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

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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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.

Too Expensive

[The Real Veritas]

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

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.

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...

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.

[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: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:Mandatory short answer:

[Ctrl-Z]

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

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.)

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.

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. :\

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.

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: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.