHy? My guess is the horrible windows media they force on us. Netflix needs to fix this NOW. So, ya. Netflix is a better bargain for the buck, but the quality is crap and having to either boot or run windows in a VM is just annoying and awful.

Re:Wrong question!

[Maelwryth]

Agreed. On the other hand, please stop advertising to us. Advertising works. I don't want people manipulating my brain. Those triggers aren't there for you to sell me product under the guise of group inclusion, power, sex, happiness, etc.... They are there to help me survive in the real world, not a fantasy land. Your product is essentially useless, it provides no real world benefit to me except to give me a brief (insert brain chemical) hit. Why do you expect that after addicting me to your product, I would then pay you for it when I can get it at a far cheaper price?

Re:Wrong question!

[Anonymous Coward]

except that congress only has the authority to pass laws that encourage the production of creative material that helps enrich our culture.

copyright extensions of anything much over the original term lengths.

so i say pirate anything older than the original length of copyrights like bastards, boast about it in public, wear shirts advertising that you have such copies. remember, copyrights only apply to distribution, not possession.

'copyrights' (the right to copy) is a gift we gave creators so that they might be able to make a living off of their works and then be able to devote themselves full time to creation, increasing their skill and the quality of output, and enjoyment of audiences. we have the ability to rescind that right from creators when it is abused with or without congress's consent.

in short, it is a citizens duty to blatantly and loudly violate any law purchased outright by big business. such laws violate the very principles this country was founded on.

Re:Wrong question!

[Anonymous Coward]

I never said that they were gutless,

YOU: They're ... too weak to just go without it.

I also never said they were bastards

YOU: you don't want to admit that you're a criminal. ... pirates are the reason that we all have to deal with DRM BS

It's called paraphrasing.

Only a total grammar prick would think that nit-picking a restatement is a meaningful argument.

By the way, it is not true that pirates are the reason that we ALL have to deal with DRM BS. You boycott the products right? So you don't have to deal with it and the pirates, by definition, don't have to deal with it either. Seems like the only people 'dealing' with it are the suckers who actually pay money for DRM-laden products. Don't you think those are the real bastards - they actually pay for DRM, if that's not sending a message to the studios, I don't know what is.

Re:Wrong question!

[SanityInAnarchy]

If you're pointing out that it's unreasonable to fill 80 gigs with legitimate music, I would disagree. Plenty of people have built up rather large CD collections over the years, and putting all of that on an iPod could be realistic.

20k songs -- assume a large average of 20 songs per album -- that's still a thousand CDs. Are you saying that people have a thousand CDs? At $15/CD, that's still quite a lot of money spent over the years.

I'm not saying it's impossible -- I'm saying that the sheer demand for these things, and the number of them that are quite full, suggests two things: That people have an enormous appetite for music, and that a large portion -- maybe most -- of these consumers are criminals.

When most of the population is declared a criminal, maybe it's not the people that need to change. Maybe it's the law.

Re:Wrong question!

[SanityInAnarchy]

I never said it was worth the money, just that is has more value.

Well, "worth the money" is how I am comparing the two. And that's what you did say:

You can't really compare the two anymore than you can compare TV with a DVR with on-demand...

Re:Wrong question!

[Sancho]

I know people who have built up collections of thousands of albums. I know many people with 500+ CDs.

Incidentally, I have payed $15 per CD probably 10 times in my life. Most of the time, I get stuff cheap, either from used record stores (before they all started dying off) or from used bookstores (after.) Even retailers sell them for cheaper than that. Wal-Mart routinely has them for $10 each (or maybe that's changed, but it's pretty recent if it has.) And again, as I mentioned in my post, there are other ways to legitimately get music for cheaper than $1/track or $10/CD, even if that's your benchmark.

I'm sure it's rare. I'm absolutely positive that the people I'm talking about are exceptions to the rule and that most people would have to really try to fill out their iPods with legal music. I completely accept that. That's why I also mentioned the marketing bit. If you're comparing two mp3 players of equivalent price, and one says, "20,000 songs!" and another says, "10,000 songs!" which are you going to buy? Even if you never fill out the 10k ones, you'll probably buy the 20k one. It's hardwired into us to want more than we need, particularly for equivalent expenditures.

Of course, with iPods specifically, you're not just talking about music. The numbers they give help you get an idea of what they'll hold. They also hold video--and that eats up your space pretty quickly. They advertise 100 hours of video. That's only 50-60 movies. Lots of people have 50 DVDs in their collections*. Video downloads are cheaper per megabyte from many legitimate distributors than music. And realistically, a person will have a mix of movies and music on their iPod. All of a sudden, filling up that 80GB isn't so hard.

I'm not saying it's impossible -- I'm saying that the sheer demand for these things, and the number of them that are quite full, suggests two things: That people have an enormous appetite for music, and that a large portion -- maybe most -- of these consumers are criminals.

That's pretty fair. I have no idea how many of these devices are full, though. I have an iPhone (only 8 gigs) and it's not nearly full. But I also put hardly any of my music (100% legitimate) on there. I have gigabytes of legitimate music, if you consider ripping from CDs I own to be legal. Remember the bitrate problem, too (Apple assumes 128kbps, and plenty of people rip to twice that.)

When most of the population is declared a criminal, maybe it's not the people that need to change. Maybe it's the law.

My favorite is President Bush himself. He was asked what was on his iPod in an interview once. He mentioned the Beatles. This was before their music was available in a digital download format anywhere. Now, you and I both know that ripping from CD is almost certainly fair use--but at the time, the RIAA were trying to push the idea that ripping was also illegal (they've flip-flopped on this issue quite a bit, to be honest, and I don't know where they stand right now.) I laugh at the thought of the President of the United States of America--the office of which is supposed to faithfully execute the laws of this country--being a copyright criminal, and admitting it on national TV.

* We could start a debate on the DMCA preventing me from ripping my DVDs, but I truly don't believe that that portion of the DMCA would hold up in court on the grounds that it stifles fair use.

Re:Wrong question!

[Anonymous Coward]

pirates are also the reason we have video streaming on computers at all. *aa wouldn't have ever allowed that direction simply because without the competition of piracy, they had no incentive to change.

if you're going to blame pirates for drm, make sure you also credit them for the good things.

Re:Wrong question!

[kingturkey]

Even better than that, I live in Australia and I can download and watch a TV episode weeks to months before it broadcasts here. These download services won't even sell to me.
Admittedly this is related to the networks here and their licensing agreements, and they are getting better in airing the new shows soon after they broadcast in the US, but I'll still be watching Heroes at least a few days earlier when it starts up again, and Amazon or iTunes wouldn't sell it to me if I missed it on TV after it aired.

Re:Wrong question!

[SanityInAnarchy]

If you're comparing two mp3 players of equivalent price, and one says, "20,000 songs!" and another says, "10,000 songs!" which are you going to buy?

The one with more space, measured in bytes, not "songs". But I realize that I'm an exception.

They also hold video--and that eats up your space pretty quickly. They advertise 100 hours of video. That's only 50-60 movies. Lots of people have 50 DVDs in their collections*.

Are you really going to watch those 50 DVDs on your iPod? On a screen smaller than your hand? Maybe it's just me, but I don't see the appeal, and I don't know anyone who puts movies on their iPod -- at least not to play on that iPod.

It's actually quite easy to fill an iPod -- but not with music, and probably not with movies meant to be watched on that screen. Instead, use it as a mass storage device. High quality DVD rips, meant to be watched on another computer -- that could easily be less than 20, or less than 10 if you store the original ISOs.

But I strongly suspect that this is the exception, not the rule. To most people, the iPod is a music player, not a generic media player, and not a portable hard drive.

Regarding your footnote:

* We could start a debate on the DMCA preventing me from ripping my DVDs, but I truly don't believe that that portion of the DMCA would hold up in court on the grounds that it stifles fair use.

"Fair use" is actually not written in the law. Anywhere.

I would hope that it wouldn't hold up, but as it stands, that part of the DMCA does exist, and there's no law which directly contradicts it -- making that act, in fact, illegal.

Or why do you think Medibuntu exists, as a separate project from Ubuntu? Why do you think Ubuntu doesn't include decss, and can only play DVDs if you bought it from Dell (who paid for a license)?

Re:Wrong question!

[Anonymous Coward]

So, when hollywood paid congress to enact retro-active copyright extensions, essentially stealing from the public domain, that's OK because hollywood is not too cheap to pay for what they want, eh?

No, it's not OK. Something needs to be done about the length of copyrights now.

