Today Amazon.com released a video download and rental service called Unbox. With more reasonable prices from $7.99 to $14.99 to purchase a DVD-quality movie and $3.99 to rent a movie ($1-2 cheaper for TV shows), Amazon’s Unbox may prove to be more popular that the iTunes Movie Store… if those rumors ever come to fruition.
However, as we all expected, the service requires the use of a special Amazon video player that will only ever available for Windows.
Can I use Amazon Unbox on my Macintosh or iPod?
No. Apple Computer Inc. has exclusive rights to the hardware and software that would make this possible. Because of these restrictions, we are unable to make Amazon Unbox compatible with these products. While it is possible to run one of the approved operating systems on computers made by Apple, we cannot guarantee the performace of Amazon Unbox on these systems.
Each hour of video content purchased/rented from Amazon Unbox is 1.2GB, so an average 2 hour movie will require a 2.4GB download. The Unbox video player has a progressive download feature that enables you to watch while you download so with a fast enough connection you can play a movie almost immediately. With a several gigabyte video file, you can be assured that you are receiving great quality video, compared to GUBA’s VGA resolution for movie downloads.
Rentals with Unbox are a bit tricky. You have a 30 day period where the file is on your computer and once you start watching it you must complete it within 24 hours. So if you’re like me and want to skim through the new movie you just rented before actually watching it, you’ll be forced to finish it the same day. At the end of those 30 days or when you have completed watching the film, it automatically deletes itself.
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Actually going out and buying the media ( DVD ) or even ordering it ( from Amazon, no less ), or even renting it from your favorite dvd-store is more efficient, cheaper and makes more sense. The only downside is that, in the case of going out, you my have to walk for a while to get there. Which is not much of a downside anyway..
In addition to that, if you are willing to ‘hop over’ the legal issues for a bit, you could rip the dvd in no time, or even put BitTorrent to good use and download the movie.
Restrictions make sense from a business point of view for Amazon and its partners, but makes it harder for consumers to adopt the concept, especially given this price-tag and the limitations that come with the DRM.
Having said that, most ‘uninformed’ folks will probably go for it anyway. From what I read, Apple’s iTunes Movie Store will suffer from similar problems (+1 = Disney as the only partner ) but maybe it won’t be this bad.
The game is afoot.
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Doesnt sounds like it is quite a match for iTunes. Good try Amazon.
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That’s a bunch of bull saying that they can’t make a client for the Mac OS. Apple isn’t going to deny them access to the tools needed to make software for the Mac. They have as much abillity to produce for the Mac as anyone else. All it takes is a Mac Pro, a dozen programmers proficient in Objective-C/Cocoa and Xcode. They just don’t WANT to make a client for the Mac.
You think that when Microsoft unleashes Zune, they won’t have a Mac-compatible client? They know that the key to winning is going to be making as many Mac users as possible like the service and validate it the way that we validate Office for Mac.
Truthfully, the reason that all of these so-called iTunes killers fail is because they refuse to make Mac-compatible clients. Mac users for years have always been the ones looked to as the barometer of what’s cool. It’s a shame that we keep getting dissed the way we do…….
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Totally agree with what viperteq said. I’m actually surprised Amazon is choosing that route with regard to a Mac client – I would have thought they would want to sell to every inch of the long tail and would recognize the good PR it would give.
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Interesting – they’ve changed the FAQ text:
“Can I use Amazon Unbox on my Macintosh or iPod?
Unfortunately, our Amazon Unbox video downloads are not compatible with Apple / MacIntosh hardware and computer systems.”
And those “limited time to watch” DRM schemes are doomed to fail.
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Until the industry can agree upon a standardized DRM allowing you to play audio/video that is encoded using standard encoders (like H.264 and AAC) in any media player that implements the standard, there will always be compatability problems because company XYZ hasn’t developed their special player for operating system X.
Should companies even put much imphasis on DRM protection for videos due to the larger file sizes. For instance if I want to download a HD full length movie it would probably take up several gigs of data lets just say 5 GB. The only people who I would be able to share that with (in a reasonable amount of time) are people nearby on my network which could just come and borrow the actual DVD from me. Sure I could compress it to a smaller resolution and crapper quality but it would still be fairly large. The problem with mp3s needing DRM is that they are so small and fast to download say less than a minute. Are people really going to be willing to wait several days maybe weeks to download a $15 movie for free. I doubt it, maybe a few will but not enough to matter.
Although I agree with Kevan about “limited time to watch” DRM schemes failing in the long run, I think that organic DVD’s that are no longer playable after a few days could be sucessful for rental’s if they could get the cost down enough to produce them before the whole industry goes completely VOD and downloadable videos.
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Let’s count the days until someone hacks those rental videos.
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