AmazonUnbox
September 8, 2006 2:43 PM   Subscribe

Amazon launched a new video download service today. It claims to be simple to use and features some superb movies. But are Amazon and the other major vendors missing the point? Will consumers pay for legitimate content with severe limitations on use or will they simply find ways of creating their own unrestricted versions?
posted by bobbyelliott (37 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
posted by meehawl at 2:51 PM on September 8, 2006


Just reading the support FAQ for unbox made me lose the will to live. Proprietary player? Mmmkay. Windows only? Mmmmkay. DRM up the wazoo? Mmmkay.

How about a nice cup of YOU JUST DON'T FUCKING GET IT, AMAZON, DO YOU?
posted by unSane at 2:51 PM on September 8, 2006


no digg.
posted by boo_radley at 2:53 PM on September 8, 2006 [1 favorite]


Isn't this just a yawn. I tried it with my free tv show download (everyone gets one), and I have to say I was generally unimpressed.

The software had to be installed, uninstalled, and reinstalled before I could get it to work. The movies play in a single window, while the purchases are made in a web browser. I think iTunes proved that a single interface for everything is the best method of handling commerce like this.

The media isn't portable, except to Plays for Sure devices, which is a concept Microsoft is going to try to kill with their Zune device. You can't play it on an iPod. And that, in the end, is what will kill it, just like every other unsuccessful niche music store. While video is definitely a different game than music, in the end, people want their iPods, and their iPod support. Sure, there will be those "Apple haters" or "No iPod Regengades", but walk around any college campus, and count the percentage of iPods to everything else. It's easy, just look at all of those white wires coming out of their ears.

Apple will probably launch something similar next week, and it will be done in a good interface, which much less rigid DRM. And it will work on both Macs and Windows machines. And it will be fairly successful.

The Amazon entry is a non-starter. The only thing going for it is video quality. If Apple gets video quality right this time around, as opposed to the iPod resolution videos, they'll knock this one out of the park.
posted by benjh at 2:56 PM on September 8, 2006


I saw this on Amazon's site yesterday and was disappointed in there was no Mac option available and that is was using shitty Windows Media DRM. I'm not surprised since that is what everyone except Apple does.
posted by birdherder at 2:58 PM on September 8, 2006


Non-tech saavy people like myself might use it if it's cheap enough. I buy TV shows and music from iTunes because they're easy and cheap -- While I know there's gotta be a way get stuff free and/or to delete the restrictions, it's not likely that I will know how to do that (or have the time/patience to learn) any time soon. But there are fewer and fewer people who are non-tech saavy.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 2:59 PM on September 8, 2006


Hmmm. Amazon or The Pirate Bay?

Decisions, decisions.
posted by newfers at 3:03 PM on September 8, 2006


am i the only person left who enjoys going to the small, indy neighborhood video store and digging through director sections, or the country specific sections for movies i have never seen or heard of?

jimminiechristmas, they even sell used dvd's for like six to ten bucks. then i can keep it, rip it, loan it to a friend, or resell it.

dagnabit.
posted by YoBananaBoy at 3:05 PM on September 8, 2006


I'm not surprised since that is what everyone except Apple does.

Because Apple doesn't let anyone else put DRM content on the iPod.
posted by smackfu at 3:07 PM on September 8, 2006


boo_radley replies no digg.

How meta.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 3:14 PM on September 8, 2006


Plays for Sure ... is a concept Microsoft is going to try to kill with their Zune device

I don't really understand this? Is PlaysForSure now on the outs? Was there a memo?

When it does work, it works quite well, from what I have seen when people are showing off their videos. But I have been enjoying portable videos on handhelds with no DRM since 2002, so to me both Apple's and MS's handcuffs are equally annoying.
posted by meehawl at 3:21 PM on September 8, 2006


For all sorts of reasons I think this will be a non-starter. They seem to be hoping for an "If we build it, they will come" effect, similar to what happened with TV shows and iTMS.

I do not currently find such a thing likely.

Platform limitations, price, convenience, inability to hook it up to your TV without diverse contortions...

I'm willing to bet Apple's store will be slightly better, but not significantly so. At the very least it will work on both Windows machines and Macs. The pricing model might be slightly saner. We'll see next Tuesday.