However, your argument about the public domain fails for the most part, since most of the music and video that is pirated is recent: Roll back copyright to its original length, and the most pirated works would still be those that are copyrighted, and we'd still be in the same situation with the RIAA and MPAA member companies.

Since it's obvious that we cannot fight the corporations at any level of government, the only real solution is one that has been mentioned time and again here, but ignored or ridiculed: Boycott them and their products.

With apologies to Martin Luther King, Jr., and in fervent hope that anyone that reads this will do so in the spirit in which it is intended, which is not to make light of the Civil Rights Movement in the US and his contribution, but rather to take a lesson from it that we CAN make a difference, and we CAN force them to change.

"I have a dream": Imagine, if you will, one day, agreed upon in advance, when *everyone*, all around the world, stops pirating for 24 hours.

The collective "Oh, shit" from the RIAA and MPAA members, and other such organizations worldwide, would be amazing, I bet.

Because, you see, they monitor the P2P networks, newsgroups, etc. - they use the traffic in copyright infringing materials as ammunition to get laws passed. Take away the demand, for even just 24 hours, and that would effectively kill that.

It would be the first collective exercise of *our* power, individually, on the Internet,worldwide, and would scare the daylights out of not only the RIAA and MPAA member companies, but every politician on the face of the planet.

Something to think about.

Posting AC, because I'd prefer the idea to be considered on its own merits. But, for what it's worth, it's worth a try, I think. I suggest July 4th, 2009, for obvious reasons. More than enough time to spread the word, and build support for it.

And the best part? You don't need to do anything at all, only stop doing one small thing for 24 hours.

Re:Wrong question!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

However, your argument about the public domain fails for the most part, since most of the music and video that is pirated is recent: Roll back copyright to its original length, and the most pirated works would still be those that are copyrighted, and we'd still be in the same situation with the RIAA and MPAA member companies.

You miss the point. It isn't that copyright duration should be returned to the original length. It's that the MAFIAA broke the contract first and then continued to do it again and again over the years beginning long before the internet even existed. No reasonable person would expect one party to continue to adhere to the terms of a contract that the other won't and doesn't follow.

"I have a dream": Imagine, if you will, one day, agreed upon in advance, when *everyone*, all around the world, stops pirating for 24 hours.

The collective "Oh, shit" from the RIAA and MPAA members, and other such organizations worldwide, would be amazing, I bet.

Yeaaah... I bet not. Because "taking away the demand, for even just 24 hours" means the 'demand' returns immediately afterwards. No effective killing of anything, no scaring the daylights out of anyone. You sound kinda like those innumerates who think that boycotting all gas stations for 24 hours will have massive repercussions to the oil industry.

Not that anyone is even going to notice a score: 0 post by an AC down in the bowels of a thread a day after it fell off the front page of slashdot anyway.

Re:Wrong question!

[istrebitjel]

You can't really compare the Amazon movie selection with the Netflix freebies...

Too Expensive

[The Real Veritas]

$15? Please. I'll just buy the DVD.

Re:Too Expensive

[mweather]

But then you can't copy it to a computer. If you do, you're breaking the law making actually legally purchasing the media moot.

Re:Too Expensive

[hedwards]

That's not true. The DMCA copy protection provisions don't apply to items with negligible security and format shifting isn't a form of distribution anyways.

It's mostly just FUD to scare people into over paying for multiple copies of the same product.

Re:Too Expensive

[SlashdotOgre]

It's too high for just a download service, but if they sent me the actual DVD in the mail and provided me this download immediately, I'd definitely consider it. Heck, I'd probably even put up with the download's DRM as long as a physical DVD comes in the mail.

As an American, I like immediate gratification and I'm lazy, so getting immediate access to the material I bought and not having to rip the DVD myself (even if my rip won't have DRM) would definitely motivate me to buy the DVD for Amazon over "Best" Buy, etc.

Even if there's a slight premium, eg. Best Buy charges $12 for just the DVD that I'd need to drive to the store for and Amazon charges $16 for the DVD in the mail plus an immediate download, I'd consider going with Amazon. Of course by that logic, their download would be worth about $4 to me which actually sounds about right. Basically I think what they're charging for rentals should be what they charge to permanent downloads.

Re:Too Expensive

[MMC Monster]

Or 3 movies from the Walmart $5 bin. (The movies in the bin are often 5 years old. For new movies, the Walmart price is ~$15.)

Or an unlimited number of movies "rented" from the local library for one week each. (Okay, I'm only allowed 3 movies at a time. That's still enough to get me through a weekend.) I've watched the complete Sopranos from my local library and will start on Deadwood next.

I know that when I need to get rid of some of the DVDs in my collection, they'll end up in the library for others to enjoy.

Re:Too Expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

"The DMCA copy protection provisions don't apply to items with negligible security..."

Are you sure? Circumventing the Content Scramble System encryption on a protected DVD seems to be covered in the DMCA. Even a highly secured system is easy to circumvent if you have an automated tool that does it for you.

Re:Too Expensive

[the eric conspiracy]

I think he is thinking of the Finnish Court Ruling that stated it's ok to rip DVDs because CSS is not effective any more.

Not sure that applies in the US.

Re:Too Expensive

[LandDolphin]

"but if they sent me the actual DVD in the mail and provided me this download immediately"

That is actually a godo idea. I could see people catchign onto this. You get to watch the movie asap, and you get a nice dvd for your collection.

Re:Too Expensive

[SanityInAnarchy]

The DMCA copy protection provisions don't apply to items with negligible security

Citation needed -- because I was under the impression that they do.

and format shifting isn't a form of distribution anyways.

It's not the distribution -- not the copying itself that's illegal. It's the the act of cracking the DRM that's illegal.

Re:Too Expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the the act of cracking the DRM that's illegal.

Citation needed, because the DMCA I read only made distribution of cracking devices illegal, not the use of them.

Re:Too Expensive

[nine-times]

A Finnish court ruling probably doesn't apply in the US.

Re:Too Expensive

[jellomizer]

I would consider it if it was a 1080p video then it would be a good deal. More convent then going blue ray. This is the same reason why I am not big on Apples offering even with Apple TV. Because it only goes to 720p. Ill wait for 1080p Apple TV or some other way to view High Def Movies.

Re:Too Expensive

[hedwards]

In the DMCA itself: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap12.html

 1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems2

(a) Violations Regarding Circumvention of Technological Measures. â" (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. The prohibition contained in the preceding sentence shall take effect at the end of the 2-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this chapter.

(B) The prohibition contained in subparagraph (A) shall not apply to persons who are users of a copyrighted work which is in a particular class of works, if such persons are, or are likely to be in the succeeding 3-year period, adversely affected by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make noninfringing uses of that particular class of works under this title, as determined under subparagraph

My understanding is that that is why it's legitimate. But of course IANAL so I may have misunderstood that. But it would be somewhat questionable if the DMCA were capable of over riding fair use provisions in such a way.

So, I might have had the details a bit off, but it's definitely not supported in the DMCA itself. And I don't have the access to case law to look there as well.

Re:Too Expensive

[SurryMt]

A Finnish court ruling probably doesn't apply in the US.

SCOTUS has in the recent past cited decisions from international courts in their own decisions and dissents (with some controversy). A quick google search turned up this one - http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=700176. But, as a practical matter, Finnish court rulings don't have much weight in the US.

Re:Too Expensive

[bigstrat2003]

The DMCA allows you, as I recall, to circumvent copy protection to make personal-use backups. What it disallows is helping others to circumvent said copy protection.

Not that this is reasonable in the least, of course, but cracking your own movies isn't illegal yet.

Re:Too Expensive

[mweather]

Even if that's true, you'd have to write your own DeCSS. I'm not even sure that's legal based on copyright.

Re:Too Expensive

[mweather]

But it would be somewhat questionable if the DMCA were capable of over riding fair use provisions in such a way.

That's sort of the purpose of the DMCA.

Re:Too Expensive

[Kjella]

Citation needed, because the DMCA I read only made distribution of cracking devices illegal, not the use of them.

You mean you didn't read the very first sentence? Let me quote you 1201(a)(1)(A):
"No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. (...)"

Re:Mandatory short concurrence

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering alternative, ad-based, free online video sites such as Hulu, is Amazon's service too pricey?

Yes.

I agree.

Referring to an article from yesterday...

[palegray.net]

If one of your top priorities is using your Internet connection for video downloads, and your ISP happens to be Comcast, you may find the 250 GB usage cap to be a bit uncomfortable...

