Amazon has announced the launch of a digital video download service that will set the online retailer against other major players including Apple's iTunes service. