iPod Amazon.com starts video download service

[KKKL]

.amzn
only a fraction of devices can play

 

[balamw]

I imagine because we get BBC in the U.S.

http://www.bbcamerica.com/

B

 

[hamholio]

It told me I didn't have enough hard drive space to download the movie. So I added a 3 GB virtual disk, which ended up being Drive E:. I changed the amazon unbox preferences to download to drive E:. Amok Time was stuck trying to download to drive C:. I couldn't change the download location. I deleted some stuff on virtual Drive C. I had enough room at that point. It still told me I didn't have enough room. I did something else (one of the setup options on the unbox program menu) it chugged for a little while, and when it got done chugging . . . amok time was gone from my list of downloads. There were no options to logon to amazon to check purchases or anything. I restarted unbox, I restarted windows, no amok time.

So I uninstalled unbox, this time I installed it to drive E. This time, I can't run it at all, nor can I uninstall it. And I can't delete it completely. It is stuck, never being able to run or be deleted. !!

Jesus! Just wanted to watch some Star Trek.

 

[swingerofbirch]

I downloaded Unbox to try it out on my PC.

I bought an episode of Keeping Up Appearances. It was a $1.99 for it as a rental.

When I was installing it all these firewall warnings kept appearing and I kept saying to allow, but I can't help but wonder if those are involved in the problems I have had.

So when Unbox opens the show's icon is there and it says it is Queued #1. I keep right clicking and going to the option to move to the top of the queue. A warning box comes up saying do you really want to download now? And I kept saying yes, but nothing every happened.

So I went to the help-->troubleshooter option...and it's some type of service that checks your setup to make sure everything is right. Well after it ran, the show started allocating disk space. It did that for a while. Then the show started downloading. It was going at 243 k/sec (it's a 950 mb file).

So I left it alone. When I came back the show was not in my library or on my pc. I can't figure out where it is. When I open unbox there is simply nothing there.

I'll call Amazon on Monday...maybe...supposedly this first show was free...so I don't care too much..won't be using it again I don't think. I don't usually use a PC anyway.

 

[riversky]

True??

I read that iTunes might only have Disney (and its affiliates) where jobs is the largest shareholder because the movie studios think Apple screwed the record companies with low prices and 99 cent songs. Rather than demand based pricing.

They do not want to make the same mistake and give 70% market share to a company....

This would suck for Apple. Looks like the film companies have learned from the music business. The article says many execs in the film business large and small don't trust Apple.

 

[ddrueckhammer]

I read that iTunes might only have Disney (and its affiliates) where jobs is the largest shareholder because the movie studios think Apple screwed the record companies with low prices and 99 cent songs. Rather than demand based pricing.

They do not want to make the same mistake and give 70% market share to a company....

This would suck for Apple. Looks like the film companies have learned from the music business. The article says many execs in the film business large and small don't trust Apple.

I think there is at least some truth to this. This is why we should all support the iTMS when it gets movies. If they sell 1 million downloads in the first day, see how long it will take for all of the other studios to join. On the other hand, I hope that Apple offers a rental model, as I have said before, it is much more appealing to me to pay less for limited usage because I don't watch movies over and over much. If it is that good, I'll go get it for $5 used at my local video store or in the Walmart discount bin.

 

[Machead III]

One million downloads of whole films is pretty much impossible.

If Apple let you burn and will provide files that play on a variety of platforms, they've already won, and will monopolise the market sector in no time.

I'm most interested in the movie management software tbh; iTunes for movies. I'm about to rip my entire DVD collection (over 80 films) to my harddrive as 700mb .avi files.

 

[DeFett]

I'm most interested in the movie management software tbh; iTunes for movies. I'm about to rip my entire DVD collection (over 80 films) to my harddrive as 700mb .avi files.

I'm doing the same at the moment using Handbrake, I've made them into MPEG4 files with the highest picture setting so I can store them in my iTunes Music library. When I want to watch them on my iPod I just convert them to the 320x240 screen size using Quicktime Pro.

