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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?"

8 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. Too Expensive by The+Real+Veritas · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    1. Re:Too Expensive by SlashdotOgre · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
  2. The quality is awful. by Silverlancer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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...

  5. Re:Mac! by wattrlz · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  6. Re:Wrong question! by iniquitous · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:Wrong question! by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.