Re:Referring to an article from yesterday...

[Vectronic]

swap priorities with obsessions you might be right, but 250GB's is about 60 DVD's a month... so one movie (at DVD quality) a day, still leaves about 125GB's for anything else which should also be plenty.

Nevermind that I don't think they are offering that high of quality, if you say 700MB's a video, thats 350-ish movies, a month

If you are surpassing 250GB's a month and you arent running a business (even most of those), you've got some serious packrat issues, I dont think ive ever passed 100GB's a month...

Re:Referring to an article from yesterday...

[Anonymous Coward]

250GB / 8.5GB is just over 29 DVDs. And that's just standard def. If you get HD wrapped in Matroska you can make that anywhere between 22 and 55 titles a month, assuming zero overheads, and no other usage. No one bothers with 700MB divx for serious viewing.

You also show you live alone. Factor in two parents, and a couple of teen kids. 250GB/month is going to run out very quickly. Especially the way kids live on youtube. Throw in video chat, VoIP services like Vonage, online gaming, and see that 250GB look even smaller. How about all the attack packets we're subjected to?

The only good thing I can see from such a small limit is that they are going to have to publish what they claim you use. Maybe then windows users will fix their machines and stop being spambots.

Re:Referring to an article from yesterday...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Nevermind that I don't think they are offering that high of quality, if you say 700MB's a video, thats 350-ish movies, a month

Say we do the math with Blu-Ray -- most movies have been single-layer, if I remember. So assuming you take the entire disc, that's 10 movies per month, or 5 if they use the full 50 gigs.

Now, given the realities of the bandwidth available, I think the roughly 4 gig Blu-Ray rips (at 720p) are reasonable quality. So that's a bit better -- around 60, a month, assuming you do nothing else.

The real question is, when the former becomes a reality (as full dvd9 rips are today), will Comcast up their cap (and available bandwidth) in response? Seems more likely they would lower it.

Re:Referring to an article from yesterday...

[badboy_tw2002]

Ah, but you're not thinking long term like the guys at the cable company. Suddenly the product they're offering is threatening to canabalize their bread and butter - selling you 100 channels you don't need to get the 5-10 shows you actually watch every week, plus Pay-Per-View. If Amazon sold an "access pass" that gave me subscriptions to the shows I like and I payed a set fee, and they sent it to me in HD, I'd cancel my cable right away. The wall between content producers and content consumers is dropping - the middle men (RIAA, Cable companies, even TV Networks in some respect, etc) are shitting themselves. Where are they without the cut?

Of course, this method doesn't allow for channel surfing, but "try one free" for series and "if you liked this you'll love this" features on Amazon could take care of that. Live services for sports like NFL season pass or boxing PPV could come directly through their own web services.

So now do you see where that cap comes in? Yeah, if you're one off downloading movies its hard to hit it. If every single piece of HD entertainment you watch comes in packets that originate from someplace other than your cable provider, 250 is already way too low.

Re:Referring to an article from yesterday...

[Vectronic]

Actually I was including them (2 other people)... I use about 45GB's a month average they use about 20GB's combined...

YouTube, say 150kb/s, is about 12.5 GB's a day if its streaming continuously... which would break 250GB's pretty much at 20 days... but who does that? 3 hours a day is only 1.5GB's...

Gaming, is about the same, VoiP is about half that...

3 Hours Of:
YouTube, 1.5GB's
Gaming, 1.5GB's
VoiP, 1GB

1 Movie (presuming your 8.5GBs)

Thats 11 hours of your day (for a single person)

You'd hit 250 at about the 20th day, give or take a few days for normal web browsing... at which point, you realize how pathetic your life is, and go outside... divide that by 3... do you spend 4 hours a day doing those things? does your wife/girlfriend? sons/daughter? every day?

I'm not saying that 250GB's is some perfect level or anything, but if you are going above that, maybe you should be buying 2 lines, and trying to beat 500GB's... or, perhaps you need to step back from the PC/TV/Phones more...

Re:Referring to an article from yesterday...

[squiggleslash]

The main feature for most DVDs is usually around 4Gb, and this is compressed using MPEG2 and with half a dozen different sound tracks. The use of dual layer is normally to incorporate extra features and cater for the movies that are over two hours long. Even then, you'll not find many dual-layer DVDs with 8.5Gb of data on them.

Realistically, a DVD-quality two hour movie usually weighs in at around 1G when compressed using H.264 or better and when a single sound track is provided. I believe Amazon are using Flash, which is using a DRM-wrapped version of H.264, so I'd be very surprised if they're going for over 500Mb per hour of video.

Re:Referring to an article from yesterday...

[AeroIllini]

If you are surpassing 250GB's a month and you arent running a business (even most of those), you've got some serious packrat issues, I dont think ive ever passed 100GB's a month...

Translation: 250G ought to be enough for anybody.

You bet.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's even expensive next to Netflix, unless you're sure you'll watch less than 3 movies per month.

The quality is awful.

[Silverlancer]

At the price they're charging, they should be offering something on the order of 1 megabit H.264 or the equivalent. Yet I opened one of the free episodes they had up and the quality was almost as bad as Youtube. One could argue that the prices were reasonable if the video was nearly as good as DVD, or at least as good as broadcast, but this is ridiculous.

Re:The quality is awful.

[assassinator42]

The CSI episode I got back when Amazon Unbox was just launched and they were giving away a show for free is ~2.3 megabits/sec WMV. It seems odd that they would decrease the quality, except if the videos were meant for mobiles.

Re:The quality is awful.

[Reality Master 101]

At the price they're charging, they should be offering something on the order of 1 megabit H.264 or the equivalent. Yet I opened one of the free episodes they had up and the quality was almost as bad as Youtube.

I opened up a couple of movies, and I thought the quality was excellent. Of course, I'm also on a 24 megabit (measured speed) cable connection. The service appears to measure your connection speed and adjusts the quality accordingly. It's possible either your connection is slow or the service measured it that way.

Re:The quality is awful.

[ahoehn]

the quality was almost as bad as Youtube

Urm. Not really. On my connection, it looked about as good as Hulu's "480p" option - considerably better than YouTube. I'm guessing the quality of your content - to a certain point - is dictated by the speed of your connection.

Re:The quality is awful.

[ccguy]

I opened one of the free episodes they had up

At least you could. I'm outside the US so it didn't work for me.

I no longer buy DVDs since I'd prefer blu-ray, but definitely don't want to wait for stuff to be released here (I don't want dubbed audio, or translated boxes, etc) and they refuse to let me buy outside Europe. Region-free blu-ray players are incredibly expensive, and because firmware updates may be needed, they may stop working completely.

So basically there's stuff I cannot get *at any price* (even if I'm willing to put up with shipping, import tax, etc). However, when the news talk about piracy they say "this was downloaded a million times, and the estimated lost revenue caused by piracy is XXXX". Fuck off.

Re:The quality is awful.

[mweather]

Broadcast is actually higher resolution than DVD.

Re:The quality is awful.

[Chaos Incarnate]

The on-demand streaming video, and the for-download videos, are probably not the same quality level. (You can still download purchased videos via their Unbox client; the on-demand service is in addition to standard downloads.)

Re:The quality is awful.

[Silverlancer]

I'm on 1 gigabit dedicated downlink. I don't think my connection is the problem.

Re:The quality is awful.

[Otto]

You can still download these streaming videos as well, in what appears to be the original unaltered quality. Just go to http://www.amazon.com/gp/video/streaming/ and access your video library there after you start any of the streaming videos. Can even send them to your Tivo if you want.

Re:The quality is awful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Analog broadcast is less than DVD. It has 4.2 MHz of video bandwidth (about 440 pixels horizontally) and 485.5 visible scanlines (i.e. vertical pixels).

DVD movies are 720x480 in the USA and anamorphic, meaning vertical resolution isn't wasted as much on black bars.

Digital broadcast, on the other hand, supports up to 1920x1080.

Re:The quality is awful.

[compro01]

Where do you get that? Unless you're referring to OTA HDTV, standard broadcast is the same 720x480 NTSC resolution as a DVD.

Re:The quality is awful.

[mweather]

Is anyone still broadcasting in analog only?

Re:The quality is awful.

[mweather]

DVD is 480p, though.

Re:The quality is awful.

[mxs]

1 mbit/s H.264 is laughable for that price, sorry. The quality should EXCEED that of "regular" DVDs for the simple reason that there are now better codecs than MPEG2, and the price is too high for even that at full bitrate.

At any rate, Amazon is entering the "arms race" with the pirates now. Those folks are moving to 720p, fast, usually at around 6-8mbps H.264 + DTS or equivalent at 1-2mbit/s. Amazon is entering the market with about the quality pirates had 7-8 years ago. Congrats.

Re:The quality is awful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Yet I opened one of the free episodes they had up and the quality was almost as bad as Youtube"

Oh bullshit. I watched a free episode of 30 Rock this morning on my Mac (screen size: big as a coffee table). The quality was awesome, no streaming problems, great sound.

We may agree to disagree on the price (don't want to pay - then don't...), but I for one am sold. I'm lazy - this speaks to me in big bold letters...

Oh, and let's not all forget that Netflix DVD delivery system was hosed for a number of days week before last..

You mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Considering alternative, ad-based, free online video sites such as Youtube"

Re:You mean...

[Ethanol-fueled]

Yeah, if you want to sift through endless home-made garbage just to find that one low-quality movie to watch over 20 parts within a 2-day window before it's taken down for "various reasons".

There are plenty of good speed runs, which are more entertaining than modern Hollywood bullshit anyway.

Re:You mean...

[Hal_Porter]

Yeah, if you want to sift through endless home-made garbage just to find that one low-quality movie to watch over 20 parts within a 2-day window before it's taken down for "various reasons".

There are plenty of good speed runs, which are more entertaining than modern Hollywood bullshit anyway.

LOL!

The endless home made garbage is just a cover. Your supposed to rip the pirated content encoded steganographically in it and the inane comments using a script.

Or did you think everyone else is really watching ~~PrincessPunkX~~ make funny faces for ten minutes? Hell no, decode the most recent thousand of her comments and you get the final season of Battlestar Galactica.

This sounds familiar.

[been42]

Is this just a new press release for a rebrand of Amazon Unbox, the badly-named service that I have been using with my TiVo for a long time now? I checked the site, and I don't see anything to indicate otherwise. As long as they don't change the way it works, then I'll be happy. If they added some new features, then I might be even happier.

Re:This sounds familiar.

[exiguus]

I would like to know what the difference between this and Unbox is too. It looks to me that it has the same content as Unbox. Even the free promotional material is showing up on Unbox.

Re:This sounds familiar.

[Albanach]

Well it is Unbox but with live streaming. You no longer need to download the file to watch, and Flash should open up the number of architectures supported.

Of course Unbox would let you watch almost as soon as you started the download if your connection was fast enough. My experience lately has been that my connection is fast enough and amazon's isn't.

Hopefully they've fixed that if the plan to offer live streaming, or perhaps that's the reason others are mentioning the poor video quality. They might have used a low bitrate to get around poor bandwidth.

Re:This sounds familiar.

[Otto]

Yes, it is indeed Unbox. All they did was to make streaming copies of all their content available.

Once you begin streaming anything, click the link up top that says "Your Video Library" and you'll find the streaming video you just watched added to your list. From there you can download it or send it to your Tivo, with a somewhat nicer interface than previously.

I do wish that you didn't have to start streaming the videos first though to make the purchase work. A simple selection of "stream" or "download" or "send to Tivo" would be nice to see *before* it tries to rape my bandwidth with the streaming video.

Re:This sounds familiar.

[Anonymous Coward]

the flash movie player IS unbox, from the source

UnboxScreeningRoomClient._V265069746_.swf

just another rebrand, and oh none of it works outside USA (so much for the Internet)
ill stick with torrents, no DRM , no restrictions, no region coding, no geoip

Nix?

[Anonymous Coward]

NIX!

The price is right.....

[LibertineR]

if it means when I watch shows, I NEVER AGAIN have to see that new Microsoft commercial with Jerry Seinfeld.

Before seeing that monstrosity, I thought Bob was the worst thing we ever did.

KHAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNN!

Re:The price is right.....

[Yvan256]

I find it strange that this commercial hasn't been submitted as a story, it's not even listed in the firehose.

No, it's not necessarily overpriced

[religious freak]

They are competing against Apple and the Apple business model. They are priced at exactly where Apple is priced at.

And if I'm not mistaken (and if I am, I'm sure someone will correct me) Amazon doesn't put DRM on their downloads. I already use them for music, and I may start using them for video.

Re:No, it's not necessarily overpriced

[fluffykitty1234]

Rentals are for 24 hours, and purchases can be used on two computers. Sounds like some sort of DRM to me.

Re:No, it's not necessarily overpriced

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

And if I'm not mistaken (and if I am, I'm sure someone will correct me) Amazon doesn't put DRM on their downloads.

You're mistaken. Amazon encodes all their video with Windows Media DRM.

Re:No, it's not necessarily overpriced

[mweather]

"And if I'm not mistaken (and if I am, I'm sure someone will correct me) Amazon doesn't put DRM on their downloads" It's kind of hard to limit downloads to two computers without using DRM. The honor system isn't an effective copy protection mechanism.

Re:No, it's not necessarily overpriced

[religious freak]

Damn. I guess it's just music then. Ok, phooey on them...

Re:No, it's not necessarily overpriced

[Penguinoflight]

Apple has a whole cult who thinks that they do no wrong. Amazon has to sell to people without a application that is built specifically for a huge line of media devices. Aren't these prices just as high as Apples?

Why would anyone migrate from a service with very few problems at no cost savings?

Re:No, it's not necessarily overpriced

[kidcharles]

They are competing against Apple and the Apple business model. They are priced at exactly where Apple is priced at.

If they were competing, wouldn't it be cheaper rather than exactly the same price? Not that I have any further evidence of it, but rather than competing it looks more like collusion to me.

Re:No, it's not necessarily overpriced

[religious freak]

Yeah... duh... I wasn't thinking before I posted :P

Re:No, it's not necessarily overpriced

[Anonymous Coward]

You're mistaken. Amazon encodes all their video with Windows Media DRM.

You're also mistaken. TiVo doesn't use Windows Media DRM.

Re:No, it's not necessarily overpriced

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

You're mistaken. Amazon encodes all their video with Windows Media DRM.

You're also mistaken. TiVo doesn't use Windows Media DRM.

I don't have one to test, but Googling for info on the DRM used for the service I found on DRM-Watch:

"The technology presumably already makes use of TiVo's TiVoToGo technology, which interoperates with Windows Media DRM, on which Amazon Unbox is based."

Do you have any good sources to back up your assertion? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that the only info I found seems to disagree with you.

They will come.

[Last_Available_Usern]

Considering alternative, ad-based, free online video sites such as Hulu, is Amazon's service too pricey?

Much like people are willing to pay extra Nike shows and Callaway golf clubs, people will indeed pay more than a non-established site. They have a good name that people trust. Could they charge less and still make a profit? Sure, but like any good business, you don't leave money sitting on the table.

So where's the catch?

[Nursie]

By which I mean, where's the DRM?

And I'm guessing this won't work on Linux?

Re:So where's the catch?

[yuna49]

I just tried watching a preview of "Eyes Wide Open" for a sample and, no, it won't run on Linux. The site complains about my version of Flash Player, but even after updating to version 9.0.124.0 from Adobe via yum, I get the same error. This is a free sample using Flash, not even the program itself.

Of course, the error says I have the wrong version of Flash, and not the wrong operating system. For people using EEE PCs and other new, Linux-based devices, they'll be spinning their wheels in puzzlement.

Re:So where's the catch?

[baldsue]

I was able to watch on Kubuntu 8.04 with Firefox. Will Netflix catch up with Amazon.com and allow me to watch their movies on demand?

This would be cool

[Knara]

If I didn't recently learn that I have bandwidth caps. Thanks Comcast!

Too Pricey

[Haffner]

Of course it is too pricey. There is no advantage to purchasing a movie online for $15. Even renting seems excessive - $4 for a movie that could easily pirated, then owned?

I think online video would be best off doing what Netflix does, but online. Charge a monthly fee, members can watch as many videos they like, but after downloading one, the previous deletes itself.

Not ideal, but better than any current model.

Re:Too Pricey

[cliffski]

well how can any price compete with your model of 'pirated then owned'. Even at $1 its still infinitely more expensive than just pirating it.
The idea is to price it as reasonable value for money, not to compete with people prepared to break the law and pirate it.
I think this is a bit too expensive, but not by much, I also guess that I can't get that same price here in the UK where (if its even offered) the price will be jacked way higher.

Re:Too Pricey

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it be possible to use a U.S.-based proxy server to get the Amazon downloads at the U.S. Price, or would DRM somehow screw with that?

Too Steamed.

[Anonymous Coward]

$15? Please. I'll just buy the DVD.

Are people still doing that?

Anyway maybe this will be STEAM for video.

Re:Too Steamed.

[the eric conspiracy]

DVD vs. some low quality streamed video loaded with DRM?

Not even close to being interested. Many DVDs are available used for what Amazon is charging for a rental.

Accessibility...

[JustinOpinion]

Considering alternative, ad-based, free online video sites such as Hulu, is Amazon's service too pricey?

It's not just price that matters. This new service is for "Mac or PC", and the expiration means that it will be DRMed. This means it won't run on my Linux system. Hulu is far from perfect, but it runs just fine on Linux, so it's what I use to catch up on the occasional show.

Of course, most of the population doesn't care about Linux per se. However I've learned over time that "will it work on Linux?" is a good proxy-question for "will it be easy to get it working?" If it doesn't run on Linux, then it invariably means that on Windows it's going to require a custom download, non-generic codecs, DRM, etc. So basically it's going to be a pain for just about everyone.

At the end of the day, something like Hulu (where a friend can just send you a link for a show; where you can just open it up in a browser; etc.) is more easily accessible and thus preferable (in my opinion).

(Note: I fully agree that the video quality of something like Hulu isn't that great... but that's orthogonal to the accessibility question. A direct download of a generic video file is by far easier for everyone than a DRMed file and a custom playing app.)

Re:Accessibility...

[zsazsa]

This means it won't run on my Linux system.

It runs just fine with Linux (I've tried it). It's Flash-based. The expiration just means that Amazon won't serve the stream to you after a certain amount of time.

Re:Accessibility...

[Anonymous Coward]

Will new Atom based laptops change this? Most of them are being shipped with Linux.

Re:Accessibility...

[Hatta]

Can I view Hulu, or Amazon's video for that matter, while sitting on my couch with my xbox? If not, neither of them are really accessible.

Re:Accessibility...

[baldsue]

I was able to view on Linux.

Check again....

[LibertineR]

Right now, in another tab, I am watching an episode of Heroes, and it looks pretty damn good to me. I think for the convenience factor, the lack of commercials, the price seems fair to me.

Especially, since I don't watch a lot of TV. For the occasional viewer, especially one with a Netflix account, this puts another nail in the Network Television coffin.

The Quality IS NOT Awful

[Udigs]

I don't know what kinda monitor the poster above is using, but on my screen it looks awesome. I went in expecting youtube. It looks great. Furthermore, I am an avid Hulu user. The video quality on Hulu is crap. But it's free, so you know. Seriously. Check it out, then decide.

News from the world outside of the US

[EdZ]

And, like Hulu, the service is region-locked. Bittorrent 2 : everyone else 0.

Internet download Caps

[VEGETA_GT]

See this is where those fun download caps come in to play. Say Rogers standard 45$ a month internet is caped at 65 gigs a month. But I want to start doing more multi-media online like this my internet works against me. I thought the future was suppose to be cheaper unlimited faster internet so movies I can rent through the internet and smiler stuff can be done.

I mean internet providers working against what the rest of the world are trying to do with the internet. All these great new tools/services become pointless as my internet provider puts a cap. Now the 250 gig cap of comcast is not to bad but its still a cap, in Canada even on expensive services its a 95 gig cap which my family blows through monthly as there are 6 computers online at my place. So when will services like this be actually usable because with caps its easier to go and rent the dam thing.

it's not too pricey, it's too much

[Hawthorne01]

Do I really need another streaming web video site that doesn't work with all the other streaming video sites out there, and one that's limited to streaming-only?

To it's credit, it is compatible with my TiVo. But if I want to watch, oh, say, Batman, The Animated Series, I'll set up a Season Pass for it and get it for free, rather than pay 2 bucks per episode.

Ultimately, Price May Not Matter

[moore.dustin]

I believe the most important element in this may be how the actual service itself performs. Is the service easy to use and understand? Is the established Amazon user base going to be willing to give it a shot? Will the previewing, along with their peer-rated review system add value to the service? Will the quality, sound and technical requirements hinder the service in any way?

Amazon can absorb some losses if their initial price point turns out to be too high. They will still gain the valuable data they need to improve the system for an update, which could include their price reductions for the service. These sorts of offerings are nearly impossible to get right the first time out. Amazon has the position and resources to take a risk now and still come out ahead in the long run if they are able to adapt to the consumers wants and needs.

not all are $15

[qw0ntum]

Doesn't seem like all movies are $15. I looked for Full Metal Jacket and it's $3 to rent and $10 to buy. And, that particular movie, like so many others, isn't available on Hulu.

This is clearly a step in the right direction. I hadn't paid for music for several years before Amazon MP3 came out. I always said I would pay for a service to download that was simple, fair, and appropriately priced. Now, I've purchased four or five albums in the past month. I've been waiting for an equivalent service to be available for videos; maybe this will be the one.

Of course, I'm fortunate in that I have easy access to a Windows box to watch all this on... I guess Linux support is just too much to ask for. :\

I'll keep my old store.

[Krneki]

I think I'll stay with Pirate bay, they offers and price policy is still better.

All roads lead to ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Porn. Porn is the super-market version of film, predicting (or sometimes influencing) trends in innovation for delivery and viewing. If an economic model for payment and delivery of film works, porn is doing it.

Mind you, while it's a good indicator, there are key differences, such as:
1. Porn is more fungible (i.e. a non-porn film cannot be substituted for by just any other film)
2. Fidelity (pardon the pun) is more important in non-porn film

So for the model that will eventually succeed, look to porn!

Is this a joke?

[realmolo]

Who is gonna pay for these? Not only are they overpriced for *downloads*, they'd be overpriced for actual physical DVDs.

This thing is doomed.

What really worries me is that this is the future. The MPAA would *love* it if they could do away with physical media, and instead sell us (at full price, of course) DRM'd downloads that we can't tranfer to another machine without paying a fee. I mean, that's their wet dream. Well, it's Stage 1 of the wet dream, anyway. Stage 2 is a full-on pay-per-view system for everything. You would never own any movies. You'd pay a fee each time you wanted to watch it. Stage 3 is sensors on your TV that detect how many eyeballs are staring at the TV, and making you pay for every person who watches.

The PSN store videos are over priced as well

[Hohlraum]

I can't believe these companies think that anything more than a small number of people will pay those prices.

If you can't provide video at a flat $20 bucks unlimited per month. Or $1 per rental for movies and $0.50 for tv episodes then don't waste your time.

Then again maybe there are enough sheeple out there to sustain these ridiculous prices.

Re:Mac users are

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct, sir. PHAGS - People Having a Great System.

Do some math....

[nweaver]

If each downloaded movie is encoded at 720p at 2.5 Mbps, thats nearly 8 hours of movies a day, or 4 rentals. 4 x $4 x 30 = $480/month in rental fees alone.

Re:Do some math....

[palegray.net]

You're assuming only one (or maybe two) people are using that connection...

'nix' and 'nod' Tag??

[PHPNerd]

What's up with the nix and nod tags? They just started showing up...have I missed something? Is there a new meme I missed?

Oh my fucking god.

[Anonymous Coward]

and you don't want to admit that you're a criminal

What in the world have we come to? You call someone a criminal because they download a TV show? You have seriously been brainwashed.

All these analogies to piracy (which involves looting/raping/pillaging) and stealing (which deprives a legitimate owner of a finite resource) is RIAA/MPAA propaganda. Sure, downloading a TV show might not be the most moral thing in the world - but criminal? I don't think so.

You're a tool..

Re:Oh my fucking god.

[bilbravo]

I wish people would quit dancing around the fact that what they are doing by pirating IP is illegal.
Regardless of whether one is a criminal in the eyes of the law, the fact is this is breaking a rule. Now I know rules are meant to be broken, but come on... the parent's point was very well made. Piracy is stealing/infringing/hurting the IP owner in some way and he's trying to justify it. End of story.

Re:Oh my fucking god.

[Anonymous Coward]

what they are doing by pirating IP is illegal

Regardless of whether one is a criminal in the eyes of the law, the fact is

The fact is you don't even know whether or not violating copyright is illegal. Your post fails, big time.

Re:Oh my fucking god.

[VisceralLogic]

The fact is you don't even know whether or not violating copyright is illegal. Your post fails, big time.

Copyright is a legal invention. Hence, violating copyright is by definition illegal.