Does anyone know the pixel size for these Amazon movies?

 

[Fukui]

...the movie studios think Apple screwed the record companies with low prices and 99 cent songs. Rather than demand based pricing.

They do not want to make the same mistake and give 70% market share to a company....
.

Notice that whatever satisfies the big movie or record companies has a direct inverse relation to what satisfies the customer? OMG, they might let apple get 70% of the market... by providing pricing and capabilties the customer wants... how dare they!!

 

[jettredmont]

Yes, but they face this kind of problem today with DVDs.

Do they? I know of no legitimate commercial DVD replication software or service which will work on CSS disks. Generally speaking, consumer-level burners will refuse to burn a disk with CSS on it, which means at some point between the original disk and the copy you have to break CSS. Which, in turn, violates DMCA. Which means, an individual might be able to get by with doing it on a small scale, and companies based outside of DMCA-controlled nations might be able to sell or distribute such software, but you don't see the likes of Apple doing that.

On the other hand, the RIAA does indeed deal with this issue, as there are legion of CD ripping applications as well as burning applications. If you haven't noticed, the RIAA doesn't much like the used-CD market, and has turned to telling people that ripping a CD is copyright violation.

They faced it with VHS tapes.

True, sort of. Dubbing the VHS tape, though, would degrade both the copy (2nd generation wasn't too terribly bad, but noticeable) and the source (after 2-3 runs through a machine, the factory-made VHS tape would start showing wear, making further 2nd-gen copies even worse. I know this because I worked on dubbing large amounts of school videos for distribution amongst participants. Without truly professional-level equipment there's not much of a window of opportunity there.

This is a small scale problem and depends, primarily, on how many people you know. Because the kind of mailing list you described would be illegal, and easily trackable, not many people would want to participate in such a thing. Whereas the friend-to-friend sharing would be more realistic. But, as I said, it would be a small scale problem.

Mailing list illegal? Hmm. How many people sell used DVDs on EBay? No reason to be selling the disk to the next person in line for less than fair market value. The "trick" here, if there is one, is that you've already arranged your "buyer" prior to purchasing the DVD from your "seller".

Now, dubbing the disk down to hard drive: yes, that's illegal, primarily because it involves breaking CSS and the DMCA makes that specifically illegal. However, the "what-if" scenario here presupposes that there is a way to legally and easily copy the disk locally (I don't expect Apple to get involved in anything illicit) has been agreed upon or constructed.

Finally, keeping the "backup" copy while selling the original would definitely seem in violation of the spirit of copyright law and "fair use" (which may or may not serve as a legal foundation for such a mechanism). That's where you would get into trouble, perhaps, potentially. Note that this has not stopped a huge number of kids I know from buying CDs in the 'used' bin and selling them back after having ripped their contents to their hard drives, and that even costs them money per disc (the used CD store sells for a few bucks more than it buys, naturally).

So, although I am not a lawyer by any means, it seems like the ramification to legalizing copying down from the physical media to a second media, even if that second media is DRM-tied to a specific machine or person, would be legalization of this type of used-movie market.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

So my laptop can handle World of Warcraft, but it can't handle watching a downloaded video?

 

[ddrueckhammer]

Amazon Limits DL Speed?

Has anyone else downloaded a movie from Unbox? I rented one and after a nightmare of getting it to start downloading, it downloaded at a pretty constant rate of 300Kbps. You can stream the movie after a certain amount has downloaded which looke to be about 1/3 of the total download which took about 25 minutes for me to download.

I use Verizon DSL on the East Coast of the US and my connection speed is 5 Mbps. I have certainly experienced download speeds faster than 300Kbps in the past. I'm thinking that Amazon might be capping the downloads at about 300-350Kbps. I don't think it is Verizon as I can get a faster DL speed if I download from a different site or via bittorrent.

It seems to me that if this is the case Amazon could decrease the time to download a movie by unleashing their upload rates but of course at a cost of bandwidth. Does anyone think that there is a way to utilize bittorrent technology possibly with DRMed files so that users of a service could share their bandwidth and decrease costs for the content provider without upsetting the studios?

