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Amazon Debuts Mixed Bag of Original Comedy Pilots
itwbennett writes "Amazon sent out a press release over the weekend announcing that the pilots for their original shows 'held 8 spots on the list of 10 most streamed Amazon VOD episodes.' So blogger and entertainment junkie Peter Smith decided to spend a couple of hours seeing if they were worth watching. He managed to sit through 4 of the 8 comedy shows and found a mixed bag — one a clear miss, two meh, and one he'd like to see turned into a series. Have you watched any of the pilots? What did you think?" The quality of these the pilots is not the only way they're a mixed bag: for many Linux users, they're simply not watchable. Watch soon for unknown_lamer's screed on the fat lot of good(will) Amazon is generating by making it harder to legally get these shows.
Please no more sitcoms.................
I beleive this is a duplicate story, done on last Saturday... http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/13/04/20/2039245/amazon-nears-debut-of-original-tv-shows
Here's what I did in Ubuntu 12.04 to watch them:
1. Use Firefox.
2. Make sure Firefox is closed.
3. Run: sudo apt-get install libhal1 hal
4. Run: rm -rf ~/.adobe/Flash_Player/NativeCache ~/.adobe/Flash_Player/AssetCache ~/.adobe/Flash_Player/APSPrivateData2
5. Launch Firefox and enjoy.
After I did this in Firefox, I was able to watch them in Chromium too but ran into problems trying to get it working in the first place in Chromium. I've read that Google Chrome simply won't play them on Linux because of some recent changes Google made. So, yea... not as easy as it should be but it should be watchable unless I've missed a different reason why they're not watchable for so many users.
It would be better than most of this crap. But still, animation is very expensive (especially on an established show where the voice cast and animators ain't gonna work for cheap). Even if they wanted to pick up a show that's already been cancelled twice, I doubt they could afford it.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Amazon should pick up Futurama, now that Comedy Central has dropped it.
Let it die with what dignity it has left. The last season shows that the magic it once had is dead or dying.
This is a follow-up. In the summary, "their original shows" cites the same Slashdot story you mention. You may have a valid complaint about how too many follow-ups makes a story look like a Slashvertisement, but a follow-up is not exactly a dupe.
Watchable on Fedora 17 with Firefox 20. No issues at all.
Amazon is one of my top picks for car parts - yes, you read that correctly: car parts.
No, I didn't! I read that as "cat farts".
30 minutes of APK being cock-punched.
Unless .. this is a hedge against the imminent online sales tax. When - not if - when is happens, their business model is almost toast. They still don't have the overhead of retails stores and they'll be able to offer 30% discounts. BUt ...
Amazon is so much cheaper and more convenient than in-store alternatives that an extra 6.25% (IL tax rate) is not going to stop people from saving 25-40% on their purchases online. It will certainly cut into their sales, just like anything that would raise their prices for most people by a small percentage. But their business model is certainly not toast.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
It's had its run. Let it go.
So, this guy is trying to be at least semi-pro about this, and we're supposed to care what he thinks and says, but he can't be bothered to watch one episode each of eight different shows before writing an article about it?
How long are these? I'm guessing an hour. You can't spend eight hours WATCHING TV before writing an article you're being paid for?
And then it gets put up on Slashdot?
Has online journalism/tech news fallen so low that this qualifies as worth a front-page mention?
33+% less on most books (and therefore 33+% less sales tax) than your local brick and mortar is still a hell of good deal. As long as Amazon's prices are significantly lower, sales taxes are lower since you pay tax based on the price you pay, not the MSRP. Still a better deal than regular stores.
I think you mean justify it, Amazon can "afford" your freedom if it wanted to.
Until linux has something resembling a decent marketshare on the desktop, stop expecting publishers to care about or support it. It's simply not worth their time to devote the time of their engineering teams to support Linux when they're not likely to see a huge return on that investment.
Most folks running Linux are smart enough to run a Windows VM if they want to watch Amazon videos, and if they don't want to because of pride or some other "belief", then that's THEIR decision.
Also, I don't have any statistics, but I've got to believe that a large portion of Amazon clients are STBs, not computers.
So, buy a STB that supports Amazon, or buy an OEM Windows license and spin up a VM.
Now, if only Amazon would release an iOS app. That's a huge market segment that they're alienating by not having their content available. I want to be able to watch Amazon video on my phone just like I can watch Netflix and Hulu on my phone.
It's even worse. They're all half hour pilots, sans commercials, so 21-22 minutes long each. You can blow through them all in about 2.5 hours, though I only made it a few minutes into a couple of them before I had to turn it off. Some of these things were beyond terrible. One or two gems, though.
What a foo! Why would he skip Onion News Empire?! This is the FIRST one I clicked, because it was the most attractive summary, and plus: IT'S TEH EFFIN ONIONZ!
Unequivocally the realest of the realz...
I'm glad this got commented on. I'm a lazy bastard and I plan on watching more than 4x22 minutes of TV tonight.
The front-page worthy news *IS* that this is what passes for news: "Journalists" are half-assed at best.
This just in, you can get just as many page views (or more!) from an ill-informed opinion on half the story than you can for actually putting in the work. ...and by work, I mean watching fucking TV.
> Has online journalism/tech news fallen so low that
> this qualifies as worth a front-page mention?
"Coming up next: Which work better -- springy clothes pins, or the other kind?"
-- Kent Brockman
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
When MTV had too many other shows, they invented M2/MTV2 to shove all the music-related stuff onto. But then that got full and they started more channels... I think History did similar with H2.
Amazon still sells books.
33+% less on most books (and therefore 33+% less sales tax) than your local brick and mortar is still a hell of good deal. As long as Amazon's prices are significantly lower, sales taxes are lower since you pay tax based on the price you pay, not the MSRP. Still a better deal than regular stores.
In addition, it only takes about a month after first release for a book to have quite a few high quality used copies available from Amazon sellers, often at even better prices.
Amazon proper plus all the sellers makes it much better than any B&M bookstore for selection and price. Add in the fact that it's not just books, and it's hard to beat, regardless of sales tax.
Has online journalism/tech news fallen so low that this qualifies as worth a front-page mention?
The editors on Slashdot were outsourced to 7 line perl scripts. This story had all of the right keywords, so it was posted. It's your fault, really. If you'd thrown more money at the site before this had happened, the site's editors could have been replaced by a 12 line perl script...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Yep, I don't see the "Internet Sales Tax" bill having any lasting effect on Amazon.