It's not new, it's "Unbox"

[gsarnold]

I really thought someone would beat me to this, but this is a rebranding of the same Amazon "Unbox" service that's been around for a couple of years. There may be some service changes, but I don't think (recalling the press release) there is much that's different other than the name.

Not awful, but not good enough for those prices

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't say the quality is awful, but I'd say it's still below your average standard def DVD.

$15 for a below standard def movie is too much and $4 for a 24hour rental is ridiculous considering that I can watch movies in HD

As far as TV - I'd much rather watch in HD for free with commercials on the networks' websites (I watched all of Lost in HD-streaming off of ABC's website and it looked amazing) than pay $2 for a significantly lower quality.

if its anything like their music service

[nimbius]

ill get my choice of downloading everything through their DRM app easily, or gnashing at the keyboard while i painstakingly download the movie in 5 minute blocks. after each block ill be reminded how easy the drm utility is, and ill eventually concede my rights and freedoms for my sanity and time well spent.

Stupid DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Once I buy it, I should be able to download it all I want. If my hard drive crashes, I should just be able to re-download it.

If bandwidth is a problem, then charge me a one cent redownload fee. I could cope with that. But having to pay 15 bucks again is stupid. We live in the digital age, and these vendors really need to get with the program.

Re:Stupid DRM

[DamnStupidElf]

Amazon is currently charging $.15 per gigabyte downloaded (unless you move terabytes of data every month) for its web services, so a 1 or 2 GB movie should really cost about $.30 or so.

Re:Stupid DRM

[Firehed]

Obviously it costs them less than they're charging, and "at cost" will never happen. Ever. Either it'll be ad-supported at no direct cost to you, or you get to pay the royalties directly. At the end of the day, someone is going to get paid somehow for producing the content. If that doesn't happen, it's completely unsustainable and it dies off.

And of course it goes down to 10c/GB at the rates they charge you. Amazon probably goes through enough bandwidth in an hour to put them in the lowest rate category.
$0.170 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.130 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.110 per GB - next 100 TB / month data transfer out
$0.100 per GB - data transfer out / month over 150 TB

Re:Stupid DRM

[mr_matticus]

Once you buy a DVD, if your DVD gets eaten by a wayward snapping turtle, you have to buy it again.

Only about $1 of the purchase price goes toward the actual cost. Like the materials cost of a DVD, the bandwidth cost of the download is really incidental to the price.

Same thing with any other random purchase, whether it's a screwdriver or a dinner plate. If you lose it or destroy it, you have to buy another one.

That said, it would probably be a popular feature to market downloads such that your purchase record is stored, allowing you to replace lost copies for a nominal fee (or built-in to the initial purchase price). But simply because such a feature can exist does not mean it must, especially when, from their perspective, it's not their problem. Everyone else gets to charge you again, regardless of their actual expenses for replacement--and who really thinks the big entertainment corporations are going to lead the way toward consumer nirvana?

OT: WTF are these nix and nod tags?

[Anonymous Coward]

They've been showing up a lot lately, and when plugged into Google just a bunch of recent slashdot pages are returned. What's the deal???

price

[kurtis25]

At the movie kiosk in the local grocery store and fast food stores I can rent 4 movies for 29 cents more than amazon charges me for 1 movie. Even with the price of gas I'll stick to that system.

Yes/No Questions....

[popeye44]

Note to slashdot editors, Never ever create a question that can be answered yes or no if you want discussion :D

SCREW the MPAA!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry. Way too smart to pay $14.00 for a movie without the packaging and physical disc and original goodies. And *then* they go and say I can only put it on two machines? What happens when that crappy piece of chinese electronics I call a computer goes down? There goes one of my allowed storage locations? Forget these licensing methods. They're crap! If I'm going to spend that money, I'm sure as hell going to rip the DVD, make a backup copy, compress it for my MCPC, recompress it so I can watch it on my Windows Mobile Phone on the go if I want, and any other device I have at my disposal that's capable of playing that movie.

If I pay to own something, it's mine isn't it? If I buy a hamburger, I get to choose how and where to eat it. If I really want to, I can throw it on the floor and sit on it. What makes the MPAA think they can tell us how we can and can't use the product they sold to us? Are they the law? How many of us are REALLY going to tolerate the MPAA's micromanagement of our personal viewing habits/preferences?

Then, if it wasn't bad enough I paid $15 for this DVD, it gets worse... now I get to sit through a dozen or so more advertisements for other movies and products I don't want before I can finally access the part of the dvd I actually paid to see, and to make it even worse, after I've selected play movie from the menu, I'm greeted with EVEN MORE DELAY in the form of pointless FBI warnings telling me I'm not allowed to copy MY PROPERTY!

Well... I get PISSED god damnit!

So ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What has nudity in the first two minutes?

no caching of the content delivered by HTTPS

[Anonymous Coward]

i fired up the packet sniffer and the streams are all delivered via HTTPS
no wonder the shows are so expensive (for you and the ISP), as no ISPs will be able to setup caching servers on the edge of their networks to take some of the load it will be costing them hardcore bandwidth and no way of lightening the load, ouch.

wrong answer

[speedtux]

In short, pirates are the reason that we all have to deal with DRM BS.

Bullshit. Companies don't implement DRM to combat piracy, they implement DRM to limit fair use. Without DRM, within a decade, there would be so many perfect, legitimate copies in the market that they couldn't make any more profit.

Of course, the real reason we are in this mess to begin with is because copyrights have been extended far beyond the 15-20 years they should be; that's only been possible because of massive bribery and corruption of Congress. Turn back the clock on copyrights and most infringement goes away automatically.

The way to combat their broken business model is boycott, not copyright infringement.

It's not clear that non-commercial sharing should be copyright infringement at all. We pay a blank media tax (yes, even in the US).

The dirty secret is that we're supposed to pay for the same content over and over and over again. That's what we need to fight.

Re:wrong answer

[gnick]

Companies don't implement DRM to combat piracy, they implement DRM to limit fair use. Without DRM, within a decade, there would be so many perfect, legitimate copies in the market that they couldn't make any more profit.

That sounds like a load. I can think of one album and one movie that I've purchased more than once. Sure the industry would like us to buy one copy for home, one for work, one for the car, etc. But I think they know that's not a realistic model. Amazon's sales are a case in point. They sell mp3s that can be transferred or copied wherever you like, but can be traced to you if they're found on P2P. And the movies, although they can only be downloaded to 2 computers, can be watched limitlessly online (I infer from the link that's from any computer where you can log into your account, but can't find anything that says that explicitly). That sure sounds to me like they're just making sure you don't just give it to all of your friends (i.e. combatting piracy not limiting fair use). Amazon's just doing a better job of tuning their DRM in the right direction than most of the industry. It's still not perfect, but if you've got a better model, implement it and put them out of business.

Re:wrong answer

[Sancho]

Of course, the real reason we are in this mess to begin with is because copyrights have been extended far beyond the 15-20 years they should be; that's only been possible because of massive bribery and corruption of Congress. Turn back the clock on copyrights and most infringement goes away automatically.

I do agree that copyright is pretty out of control, but there are also larger issues to consider. Due to the Berne Convention, the US must respect the copyright laws of other nations. Realistically, if our politicians suddenly got a clue[1] and reduced copyright back down to its original levels, corporations simply would not file for copyright in the United States anymore. They'd file in a more copyright-friendly country (possibly even moving operations over there, reducing taxable income and jobs in the US) and we'd still have to deal with the longer copyrights.

[1] That is, copyright is intended to give the author a limited amount of time to profit from his work (thus encouraging people to create) before removing the asinine notion that an idea can be owned. The original copyright length was good for its time--nowadays, it's so much easier to distribute a work that by the original intention, copyright should actually be shorter than 28 years.

Re:wrong answer

[speedtux]

I [can't] think of one album and one movie that I've purchased more than once.

Well, then you're simply too young. The industry has been changing formats every decade or so in order to force you to upgrade.

They sell mp3s that can be transferred or copied wherever you like, but can be traced to you if they're found on P2P.

That model is just as broken as other kinds of DRM because you effectively still can't sell the music you bought to others and because it destroys the anonymity of reading and listening.

And why bother with all this copyright and DRM anyway? What's the benefit to society? Most of the world's great works have been produced without copyright protection.

It's still not perfect, but if you've got a better model, implement it and put them out of business.

That's kind of like trying to put drug dealers and the mafia out of business with a "better business model". It's absurd.