The problem that I see with this is that the ISPs would then put restrictions on download speeds. Especially, if it the ISPs have ambitions of providing their own video download/on-demand services like the cable companies and phone companies do. I'm certainly not paying for the 15Mbps connection that Verizon is offering if all of the sites that you can download from limit their upload rates, effectively making the increased bandwidth useless.

BTW, my total dowload time for a 90 minute DVD quality movie (filesize of 1.85Gb) at 300Kbps was about 1.5 hours and I could stream after 25minutes. I think it is possible that Apple could potentially decrease this down to 45min/1hour using H.264. At $2.99-3.99 to rent, I think download time of 45minutes-1.5 hours are very acceptable for DVD quality. Just eat dinner and it will be done.

 

[jettredmont]

I use Verizon DSL on the East Coast of the US and my connection speed is 5 Mbps. I have certainly experienced download speeds faster than 300Kbps in the past. I'm thinking that Amazon might be capping the downloads at about 300-350Kbps. I don't think it is Verizon as I can get a faster DL speed if I download from a different site or via bittorrent.

5Mbps (read: "Mega-bits per second") is about 625kBps (kilobytes per second). Adding in network overhead, you should be getting around 500kBps routinely from Verizon, so 300-350 definitely sounds throttled somewhere.

That having been said, you can't tell if Verizon was throttling it or Amazon without more information and experimentation. [Edit: I'm assuming when you say you get faster speeds from other sites you are not doing these at the same time as the Unbox download ... if you are then disregard below ]

So, try this next time if you're curious: start a second download of a large file. Does the Unbox download speed drop or stay the same? If it drops, does the total download speed rise (ie, if Unbox then gives 200kBps and the other download also gets 200kBps, then your overall bandwidth is getting capped at 400kBps). If the total speed rises, then it shows the previous bottleneck wasn't local to you. If the total speed stays the same or drops slightly, then it is likely Verizon is the problem, not Amazon.

 

[ddrueckhammer]

5Mbps (read: "Mega-bits per second") is about 625kBps (kilobytes per second). Adding in network overhead, you should be getting around 500kBps routinely from Verizon, so 300-350 definitely sounds throttled somewhere.

That having been said, you can't tell if Verizon was throttling it or Amazon without more information and experimentation. [Edit: I'm assuming when you say you get faster speeds from other sites you are not doing these at the same time as the Unbox download ... if you are then disregard below ]

So, try this next time if you're curious: start a second download of a large file. Does the Unbox download speed drop or stay the same? If it drops, does the total download speed rise (ie, if Unbox then gives 200kBps and the other download also gets 200kBps, then your overall bandwidth is getting capped at 400kBps). If the total speed rises, then it shows the previous bottleneck wasn't local to you. If the total speed stays the same or drops slightly, then it is likely Verizon is the problem, not Amazon.

Thanks for the info. I'll rent another movie tomorrow night and try to figure out where the bottleneck is. Oh, and no I was only downloading from Unbox at that time. I could see Verizon or Amazon capping download speeds so you are right it could be either one...

I think this service is pretty decent for first on the market (not including MovieStink) even though the UI and implementation leaves much to be desired. The real problem as others have mentioned is that Fios On-Demand has the potential to provide the same service and instantly transfer the content with the 15Mbps connection...I guess they probably won't have the selection as online stores but it on-demand should be easier...

Edit: I just tested my download speed at a couple of different sites (Broadband Reports and the McAfee one) and got 510 Kilobytes per second. This seems to indicate that Amazon or some server between my ISP and them is capping the download speed. Too bad because I wanted to see how fast I could download with a 15Mbps connection...

 

[Planeteers]

Napstergirl shoots back!

This just posted in the Seattle PI



http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/1700AP_Amazoncom_Online_Video.html

After Amazon spread out the news about the videodownloading service.
Napster came up with some heavy armes!

Check the video: http://www.napstergirl.com