The only thing Amazon seems to have gotten right is video quality. They lose on all other counts.
posted by sparkletone at 3:25 PM on September 8, 2006


What on earth are these companies thinking They spend all this money to develop stuff that people want, and then encumber it with all manner of nonsense and turn it into something no one wants.
posted by delmoi at 3:30 PM on September 8, 2006


I get DVD's from netflix, rip them to my drive and send them back, so I always have something to watch when I want. Legal or not, that's how it works.
Beat that and you may get my business, otherwise you're wasting your time.
posted by 2sheets at 3:30 PM on September 8, 2006 [1 favorite]


I've been downloading a flick from AmazonUnbox since 9am this morning, and it's 6:36pm now, and it's still downloading. Yes, I have broadband.

Not especially impressed so far, I have to say.
posted by jscalzi at 3:37 PM on September 8, 2006


Any DRM scheme that is pervasive will eventually be cracked. Any DRM scheme that is not pervasive will fail.

The only way to make a DRM scheme that is unbreakable is to produce media which never enters analog form. If it isn't analog, you'll never ever be able to experience it. So DRM will always be cracked. It's fundamental.

I feel really bad for the engineers who are tasked with coming up with DRM systems, because it's ultimately a complete waste of their energy and talent to build a product that no end user asks for or wants.
posted by mullingitover at 3:40 PM on September 8, 2006


"I do not currently find such a thing likely."

There was a time when people were buying pet rocks by the truckload.

Bottled water is a major industry, and you can still get canned air as a novelty if you know where to look.

Over half of the american voters bought into the conservative republican advertising campaign hook line and sinker. Repeatedly.

I doubt this unbox idea will fizzle without at least a respectable "people are stupid" phase to its credit.
posted by ZachsMind at 4:17 PM on September 8, 2006


"I get DVD's from netflix, rip them to my drive and send them back..."

I been using netflix off and on for years now. Haven't thought of that... I feel stupid.
posted by ZachsMind at 4:28 PM on September 8, 2006


I, for one, would happily pay a reasonable fee for unencrypted video without use restrictions. Well, other than the request to, "don't give people copies of this video", which I would largely honor, although I would occasionally make exceptions.

Fundamentally, the RIAA and MPAA want to charge you over and over for the same content. If you bought it on CD, they want you to pay for it again on your iPod. If you own a DVD, they want to force you to pay for it again on your PSP. And again on tomorrow's devices, whatever they might be. And again two years later. Their goal is a permanent revenue stream of people buying the same thing again and again. This costs them absolutely nothing, because the content is already produced, so it's 99% profit. They want that profit bad enough to hijack the guns of the government to get it.

It is at this point that the RIAA/MPAA and most customers part ways. Most folks don't have a problem paying for something once. But they resent being forced to pay ten times for the same thing. They know perfectly well there's no REAL reason why they can't put a DVD on their PSP. Those restrictions exist solely to extract more cash from them, and for that reason, most protection regimes fail.

It is not coincidence, I think, that there have been no successful media formats with secure encryption.
posted by Malor at 5:26 PM on September 8, 2006


i love the 'plot keywords' section for the movies...for xmen2 (and this isn't all of them, even):

Secret Base | Betrayal | Blood | Deception | Exploding Body | Stabbed In The Arm | Stabbed In The Back | Stabbed In The Chest | Stabbed In The Face | Stabbed In The Leg | Stabbed In The Neck | Family | Helmet | Police Officer | Prisoner | Storm | Security Guard | Dark Hero | Stabbed In The Foot | Evil Human | Tragic Villain | Superhero Team | Character Name In Title | Invasion | Mutant | Sequel | Based On Comic | Superhero | Bigotry

how cool it would be if metafilter had a 'stabbed in the face' tag!

i foresee a home game in which you get people to guess the film based on these...(i can name that film in five keywords, tom!)

guess this one:

Child Abuse | Child | Colorado | Denver Colorado | Doctor | Domestic Violence | Fall Down Stairs | Female Frontal Nudity | Filicide | Filmed In Mirror | Forest Ranger | Freezer | Ghost | Haunted | Isolation | Job Interview | Marriage | Miami Florida | Mirror | New Year's Eve

....hmmm, i wonder if there is an amazon api to make a game program to do this...
posted by troybob at 5:41 PM on September 8, 2006


"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."

Wow. Colour me unimpressed.
posted by drstein at 6:14 PM on September 8, 2006


I doubt this unbox idea will fizzle without at least a respectable "people are stupid" phase to its credit.

Look around this thread. It's representative of pretty much every reaction I've seen to this store. The most basic version boils down to, "It doesn't work on my iPod. Therefore, I do not care."

I'm not saying it won't have a little bit of a novelty factor-related honeymoon. Of course there will be that. Hell, I considered booting over to Windows and giving it a try, since they offer a free TV episode.

When I say it's a non-starter, I mean that while it might be able to build a little niche for themselves. They will not be a huge success. They are fighting the market's 900 lbs. gorilla with one hand tied behind their back.

Are you seriously telling me that you think there's a real market for what they're selling when it won't work on iPods? When there's not currently a convenient way to play it on your TV?

I think some serious competition for Apple would be healthy. However, getting traction in this space given Apple's dominance is hard. I'd like to see someone succeed at taking a sizeable chunk of Apple's marketshare away. Amazon's not going to with Unbox.

For the studios, the only count on which I suspect the Amazon store will win is that they can set whatever price they like, no matter how sane or crazy. I do not think Amazon will be bringing in the sales. For the consumer, like I said, I think quality is the only thing Amazon's really gotten right here. I strongly suspect Apple will win on price and convenience. If they're smart, they will be doing DVD-quality downloads as well.

So Amazon will have no discernible advantage. How is this supposed to have anything more than the novelty honeymoon, and the loyal sales to the

If Amazon were supporting a set of players with anything near the market share that the iPod has

I think Apple will do better. And if they do, they deserve to continue destroying their competition utterly. I'd love to see someone be successful enough to scare the crap out of them, drop their market share 20-30%. I don't see Amazon contributing to that right now.
posted by sparkletone at 6:55 PM on September 8, 2006


To put it another way, and more succinctly: Apple's more than likely going to obliterate Unbox in terms of files moved. Their stuff will play nicely with iPods, and work on both Windows and Macs.

But even if they don't, who's going to prefer this to DVD, except maybe to kinda try it out just once?
posted by sparkletone at 7:14 PM on September 8, 2006


Metafilter: Stabbed In The Chest | Stabbed In The Face | Stabbed In The Leg | Stabbed In The Neck
posted by mullingitover at 9:36 PM on September 8, 2006


Not so worried about my (non-existant) iPod, but I would like it to work with my Palm (as my downloaded TV does)...
posted by Samizdata at 9:57 PM on September 8, 2006


No savings over a DVD, and I can't even lend it to a friend? (Which I can legally do with a DVD, so long as they don't copy it). I can't see the appeal -- it's not like Amazon doesn't deliver.
posted by jb at 6:59 AM on September 9, 2006


Any DRM scheme that is pervasive will eventually be cracked

According to IGN the "FairUse4WM" successfuly strips the DRM from Amazon movie/TV downloads.
posted by meehawl at 7:01 AM on September 9, 2006


I don't see why anyone would want to watch shows on some dinky little screen. This whole 'doesn't work on ipod' thing seems ridiculous.

My issue is the notion that I'd want to watch shows on my desktop. Thanks, no. TV is something I use to get me away from the computer. The TV lounge is running Linux, not Windows. Just had to replace the box in there, and now it's all upgraded to Mythdora.

Pity. I buy the majority of the shows I view, and currently have no access to broadcast TV of any kind. When the hard drive gets empty enough, I'll re-subscribe to the satellite service. That's revenue that could have been Amazon's.
posted by Goofyy at 7:22 AM on September 9, 2006


Every movie I've looked at costs exactly the same as the DVD version. What's the point?
posted by Sibrax at 9:31 AM on September 9, 2006


The point? You pay for the cost of downloading and they don't pay for the cost of mfg and shipping - profit! BTW, please don't pirate, that would be stealing.
posted by stbalbach at 11:07 AM on September 9, 2006


Apparently, Amazon's UnBox player likes to do the E.T..

This service gets more and more appealing the more I learn about it!
posted by sparkletone at 2:10 PM on September 9, 2006


You can't play it on an iPod. And that, in the end, is what will kill it, just like every other unsuccessful niche music store.... Sure, there will be those "Apple haters" or "No iPod Regengades", but walk around any college campus, and count the percentage of iPods to everything else. It's easy, just look at all of those white wires coming out of their ears.

You act as though Amazon chose not to support the iPod, when you know very well that Apple will not let other companies utilize the same DRM that protects iTunes purchases. Interoperability is the reason why France attempted to allow DRM circumvention until Apple objected, leading to watered-down legislation that actually protected DRM from circumvention techniques. When competing music stores attempted to offer music compatible with Apple's FairPlay DRM, they were subsequently locked out by Apple. And despite repeated calls from industry players and media, Apple continues to keep its FairPlay DRM to itself.