Re:wrong answer

[gnick]

I [can't] think of one album and one movie that I've purchased more than once.

Well, then you're simply too young. The industry has been changing formats every decade or so in order to force you to upgrade.

For the record, that wasn't a typo - I've repurchased 1 album and 1 movie. Toad the Wet Sprocket - Fear and The Little Mermaid (my wife did the Little Mermaid - Pissed the hell out of me - I hate giving $$ to Disney). And it's not an age issue - I've spent many hours copying reel-to-reel and vinyl onto CD. That may be illegal and some may call me a hypocrite, but I do copy stuff ad infinitum as long as it's for my own personal use. And, as was implied when I purchased it, I don't share.

It's still not perfect, but if you've got a better model, implement it and put them out of business.

That's kind of like trying to put drug dealers and the mafia out of business with a "better business model". It's absurd.

I've got a better business model for those. Open legal casinos and brothels and start selling weed at Walgreen's to anyone with a valid license to purchase recreational drugs. What's absurd about that? I call bad analogy - Hulu, RealRhapsody, and Amazon have radically different models for distributing copyrighted content. If you've got a better one, kick it off.

Re:wrong answer

[mr_matticus]

before removing the asinine notion that an idea can be owned.

There's no need to remove a notion that doesn't exist. An idea can't be owned.

copyright should actually be shorter than 28 years.

No, it should be, and is, longer. 28 years was selected originally because it was both a multiple of 7 (the Framers liked that) and because it approximately covered the length of an artist's career, ensuring longevity. As people started living longer and working longer, and producing works at a younger age as the art of the apprenticeship faded, copyright was extended accordingly. It came to be considered an asset like any other annuity, and so it was further tweaked so that like other wealth-generating labors, it would benefit the children of the author as well.

The works of copyright were never intended to benefit those in the generation of the creator, but rather to benefit the social trust of future generations. Nothing copyrighted is ever needed for any practical purpose, unlike a patent.

The most recent extensions are starting to push their luck, but about a century is consistent with both the artist's rights (global minus US) model and the economic incentive (US) model. A century ensures that any profit to be made is made by the creator or his estate, so long as there is a measurable demand. Artists/estates are also free to release their copyright at any time prior to that point should they choose to do so.

Personally, I'm a fan of a 50-year blanket copyright, with the option of ten-year extensions up to the current longest limit of 120 years. Fail to register for the extension, and the copyright lapses. This simplifies calculations (assuming the date of fixation is known), and also provides a single source (the copyright registry) for checking the status of copyrights on any work older than 50 years.

Re:wrong answer

[Weedlekin]

"Due to the Berne Convention, the US must respect the copyright laws of other nations."

The current Berne Conventions actually says that signatories must treat the copyrights of other signatory countries in precisely the same as their own copyrights unless this produces a situation where a foreign copyright holder gets a longer term than would be the case under their domestic copyright laws.

The minimum permissible terms laid out by the Berne Convention are as follows:

All works except those with specific terms below: 50 years after the death of the author or composer.

Cinematic works (this includes TV stuff): 50 years from first showing, or 50 years from completion in cases where the work hasn't been shown.

Phonorecords (includes all sound recordings); 50 years from release, or 50 years from being recorded if it hasn't been released.

Photographs: 25 years.

Re:wrong answer

[Sancho]

Ah, good to know. Thanks for the correction.

Fine, but what about MP3 downloads for the world?

[PARENA]

First it took them a while to have their album downloader for Linux. Now, several distros are supported (though the suse 10.3 won't work on 11.0, they need to update their downloads). But without the downloader, you can still buy individual songs. If you have a US credit card... So how long 'til they reach the entire world with their DRM free music downloads? I'm finally willing to buy music again, let me buy it. :/

good!

[speedtux]

That's the point of the 250G cap: so that I don't have to pay for your insatiable appetite for DVDs you're never going to watch.

If you're going to buy hundreds of movies from Amazon at $15/movie, you might as well pay another $100 or so to get full bandwidth 24/7; don't make pay for your bandwidth lust.

Re:good!

[palegray.net]

Or people who are sharing their connection with others could do the sensible thing and upgrade to a business-class connection.

Re:good!

[woot account]

Why should they be forced to upgrade because you're stressing the system?

Re:good!

[palegray.net]

You're approaching this from a somewhat socialist perspective, I think. In the model we're discussing, the ISP sells a particular level of service for home users, setting a monthly bandwidth cap but not restricting the types of download services you can utilize on the network (Netflix movies, random torrents, whatever). If you want more download capacity, you purchase a higher tier of service.

There's no "forced upgrade" happening here. If a person is consuming more than 250 GB of bandwidth per month, he's using the connection in a manner that strongly differs from the average home user. He should (rightly) be required to purchase a higher level of service to meet his needs. This is precisely why I use business-class Internet service (I run home office based servers and download a LOT of ISO images each month).

Perhaps you misunderstood what I meant by "sharing." I was referring to the somewhat common practice of an individual obtaining Internet service, and then sharing it via wireless with multiple other separate households (perhaps splitting the monthly service bill).

Re:good!

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez, you really can't make up your mind, can you? You are an idiot.

The 250G cap is reasonable. It forces people like you to upgrade. Period. Now crawl back into the hole you came from.

Re:good!

[palegray.net]

Wow. I'm floored by your complete and utter inability to demonstrate basic reading comprehension.

Let me say it again: I Like The 250 GB Cap And Think It Is A Good Idea.

Is that clear?

Subscriptions

[93 Escort Wagon]

I know there are people who want a subscription-based music service; but I think what the typical person really wants is a reasonably priced subscription-based television service. After all, (unlike with music) that's really what we've been already doing for the past 60 years. For most TV shows, one viewing is all anyone ever wants - so why attempt to charge us $48 to watch a season of a show that, once viewed, we'll never watch again?

I do think this is priced too high, as well. As others have noted, I can buy a DVD movie for less than what they're charging for online delivery.

Re:Subscriptions

[flanksteak]

OnDemand does this now. You pay the cable provider for HBO, and you get to watch whatever they make available each month. Any reason to think this can't be expanded on a larger scale?

I don't buy that many DVDs. Owning a movie isn't as important to me as being able to watch something worthwhile where I control the time frame. DVR, OnDemand, and PPV all provide this at a reasonable cost. I don't understand the need to own copies of everything, and the thought of paying more than $5 for something that only exists on my hard drive isn't that appealing. Hardware failures and DRM obsolescence issues make that too unattractive. So few movies are good enough to keep around forever (or at least as long as the format is usable). Almost all my DVD purchases are for TV series, where the cost/benefit ratio seems more reasonable and I can watch things in the order they were originally released.

The watch-stuff-interrupted-by-advertising model isn't so evil provided the signal-to-ad ratio is acceptable, but the DVR is making it hard for the advertisers to feel like they're getting their money's worth. Although I have noticed that more ads seem to be noticeable when fast-forwarding through some show. Are they actively trying to be recognizable at higher speeds, or am I only noticing this on nights where I had more than one beer with dinner?

Re:Subscriptions

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I think what the typical person really wants is a reasonably priced subscription-based television service.

OnDemand does this now. You pay the cable provider for HBO, and you get to watch whatever they make available each month. Any reason to think this can't be expanded on a larger scale?

OnDemand fails because it is offered by the existing cable providers and bundled with their cable TV services. A lot of people want to be able to watch any TV show they want, when they want, but not own anything. This is not affordable when it can only be obtained by also paying $50 a month for regular cable TV, which is not really of interest. It also sucks when it is paired with the quality of service and customer responsiveness of an entrenched local monopolist.

A subscription service over the internet, run by people who actually care if their customers are happy and competing on price and quality with similar services would revolutionize television watching for many americans.

Re:Subscriptions

[flanksteak]

A subscription service over the internet, run by people who actually care if their customers are happy and competing on price and quality with similar services would revolutionize television watching for many americans.

AppleTV, then, but with a fixed monthly cost instead of individual product purchases? For a subscription service to succeed it has to have something its competitors don't, which means unique content. This means customers will have to use multiple services to get at everything they want. Which means multiple subscription fees. Which adds up and eventually you're missing out on something because you can't pony up all the fees.

Plus, these services will have to deal with entrenched national oligopolists known as the movie studios. The service's commitment to customer service will only be able to go so far.

Re:Subscriptions

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

AppleTV, then, but with a fixed monthly cost instead of individual product purchases?

