Earlier in the month, I mentioned how Amazon had released their movie downloading service called Unbox. Just from reading about it, I had thought the restrictions far outweighed the little advantages with overly large downloads that take hours, a sketchy piece of software that’s required to play each video, as well as a few other hurdles.
A few days ago, Fortune’s Peter Lewis tested Amazon’s Unbox service and wrote an excellent review. I think the article can pretty much be summed up with this quote:
Of all the smart and talented people at Amazon, did no one dare say, “Wait, our new service bites! It’s slower than a trip to Blockbuster, more expensive than a DVD, absurdly restrictive on how the consumer uses the movie, delivers lower resolution than a DVD, and requires running a cable from the PC to the TV if you want to watch the movie on something larger than a PC monitor”?
I particularly enjoyed the part where Peter started downloading a movie and discussed how it took 5 hours on his 5 megabit connection – the time it would take him to drive to a far away Blockbuster to rent the DVD and then spend a few hours at the shopping mall.
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Seems like the roommates and I will be sticking to Netflix.
Here at Towson we have free movie rentals, which is awesome. They only charge you for late fees, which is great. I have definitely been taking advantage of that.
What are your thought’s on Apple’s Movie Store Paul?
As for Apple’s Movie Store – the downloads are more tolerable but they only come in at VGA quality, leaving something to be desired. However, you do get to use the file as you please – on your iPod for example.
Paul, did you just comment on your own post before letting anyone else get in on the action?
Amazon Unbox blows. I didn’t even have to try it. Who wants pay to spend hours waiting for a download to trickle? If I’m going to wait for a download to finish, it better be free.
Out of interest, I have started copying my DVDs onto my mac, in the hope that I can do away with a DVD player altogether when the iTV comes along… As I am watching my hard disk space dwindle in size, any thoughts on the best format for storage of dvds on a hard disk anyone?
I’d say an ISO disk image.. to keep everything, then you can encode as you please later.