TiVo users have been able to rent and buy movies from Amazon.com's Unbox service for over a year now, but lately the service has felt a little outdated compared with competitors like Vudu and Apple TV, which offer HD downloads. Well, thanks to a comment by TiVo's VP of product marketing, Jim Denney, it seems like that's going to change soon. In an article on TV Week, Denney claims TiVo and Amazon will announce HD capabilities "in the not too distant future."
While the upgrade from SD to HD would be nice for any service, it may seem like an even larger upgrade for Unbox on TiVo users, since our initial hands-on testing with the service revealed that movies were letterboxed, instead of true anamorphic widescreen. We'd also like to see HD movies get a bump from the standard stereo soundtrack to at least a 5.1 Dolby Digital/DTS--although Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio would be even better. And while Denney's comment only referred to HD content coming to the Unbox on TiVo service, we see no reason why HD movies shouldn't be available to PC users as well.
Via Zatz Not Funny
We bet you know someone who does everything online, from banking to making friends, to kicking back. If you're stuck trying to find great gifts for the constant blogger, video vulture, or online socialite in your life, take a look at this virtual gift guide that shows you get it, and you care.
Compared to the iPod and iPhone, the Apple TV's gotten a tepid response.
(Credit: CNET)It's been online for a few days now, but I just spotted (via PaidContent) Forbes' article titled The iFlop (subhead: "Steve Jobs tried to design--and dictate--the future of television. Here's how he failed.") Author Scott Woolley calls the Apple TV "a flat-out" failure, claiming that it's sold less than 250,000 units in six months. Among the supposed sins of the product: the lack of a built-in DVR and a "parochial and proprietary approach" to online video content. He also highlights a variety of on-demand video competitors, including Vudu, TiVo (via Amazon Unbox), and Xbox 360 (which offers rentals and sales of TV shows via the Xbox Live Marketplace)--while glossing over many of their shortcomings. Still, is he right? Is the Apple TV dead in the water?
... Read moreCollege football is back, and so is fall television. If you're looking to pick up some free TV shows (legally), the Internet is your friend and is a great place to go for digital versions of TV shows, sans a TV or the need for a VCR or DVR to watch shows when you want to. Note that several of these sites are walking a fine line of what's legal and what's not, which was outlined in yesterday's post about legal suicide for start-ups. We don't condone piracy or encourage it; this guide is for entertainment purposes only.
Free (and paid-for) downloads:
iTunes. iTunes is worth mentioning here because you can often get the first and last episode of any show for free. You can then put it on your iPod, iPhone, or watch it full-screen on your computer. While the iTunes Store is now lacking shows like The Office, because of NBC pulling out of its renewal deal, you can still find shows from ABC, CBS, and Fox--which incidentally is offering free pilots of all of their series, which you can find here (link opens up in iTunes).
Editor's Pick: Kitchen Nightmares--it's like Dinner Impossible, but with more volatility and endive.
Amazon Unbox. While we may not have had the best experience using this service in the past, if you're looking for legal digital copies of NBC's newest shows, you're stuck with Unbox until Hulu launches next month. Like the iTunes Store, you'll find all the big players here, although keep in mind that you can't watch these shows on any portable media players, which makes the $1.99 price tag a little harder to swallow.
Editor's Pick: MythBusters
Joost. There is an absolute ton of content on Joost, including entire seasons of the original Transformers from the 80s. The only catch? You've gotta download and install the client, and get a private beta token, which these days is about as easy to get as it was to get a Gmail invite a few years back.
Click the "read more" link below to continue reading, and find out about free, streaming options.
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CNET Networks)
Amazon Unbox on TiVo launched yesterday, which means TiVo subscribers will be able to download selected Amazon Unbox videos straight to their TiVo box. We were pretty excited about the announcement, because at first glance Amazon Unbox on TiVo looks to be a possible replacement for a DVD renting service like Netflix, or Pay-Per-View services available on cable or satellite. The service works on any broadband connected Series2 or Series3 TiVo, and we took it for a spin on our Series2 TiVo.
We had absolutely no trouble linking our TiVo with our Amazon account, and we were selecting movies in just a couple of clicks. The interface to select movies will be familiar to anyone who has used Amazon, which is to say it's pretty painless. The only knock we had is that Amazon doesn't seem 100-percent ready for TiVo fans, as the method of filtering TiVo-transferable files from other Amazon Unbox files is just using the search term "tivo" in the Unbox section. A separate section of Amazon Unbox would be preferable.
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CNET Networks)
We found the initial selection to be a little meager. Not all Amazon Unbox videos are available to be transferred to TiVos, presumably because of the need to convert the files to a TiVo-friendly format. As of press time, 1,433 videos were labeled "TiVo", which is a combination of TV shows and movies. Sure, that's a lot of videos for any one person to watch, but it's not much of a library. However, Amazon claims it will be adding new titles every week, so you can expect this library to grow. In terms of cost, most movies we saw were $15 to buy and $4 to rent, while TV shows were $2 to buy.
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Amazon)
TiVo DVR owners will soon be able to watch movies and TV shows purchased or rented from Amazon's Unbox video download service. The new feature, being beta tested by a "select group of TiVo subscribers" according to TiVo's press release, will eventually be rolled out to more than 1.5 million TiVo Series2 and Series3 owners.
According to the FAQ page on Amazon, you'll choose the videos you want to download while browsing Amazon's site on your PC, but the videos will be downloaded directly to the TiVo. Once they're fully downloaded, they'll appear in the Now Playing list with all the other recorded content on the DVR. To avoid hard-drive overcrowding, purchased videos can be erased from the TiVo and re-downloaded again at any time. And the download terminology is key here. The videos need to be fully (or at least partially) downloaded before they can be viewed, so you won't get the instant gratification of a YouTube-style streaming video. On the plus side, the quality should be good: when we reviewed Amazon Unbox on the PC, we noted the WMV9 video was "near DVD quality," and offered 5.1 surround sound. Ideally, the TiVo versions will be just as good, if not better.
While it's not completely comprehensive, Amazon's service offers content from some key Hollywood content providers, including Warner, Universal, Paramount, Fox, and CBS. The other good news is that the TiVo functionality won't cost extra: the same prices for PC downloads ($2 for TV show episodes, $10 to $15 for most movies, and $2 for movie rentals) will apply for watching the content on your TiVo. Unfortunately, there's no indication that Amazon will be offering a Netflix-style "all you can eat" subscription service anytime soon.
What about the fine print? Amazon Unbox on TiVo will work only on TiVo Series2 and Series3 boxes connected to a home network with broadband Internet access (naturally). Dial-up TiVo users and owners of DirecTV TiVo boxes are out of luck, as are (we assume) future subscribers to the TiVo service for cable. And don't expect to transfer the downloaded videos off your TiVo: they won't be compatible with TiVo's TiVoToGo or Multi-Room Viewing features (though you can download videos straight from Amazon to multiple PCs and some compatible portable-media devices). Moreover, while the Unbox service is for Windows only, we assume Amazon could open it to Mac users as well, at least for TiVo playback. On the flip side, owners of Windows Media Center PCs (or the Home Premium or Ultimate flavors of Windows Vista) will likely greet the TiVo announcement with a yawn: they already can stream downloaded Amazon Unbox videos from their PCs to their TVs, courtesy of the Xbox 360.
Caveats notwithstanding, Amazon Unbox for TiVo is a nice step-up feature for both products. Like other PC-based video download services (including CinemaNow, MovieLink, and the just-launched Wal-Mart store), the main criticism of Amazon's Unbox service was that you were stuck watching the movies on your PC rather than on your TV. Similarly, TiVo had long hinted that on-demand video content would eventually be available, but nothing ever materialized from a Netflix deal announced back in 2004. Likewise, the expensive Series3 box cuts off cable users' access to pay-per-view and video-on-demand content from the cable company (thanks to the limitations of the CableCARD technology upon which it relies). Amazon Unbox on Tivo is a tidy solution for all of these issues.
How well the Amazon/TiVo partnership will take on Apple TV (coming later in February) and Microsoft's Xbox 360 (which already offers HD movie and TV downloads for TV viewing without any PC intervention) is anyone's guess. But toss in additional competition from Netflix, CinemaNow, Google/YouTube, BitTorrent, and Sony--just to name a few--and one thing's for sure: the battle for on-demand digital content has the potential to make the Blu-ray/HD DVD competition look like a minor skirmish in a much larger war.
Additional sources: Gizmodo via Digg, New York Times via CNET
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