Downloadable Movies from Amazon?

StrongGlad writes "Screenshots of what could be an Amazon.com video store in the making surfaced Friday on the Web. Alan Taylor, who claims to have worked for the online retailer more than two years ago, said he discovered the screenshots while poking around an area of Amazon.com used by developers. The screenshots can be seen on Kokogiak.com. The pictures show a service called 'Unbox Video' that offers first time users a free TV show or $1.99 off the first movie they download. Instructions are given for downloading the player and buying movies and video that can be played on a PC, TV or portable media player. Amazon.com has declined to comment."

Great..

Now all we need are reliable ISPs so we don't have to spend 12 hours downloading each movie.

Re:Great..

12 hours?? Why, it only takes me a half hour to download a 700mb rip of a movie... Uhm, I mean that's probably how long it would take *Cough* if I were ever to do....uh. (backs slowly out of the room)

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DivX and XviD are both names for encoders, and both are implementations of MPEG-4 Part 2 (IIRC). The new compression format is H.264 (also known as MPEG-4 Part 10, or AVC. This delivers considerably higher quality than DivX/XviD at the same data rate and

Re:DRM :(

Shurely it will have DRM and a total lack of intercompatibility. What happens in 10 years when the amazon movie player is no longer maintained? Do we still get to watch the content we bought?

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It's already supported in all the important media players, including open-source implementations. There is no DRM in H.264.

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It's already supported in all the important media players, including open-source implementations. There is no DRM in H.264.

You mean like HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have H.264 and no DR... oh, wait. Or the way the iTMS music files are AAC and no DR... oh, wait agai

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I was talking exclusively about the video codec. Of course they likely attach DRM to whatever they'll sell or they won't be able to sell it - unless they move their base of operations to Russia. ;) For what it's worth, there has been pirated content in H.2

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Personally, I don't see having to download for 12 hours as such a bad thing if the company is smart about it. If you're paying about as much as if you rent a movie, and you can download a movie before it is released (suppose you download a movie and when i

Re:Great..

They could use BitTorrent.

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Or it may be streaming. Though, you may need to give it a nice head start if you don't enjoy interludes of "Buffering..."

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That's why ISPs are switching to Fiber Optics.

This will change everything!

Bezos says cities will have to be rebuilt to accommodate this new concept of "downloading" "movies". This changes everything.

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Ah, now this'll never work, a more sensible option would be a fleet of dvd delivery boys on Segways. Smell the future Jeffrey.

apple

I wonder what this means for the apple movie store..

They still don't get it.

The average hour long TV show can now be downloaded for 1.99. This is fairly reasonable, and I only wish 30 minute shows were .99.

But these guys are making the same mistake as movielink. They are charging retail and in many instances for older movies more than retail. Sure you'll make money because some people have plenty of money and would rather not run out to the video store. The rest of us will only use these services when they are cheaper than the video store or they have movies that you can't find anywhere else.

Re:They still don't get it.

Well, the thing is, this might not be that time efficient either. If I can go buy a movie at a store for the same price as it costs online, and I can get to the store, buy it, and come home before it would of finished downloading, that certainly lessens the appeal.

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Well, the thing is, this might not be that time efficient either. If I can go buy a movie at a store for the same price as it costs online, and I can get to the store, buy it, and come home before it would of finished downloading, that certainly lessens th

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Well considering amazon has always been about the long tail of online purchasing I'd figure they would be ramping up on all the movies you can't find anywhere else. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail [wikipedia.org]

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On the other hand, this is Amazon.com we're talking about here, and already having a widely-known name is worth its weight in gold. Just look at iTunes -- DRM is a hassle, buying a full CD of older music is cheaper at a store, but sales keep coming anyway.

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You do understand that in some cases this isn't really their call to make, right? If the studios say "THOU SHALT NOT SELL THIS MOVIE BELOW THIS PRICE", or even better if they expect to receive a "wholesale" price somewhere close to that (wholesale isn't r

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Amazon doesn't have to venture into this business of selling movies either at the whim of the studios. If I had the sense of the parent poster while running amazon I'd think I'd rather not bother. More so when I'm doing fine with my current business mode

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The average hour long TV show can now be downloaded for 1.99. This is fairly reasonable,

In crap quality. That's far from reasonable 0.10 would still be on the greedy side, depending on the format.

Format?

Downloadable movies/TV shows are great, because this is one area where they won't have too much trouble combatting filesharing networks if they do it right. Chances are the downloadable copies are gonna be of better quality than the freebies, and if they'r

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Downloadable movies/TV shows are great, because this is one area where they won't have too much trouble combatting filesharing networks if they do it right. Chances are the downloadable copies are gonna be of better quality than the freebies, ...

