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Amazon Opens On-Demand Video Store

Posted by kdawson on from the bandwidth-caps-could-be-a-problem dept.

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?"

3 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. Re:No, it's not necessarily overpriced by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Re:Referring to an article from yesterday... by Vectronic · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...

  3. not all are $15 by qw0ntum · · Score: 4, Informative

    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. :\

    --
    'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway