Amazon.com unwraps its 'Unbox'

The widely anticipated video download service moves the online retailer into the nascent digital movie market.

The story "Amazon.com unwraps its 'Unbox'" published September 7, 2006 at 5:05 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[Earl Benser]

A bit off base, at least, ....

.... too pricey, too restrictive, too much Amazon, too little <br />credibility.

[jakec]

Wait a minute...

I just downloaded a TV show (Star Trek, Season 1, Episode 1, "The Man Trap") and it gave me two files. One for the PC at 640x480, and one for a portable media player. Both files took up a little over a gig of space and it only took me 30 minutes to download at an average of 585 kbps. The PC video looked great and I was able to transfer the portable video file over to my Gigabeat S. It looks beautiful!<br /><br />So my question is this: Why would I pay the same price for a 320x240 TV show at iTunes that I can now get at Amazon with a higer resolution and quality?<br /><br />I'm pleasantly surprised.

[mathue_tax]

Windows Media, again! (Blech!)

A shame it's WM10, not only will some Windows users not use it <br />but it locks out the small but lucrative Mac market. What a joke!

[riodejaneiro2007]

Slow service.

Good concept. However, I purchased 2 files and I will die of old age before they download! I have a DSL connection. This service is obviously pushed to it's limit. I can get films for 1/4th or the same the cost at another site at full speed. Fix the problem Amazon.

[Doc-u-type]

The Movie wars are over and Apple has won!

The Movie wars are over and Apple has won!<br />I was so excited about being able to download movies home to a media player/computer that I went out and purchased a ?Creative Zen Vision:M?. Please note, this is the player recommended by Amazon. In fact, they are offering $20 in free video downloads if you purchase it from Amazon.com (This fact will be important as you read my review).<br /><br />So, my shinny new ?Creative Zen Vision:M?. is on the list supported and my trusty Dell desktop more then exceeds the minimum system requirements. , yet installing the software took almost an hour. One I resolved the software conflict; I setup an account and purchased my first movie. Down load wind informed me that my movie would take about two hours so I cooked dinner, cleaned up the kitchen and settled in for a night of movies and TV classics ?NOT!<br /><br />As you may have guessed, the movie did not download as it said it would. So I call Amazon tech support. After about two hours on hold I?m that you have to tell the media player to down load your purchase movie. Ok, I thought this was a bit odd, you?d think that by forking over $15 of cold hard cash would cause for downloading to commence. Affter an additional 2 hours the movie downloaded, at this point it late and I'm too frustrated to watch the move so I head off to bed.<br /><br />The next day I tried to move the move over to my ?Creative Zen Vision:M? -the move won't transfer. This is the same player recommended by Amazon, the same player advertise prominently on Amazon.com with $20 of free video downloads. I check the specks on Amazon?s UnBox site a second time to make sure I have a supported player (who knows, maybe the marketing wiz kids screwed and put their push behinded the wrong player).<br /><br />According to Amazon?s web site my player is supported. So I called Amazon and after a long wait I get another rep that says even though the device is listed on the site as supported it's not a guarantee that it will work. What?!?!<br /><br />There might be a happy ending to my story; today I went to Best Buy and exchange my Zen player for an Apple iPod. I?m not happy about Apple?s DRM monopoly, but my desire to rent/purchase movies online, messured with the Best But sales person?s push that the Apple just works convinced me to give it a try. This is my first Apple product and I'm hoping it will work. Unfortunately iTunes offers few movies, and you can?t rent them either. However, if iTunes works I'll stick it out with Apple as I'm sure they get more movies.

[Musica360.com]

???????

Is there anyone here who thinks this will make a difference?

[Musica360.com]

Now this is a nice model...

This is a nice model that I would like to have seen Amazon implement:<br /><a class="jive-link-external" href="http://playlistmag.com/news/2006/09/08/eztakes/index.php" target="_newWindow">http://playlistmag.com/news/2006/09/08/eztakes/index.php</a><br /><br />with the breadth of catalog Amazon has and this model... it could have been a contender