You need iTunes and an iPod to use FairPlay, no ifs, ands or buts about it. iTunes and iPods won't work with any other DRM system. Amazon's choice was simple: either use PlaysForSure, the closest thing to an alternative DRM standard available; or release their movies free of DRM, which is great for you and me but will never, ever happen.

What you're basically saying with the "it doesn't work on an iPod and therefore it sucks" issue is that if you're not Apple, you shouldn't bother opening an online media store, because Apple's position in the market makes it inevitable that the store will fail. There are words for this sort of thing.
posted by chrominance at 3:11 PM on September 9, 2006


(Note that the above comment is NOT tacit approval of the Amazon service; my ideal world is one where DRM doesn't exist at all. But the idea that Apple's DRM is somehow "okay" while everyone else's DRM isn't, despite the many similarities in execution and restriction of rights, is one that needs to be knocked down.)
posted by chrominance at 3:12 PM on September 9, 2006


I've been treating the interoperability discussion as somewhat seperate from whether or not Amazon's service sucks. Mostly because there's not a whole lot Amazon can do about getting Apple to let them in.

Part of what I meant by "platform limitations" is that there's no way Apple would let Amazon into its system when it clearly intends to have a competing service. And I don't think they'd let Amazon in like this even if they didn't intend to open a movie store.

For Amazon's service to have a shot at succeeding, you need someone to come along and grab a significant portion of the player market away from Apple. Or you need to convince some legal something or other to forcibly open Apple's system.

Either way: Good luck with that.

It's not a fair system, really. I'd like to see more competition. And not the sort of competition that comes from everyone having their own walled-off little system.

Amazon's service isn't going to increase sales of non-iPod portables. There are two things that would help Amazon's chances: 1) Having a set of portables to support that weren't in such a distinct minority and 2) Not doing something stupid.

They've failed at #1 because of Apple's platform lock.

"Something stupid" is a bit broad. I mean things like: Letting the studios set prices at or above DVD levels, without giving consumers a similar level of convenience. Eg: It costs about as much as a DVD, only you can't easily play it on your TV. You also can't easily take advantage of the most convenient method of plating it on your TV (burning a regular DVD of the file).

They've failed at #2 because... well. That's a good question with some answers that are probably a little complex. Amazon's clearly not much responsible for the prices at their store, as the whole reason they held more appeal to studios was allowing them to set their own prices.

Pity that the prices chosen were for the most part choesn poorly.

In any case, for all sorts of reasons, this is not how you meet with large-scale success.

PS: I don't like Apple's DRM either, and do not patronize their store (outside of grabbing the rare bit of interesting free stuff). I particularly do not like how they've been eroding the uses they grant customers over time. Apple's DRM scheme is stupid. Amazon's is stupid and doomed to limited, if any, success.
posted by sparkletone at 3:45 PM on September 9, 2006


You act as though Amazon chose not to support the iPod, when you know very well that Apple will not let other companies utilize the same DRM that protects iTunes purchases.

Apple amaze me. They foster this impression of being free and open and anti-establishment when their products are actually the most closed, most controlled and anti-competitive on the market. They even invoked Orwell's 1984 in an advertising campaign when their methods would have old George spinning in his grave. Steve J obviously appreciates irony.
posted by bobbyelliott at 3:37 AM on September 10, 2006


you need someone to come along and grab a significant portion of the player market away from Apple ... good luck with that

Latest NPD sales (audio) show iPod share has eroded to 62%, with SanDisk in second place at 13% with the Sansa. Obviously Apple is still way ahead of any individual manufacturer, but it is trending down.

Once upon a time Apple was the single largest dollar volume and unit sales PC manufacturer. Things change.
posted by meehawl at 7:05 PM on September 10, 2006


I don't see why anyone would want to watch shows on some dinky little screen. This whole 'doesn't work on ipod' thing seems ridiculous.

Speaking only for myself, I ride a stationary bike at the gym in my lunch break during the week to help keep me in shape for weekend mountain biking. Daytime TV sucks, but I can encode anything I want and watch it on my portable (a Nintendo DS) instead. Sure the tiny screen isn't great, but it's good enough for a lot of stuff.
posted by markr at 2:14 AM on September 11, 2006


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