Amazon Unbox launched late last week, joining the growing video download market. You can buy TV shows at $1.99 (standard price: iTunes et al.), movies ranging from $7.99 to $14.99, or rent either for a 30-day period through Amazon's 1-click shopping. Upon payment, you download one WMV video file using Microsoft PlaysForSure DRM and one AMZN mobile video file (not compatible with iPod - PlaysForSure??? Not quite.). They have similar restrictions on burning to DVD and transferring to 2 or 3 devices that iTunes, CinemaNow (gradually working out), MovieLink, Guba and the other services have.
Given the $1.99 trial discount on all downloads, I figured I'd give it a whirl so I DL'ed V for Vendetta for $12. You have to download and install the Amazon Unbox player first, which was going well until the whole thing hung for a while during installation, eventually crashing my computer. After reboot, I tried to download the movie, but it was stuck in queue in the player, and on Amazon said I had already used up all of my licenses and downloaded the movie. Thankfully, I was able to have someone call me immediately to iron this out by re-releasing the license. I started DL'ing the file over WoFi, which would have taken ~6 hrs for 3.5GB, but once at home with a strong cable line, DL'ed the final 80% of it within 2 1/2 hrs. The video quality on my laptop was quite good and played fine, although the player was a tad glitchy.
All in all, the service is fine as long as you know what you're getting from it. Therefore, it faces the same problems as all other movie download services thusfar. Given the price points for movie downloads, these services will not take off any time soon, nor does Hollywood seem to want them to just yet. The basic V for Vendetta DVD sells for $13.87 on Amazon, includes DVD extras, is mine to own and use wherever, and can be converted into digital files with software. Why would I pay $13.87 for a digital file of lower quality with all the restrictions and glitches that takes hours to download? I might as well just use BitTorrent! This is a question many people are asking, so despite the hype, the market doesn't really seem to be there yet despite even Apple joining the fray soon (perhaps today? UPDATE: yes). TV shows, on the other hand, do seem perfect for these formats, as evidence is starting to show... (UPDATE: Lord Jobs announced that 45 million TV shows have been downloaded on iTunes since its launch in October).
links:
PaidContent (Rafat & Co. have got it covered very well), Engadget, ZDNet
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