I don't

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So what. With DVDs and esp. CDs, only one person has to buy it, and then they can share it with everybody in the world also. The fact that the product already comes as computer files doesn't really change much. I don't know why all the media companies a

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Meh, you're right. I'm probably being a little naive. But I did realize that.

However, I know the reason why I'm tempted to download 'illegally' isn't that I just wanna stick it to the man. I mean, these are people that are doing work, just like me, and I

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This is my biggest problem with iTunes. I have an ipod, but refuse to buy iTunes. The reason? You can often get the CD for the same price, or $1 or $2 more. Plus you get a real physical copy that can be used in any player out there (with a little conver

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Chances are the downloadable copies are gonna be of better quality than the freebies (..)

Why would that be? I mean, in theory, yes, without the hassle of the transfer being illegal you can more easily transmit large amounts of data. On the other hand, whil

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In my experience, it's really hit or miss. TV shows aren't normally that big of a problem, but there are so many copies of things out there that are just . . . well, bad. Let's face it, a lot of people out there participating in piracy just really don't kn

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I'm guessing it will be protected WMV files, like the other services.

So it is dead from start

If Amazon makes the deadly mistake of "exclusive deal" with Microsoft to distribute their Windows only (yes, NO MAC!) WMV 10 DRM format, it means nothing to Mac users.

Mac users are A+, A and AB class in terms of marketing. Anything ignores Mac is not to be

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On this page [downloadsquad.com], there is a link to an amazon page [amazon.com]. On that page, there is a link to "download the unbox video player", so I do believe the format will be somewhat proprietary. Amazon may take that page down, but I still saw what I saw.

Link from Screenshot

The screenshot shows this URL: http://www.amazon.com/gp/video/help/faq.html [amazon.com]. It seems that this URL actually exists, because it gives 200 OK and a 48 byte response.

whats with the prices?

For about a dollar more (including shipping) at overstock you can buy Road Warrior on physical medium thats uncompressed and higher resolution than any download they'd probably provide.

Plus they have "Batman Forever" listed for $10. I seriously hope th

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If you mean they will send you a DVD, that's compressed. (MPEG-2)

Uncompressed would be the film masters. That would be cool.

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Uncompressed digital video is also hugely huge. It's akin to a series of bitmap images, and even that would have to be an immense resolution to make up for an analogue to digital conversion.

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I'd like to think he meant lazer disk, which he watches on his high quality player, which does not require you to flip the disk.

Just as long as they don't run out of stock?

These are artwork mock-ups not a final design even if they are genuine. No way Amazon is having its menu jump around like that.

I have no doubt that Amazon will do this service, however I seriously hope 5GB is not enough to store all my downloads (though if

Generic /. moan

Just thought I'd day that, despite not wanting to use this service, I wish it ran on Linux.

Related news ..

on DownloadSquad - here [downloadsquad.com]

From a WSJ article, 8/3/06

"Although it hasn't been officially announced, Amazon is set to launch its long-anticipated movie site this month, people familiar with the matter say. The company's biggest advantage is the trust it has won from millions of households over the years, whic

I'm not interested in your software, Amazon

Taylor also posted what could be the screenshot of the Amazon.com player..

Stick to selling the movies. We'll use mplayer or xine or something to play them.

Oh, we can't? You mean these are in a weird new format, or have DRM? Sounds like you're getting

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I couldn't agree more. I would love to be able to buy episodes of TV shows, on their air date, online. The thing is, I sometimes want to watch them on my TV, which means burning to DVD. I sometimes want to watch them on my Nokia '770, which means transc

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but who will sell stuff to Amazon.com if they publish it without a DRM ?

Businesses that want to make money.

Mirror

Images mirror [homelinux.com]

Mirror

Images mirror [homelinux.com]

Bring It On

There's been a distinct lack of reputable distributers of downloadable, commercial movies. With Amazon however, I know they're good. I've done business with them before and they're well established, so I can forsee using this service.

Going about this wrong...

All the places offering movie downloads are going about it wrong. The whole point of movie downloads isn't so I can get another mainstream movie release that is already on DVD... or a TV show I already get for free on cable... the whole point of movie down

DRM, therefore DOA

They're offering something that's less valuable than a DVD for the same price or more. Yeah, that'll go far.

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Anyone notice in the second screenshot that "what" is misspelled. Anyone else think maybe these are fake?