That's closer, but has the issue of requiring vendor specific hardware. Ideally, TVs would simply support grabbing content from the internet using the service of choice. Buying an expensive box from one vendor removes incentive to move to a better, cheaper, easier service dulling the advantages of true competition.

For a subscription service to succeed it has to have something its competitors don't, which means unique content. This means customers will have to use multiple services to get at everything they want.

I disagree. Does Netflix have any exclusive film rental deals? You don't need exclusive content if you focus on building the best system of delivering content to your customers. A really easy to use service/Website is enough to gain an advantage on the competition and there are always niches that can be better served.

Plus, these services will have to deal with entrenched national oligopolists known as the movie studios.

True, and this is the real barrier to progress. We can't have excellent services at low prices with innovative solutions when the internet connection industry is broken up into local monopolies and duopolies and regulated by corporate shills. The same applies to the RIAA cartel's lock in on movie distribution. Since the US government has proved incapable of solving these regulatory problems in the face of well funded corporations, we'll probably never have the level of quality we'd like. But then, we were talking about what real progress would look like in theory, not the intentionally crippled changes we're likely to actually see.

Re:Subscriptions

[flanksteak]

Ideally, TVs would simply support grabbing content from the internet using the service of choice.

This will happen the day that TVs go away and are replaced with convergence PCs with big screens. But that day is a long way away.

Does Netflix have any exclusive film rental deals?

Not for physical DVDs, but their online library is limited and I bet lacks some titles that are only available on the other services. The day that everything goes online, Netflix's logistics advantage for shipping DVDs disappears. Online providers need some exclusivity to maintain advantage. It's the same thing that drove HBO to start creating its own shows and movies years ago to distinguish itself from the Showtimes and Movie Channels of the world.

True, and this is the real barrier to progress. We can't have excellent services at low prices with innovative solutions when the internet connection industry is broken up into local monopolies and duopolies and regulated by corporate shills.

It's not really that surprising. In an industry with such large penetration but high barrier to entry, either you have one large player that controls everything to the detriment of the customer, or you have a lot of medium players (in this case studios, production companies, movie distributors, service providers, software companies, and ISPs) who don't trust each other and are all looking to create some advantage, all to the detriment of the customer.

$3.99 is Too Expensive. Should be $1.00

[gtwreck]

Why is there not an On-Demand (DirecTV, Cable, etc.), Download Service (Amazon), etc. that will offer movies for the same price that Redbox does at my local Walmart or Grocery Store?

I can go rent one from the Redbox vending machine for $1.00/day, yet download prices are still artificially inflated to match the old fashioned video store price of $3.99? This is ridiculous.

If Redbox or anyone else offered a download service for $1.00 or even $2.00 the total volume of rentals would go way up.

I don't mind grabbing 3 movies at $1.00/day on the hope that 2 of them might be watchable. At $3.99 it's just too expensive so I rent far fewer movies.

Video Playback Not Authorized

[Anonymous Coward]

We have detected that you are not located within the US. Due to licensing restrictions Amazon Video On Demand customers must located be in the United States (the 48 contiguous states, Alaska, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia) when viewing videos online. (What's This?)

well there goes the whole point of the Internet
instead ill choose Bittorrent and Piracy, its not like i didnt try

Let me guess...

[Anonymous Coward]

But it does sound like you're deluding yourself into thinking that you're somehow striking back and standing up for the little guy when in fact you're just too cheap to pay for what you want and too weak to just do the right thing and go without it.

You're a young male under the age of 23. You think that any amount of injustice should be met with public outcry. You believe that public outcry actually does something. If you play role playing games, you probably choose a Paladin.

Yeah, I know your type. Society refers to it as "prick".

It's not really stealing if I give it back!

[CorporateSuit]

Is it really criminal if I give it back? According to the rule of four-fold compensation, I pay my proper dues. Everything I download from Bittorrent, I make sure to reupload above a 4.0 ratio!

The only way forward

[StreetStealth]

The Netflix model is the only one that's actually going to pull real numbers away from cable and satellite.

$2.00 (give or take a cent) per episode isn't bad for something you really want to keep, but it's just not worth it for a whole season that you only plan to watch once.

Would I have started watching 30 Rock at $2 per? No, but as part of my $8.99/month unlimited package, gladly.

Amazon has an edge

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between Amazon and Netflix or iTunes is this:

1)If I buy a movie on Amazon, I can view it online anywhere (as long as I only have two streams open). That means as long as my friends have a decent internet connection we can watch any movie I own at their place, no more lugging DVDs and then forgetting them. No more sending them gig files. Heck, since you can have two streams of a movie going, you can theoretically "lend it" to a friend if you want, or watch it at the same time as your brother who is living in a Atlanta.

2)Sure on netflix I can stream from anywhere too, but I don't really own the movie, so if it's movie I like to watch again and again, I actually end up paying more as I'm paying for access to it each month, month over month, not ownership. Since I don't own the movie, once I terminate netflix it's gone. With Amazon I still keep my two downloaded copies because I own them.

3)iTunes is in trouble as their prices are as high Amazon's and they lack the viewing flexibity of Amazon and Netflix. Also it's a pain to search and browse movies on iTunes. Considering the way Apple's model is set up, I'm not sure they can get the flexibility.

Amazon is helping push Google's "cloud" model with you owning stuff that doesn't have to be stored on your computer, that you can access from anywhere. Apple, despite a lot of forward thinking on UI, is still trying to use proprietary hardware as a platform, when the real platform is the web, which is free. If they don't change soon, they'll find themselves in a familiar place.

$1.99 to rent or buy a 22.5 minute episode?

[Antony-Kyre]

To buy, yeah, sure. Because that is the going rate on another website to purchase the video, although laced with DRM I believed.

However, $2 to rent a 22.5 minute episode? NO WAY! How about $0.99? That is something for which I'd be willing to pay.

Something is gonnaâ(TM) give..

[guzzirider]

Currently, there is not a large percentage of internet scribers sucking major monthly downloads.. for those of us who are (use net) might be an example. But when the masses try to come to downloadable decent resolution video (whether it's Apple TV, Net Flix or now Amazon (resolution TBD)) the internet will need to support serious end to end bandwidth. The ISP-s are in a speed contest that started with all you can eat, but now that there is a threat that Homer Simpson might show up at the Shrimp Buffet counter the ISP-s are having second thoughts. Exactly just what would happen if 50% of the DSL, Fiber and Cable Modem subscribers in the USA all decided to download a movie at about 6 PM local time ? My intention is not to defend download CAPS, but something is gonna give..

Not outside US

[DaleCooper82]

I tried and...

"We have detected that you are not located within the US. Due to licensing restrictions Amazon Video On Demand ...."

Looks like I won't be allowed to follow The Office, s05 and will need to do Torrent once again. Wondering if that restriction is the same for downloads...

Re:Fine, but what about MP3 downloads for the worl

[Anonymous Coward]

Try http://clamz.googlecode.com/

It is great for for rental with a TiVo

[Secrity]

I like Unbox (which I think that they are talking about) for renting a movie, but I would never buy a movie through it. I can browse and buy movies on my TiVo or computer. A movie rental costs between $1.99 and $3.99, and some rentals have been free. We rent maybe one or two movies a week, and feel that the cost is insignificant. The quality is very good, although it isn't quite DVD quality.

I normally hate DRM, but for a rental that I watch on my TiVo, I don't give a shit. There isn't anything to return and we have up to a month to start watching the movie. It can be kept on TiVo for a month without playing it, and it expires 24 hours after it is first played.

Intelligence Test

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy fuck. $4 to "rent" a movie for a day? First off, the term "rent" has no meaning unless we are talking about physical objects. But let's not get into that. Let's do get into how the hell they can justify charging brick-and-mortar prices for DATA?! I expect to pay $15 for a current popular movie DVD at Wal-Mart. Cause it has a case, pamphlet inside, disc.... you know... MATTER. Stuff that cost someone money to put together so it could arrive in my hands. But digital movies? No. I am not compensating the company the same price for doing LESS service for me (i.e. I can buy without human intervention) and giving me nothing (i.e. they lose no inventory when they make a sale). $15 for their server to say
"yes, allow a copy to be downloaded"? People, you are at this moment being fleeced. Amazon's thinking "Hey, these moronic consumers are used to paying $15 per movie, and 95% won't know that these digital movies cost us NOTHING to sell, so let's rape them by not reducing our prices along with the elimination of our overhead." Well fuck you and your greedy minions, Jeff Bezos. I took a long hiatus from media piracy. Hiatus over.