TiVo Amazon Unbox service launched

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TiVo Amazon Unbox service launched

Megazone has the scoop on the long-anticipated Amazon Unbox/TiVo service.

For launch day, they offer about 1,300 movies and shows, with shows going for $1.99/episode and movies going for either "rental" prices of around $3.99 or "buy" prices at $7.97 and above (I see a recent film at $14.99).

They have a FAQ and it mentions that stuff you "buy" is always stored at Amazon and you can re-download whenever you want, but I don't see a definition of how long a "rental" window lasts (I see it is only 24 hours on the purchase pages). Additionally, there's a really bizarre "Pay-TV Blackout Window" where stuff you bought and viewed before can't be re-downloaded for a short time when it is playing on Pay Per View. That one is really weird, considering no sane person would re-buy the same movie they already purchased at Amazon months before.

To get started, you need an amazon account, broadband-connected Series 2 or 3 TiVo, and after you link up the two accounts, you'll get a free $15 credit towards purchases.

I bought an episode of Studio 60 and the Borat movie to test it out. In about an hour, I should have both on my Now Playing list, and I'll check them out today and make a follow-up post about the video quality and experience. This looks pretty cool so far and I love that new movies on the day they are released to DVD will be available via Unbox. No more trips to the video store! (thanks Megazone).

by Matt Haughey March 7, 2007 in News

Comments

The rental policy is pretty easy: downloaded rentals stay on your TiVo for up to 30 days or until you hit Play. Once you start playing a video, you have 24 hours to watch it before it disappears. 48 or 72 hours would have been better but the 30 day window seems more generous than I would have expected.

Posted by: skip at Mar 7, 2007 7:35:35 AM

This is SO cool! Give it try....

Posted by: David Gilbert at Mar 7, 2007 9:27:49 AM

The problem is that all the Tivo downloads are Fullscreen format - not widescreen. PC downloads are widescreen. They should at least offer both options.

Posted by: Alex at Mar 7, 2007 9:37:13 AM

not exactly a huge selection of current
movies to rent. and no widescreen format?
what hope does one have for hd?
i guess netflix is safe for a while....

Posted by: lloyd at Mar 7, 2007 10:40:35 AM

@Alex: That is simply not true. I haven't seen a new movie yet that was full screen.

Posted by: Dave at Mar 7, 2007 11:18:34 AM

@Dave: Actually, Alex is right. I "bought" Stranger Than Fiction with my $15 incentive/reward and on my Series 3, I get both pillarbox (from the TiVo) AND letterbox (in the original source.) I could "trick" it by zooming the video, but then the video quality (not great to begin with) really tanks.

As Lloyd said- Netflix is safe. I'm glad I didn't have to use any of my own money to test this feature out. The idiotic 24-hour expiration on rentals is also a deal breaker when you have small children at home... we can rarely watch an entire movie in one sitting. We need to stretch it out over a couple nights often.

So, overall, Great idea- needs better execution.

Posted by: Jeff at Mar 7, 2007 3:12:53 PM

To clarify my earlier post... technically what I'm trying to say is that while the source *is* widescreen, having the video very compressed and non-anamorphic makes for less than ideal viewing. Certainly nowhere near comparable to watching a DVD.

Posted by: Jeff at Mar 7, 2007 3:17:06 PM

Movies that are purchased can be backed up to a removable media, i.e. DVD, but according to the Amazon/UnBox site, that DVD can only be played on authorized systems. I'm assuming that that would be a computer or laptop that has the UnBox software.

Too bad you can't download the movie and also have the DVD shipped to you. I'd pay competitive rates for that.

Posted by: Loren at Mar 7, 2007 4:25:40 PM

I tried it out and I was disappointed that there isn't more content to watch on the TiVo. In fact, one of the TV episodes that I initially purchased wasn't available for TiVo. It was featured on the videos for your TiVo search page. I found that confusing and disappointing.

I am disappointed that items aren't available in Widescreen, but what I tried out was mostly TV shows and for that it works great. Nice to have it on my TiVo right away, since my iTunes items aren't. I still think that the user interface for iTunes store purchases is far superior to this Amazon Unbox service, but I'm happy that TiVo is trying out some new stuff and I'll give it a try again in the future.

Posted by: Fred Miller at Mar 7, 2007 10:00:53 PM

for those of you who don't get to engadget or
the tivo user community, here is and interesting comment from supposed amazon unbox developer:

http://www.linkedin.com/ppl/webprof...k=ppro_viewmore

Posted by: lloyd at Mar 8, 2007 5:13:04 AM

sorry about the bad url in the first post....

http://www.linkedin.com/ppl/webprofile?action=vmi&id=62599
7&authToken=gJHh&authType=name&trk=ppro_viewmore

Posted by: lloyd at Mar 8, 2007 5:15:00 AM

I bought a movie yesterday at about 6. I am still waiting for it to download to my tivo. I registered through the Amazon link and got my $15 credit. It found my Tivo and I get updates via the Tivo wireless thinger. As of this morning it is still not there.

At least I didn't have to pay for the content (used the credit) but it is still disappointing at this point.

Posted by: Andrew at Mar 8, 2007 7:37:38 AM

I just got home and it is downloading now. So at least it found me eventually.

Posted by: Andrew at Mar 8, 2007 3:21:52 PM

I signed up and ordered a TV show yesterday afternoon and when I got home from work it was ready to go on my Tivo Series II. Clearly there are limitations, but the process seems to work seemlessly. The 24 rental window is definitely a drag.

Posted by: Brendan at Mar 9, 2007 5:56:19 AM

The Unbox marketing is a bit deceptive compared to the license agreement. The license agreement allows you to download a purchased movie to 2 PCs (including Tivos) and 2 Portable Media Players.

The marketing states that you can re-download whenever you want. It's important to note that HW restrictiction in the agreement.

If I BUY a movie, I can player it anywhere I want. If I upgrade to a new PC, I can play it on the new PC. If I BUY an Unbox movie and download it to a PC and Tivo, I'm done. If I upgrade HW in the future, I can no longer download the movie that I bought.

To me, this is a huge limitation.

Posted by: Brian Cooper at Mar 10, 2007 3:39:02 PM

I'm watching Devil Wears Prada,and it just ocurred to me that I don't get what are bound to be some good extras.

Posted by: Susan Carley Oliver at Mar 10, 2007 4:04:12 PM

I just tried out the service. The movies started downloading pretty quickly, after about 10 minutes. I thought the video quality was good -- better than Best quality on my Series 2.

I'm also not a fan of the 24 hour viewing period. I wish the prices were cheaper both for rentals and purchases. You can purchase Borat at Unbox for $15. I just picked up the DVD at Fry's for $14. Digital distribution is supposed to make things cheaper (as well as more convenient).

$2 rental for each TV episode at Unbox is also not a great deal since you can usually rent TV DVDs for $4 and get 4 episodes. That's a 50% savings plus you get the DVD extras.

One last thing is that I wish they would separate their purchase videos from their rental videos. I accidentally purchased Babel with that 1-click Buy button, and I really meant to just rent. When you see rental after rental, and that one purchase just sneaks in, it's easy to forget. And 1-click buy makes it hard to take back your mistake. Amazon refunded my money, but I ended up losing half of the free promo money.

Despite my complaints, I really hope they fix it and get more content. I would *love* to have this.

Posted by: howie at Mar 11, 2007 7:26:51 PM

Purchase yule.cn?

http://digg.com/offbeat_news/CHRISTMAS_GATE_WORTH_100_MILLION_DOLLARS

Posted by: celt at Mar 11, 2007 11:58:06 PM

@Brian Cooper: You can delete the purchase from the TiVo and the Amazon site will see this and allow you to download it to a valid PC/TiVo again. In no way are you stuck once you download the purchase.

Posted by: Dave at Mar 14, 2007 12:27:03 PM

Casino Royale came out yesterday on DVD, and it's downloading to my Tivo today. Good to see they're keeping up with new releases. But I agree with all of the pricing issues - I won't be back for more once the promotion runs out.

Posted by: Susan at Mar 14, 2007 4:21:20 PM

I used a TIVO Series 3 DVR and the Tivo 802.11 (g) wireless adapter connection to my new Apple Airport Extreme (n). The movie download results were quite satisfactory. Unlike my Comcast On Demand digital feed there were no artifacts or other distortions--no encoding problem at all.

The video filled my entire 60 inch screen width wise and I almost mistook it for HD because my Comcast digital signal is otherwise not first rate. Downloading started in 3 minutes and took 40 minutes for a 100 minute movie -- I average about 7.4 mbps according to server download tests on Broadband Reports. TIVO recommends their wireless adapter--it apparently takes over some of the processing of the code and has a better antenna then most cheap adapters.

PS. Please get it right--rentals are for thirty days. Its only after you press the play button that you must finish one or more viewings within start of play. You can also dowload a second rental copy to any other TIVO you have in your house. With purchases you don't have to store video on the TIVO's hard drive, as you can request another download anytime from your personal video dowload list at Amazon's Media Library

Posted by: David Werling at Mar 14, 2007 9:54:24 PM

just signed up and downloaded casino royale. the movie is about 2.5 hours long and the download didnt take more than 4 hours. i have roadrunner cable and am using the tivo wireless adapter. very fast service and i love the fact i can order a movie at lunch time from work and be home to watch it that evening. two gripes, however..

im hoping amazon extends the rental viewing period beyond 24 hours, there are times it's difficult to watch a whole movie in one sitting. perhaps even 36 hours would work, which would allow 2 nights to view the flick.

the freedom of staying at home and downloading vs. going to a rental store is significant. however, it seems like amazon is charging a premium for this freedom while discounting the freedom lost with a dvd that one could watch 2 nights in a row and perhaps even share with family members.

i will rent out from amazon, but very selectively, because of these reasons.

Posted by: jamiel at Mar 20, 2007 5:32:19 PM

I'm getting more than 24 hours. I watched Casino Royale, then pressed play again, watched a few seconds and left it there. It's been over a week now and it's still on my Now Playing list.

Posted by: Susan Carley Oliver at Mar 26, 2007 2:42:25 PM

I was pretty impressed by the capabilities of the service at first, but the prices are among the crappiest thing in the world.

Apparently, Amazon subscribed to the hotel Minibar theory of pricing. The reality is that it's only a trivial bit MORE work to download a full-length DVD rip from usenet at no cost.

RENTING for $14.99? Are you kidding me? This is flat retarded. Movies that cost $1.99 or $3.99 are much better. I'd gladly go to the store to rent a new release that I can keep for a week, use as much as I want, lend to a friend, rip or whatever I want.

Nice idea, but CRAP pricing.

Posted by: Richard at Mar 30, 2007 6:01:50 PM

What rental costs $14.99? If there is one I'm sure it's a mistake. Rentals are 99 cents to $4.

Posted by: Greg at Jul 2, 2007 11:59:48 PM

Any idea how can I trik my IP? Im outside of USA and I can not get the Unbox working

Posted by: RZ500 at Oct 12, 2007 7:02:50 PM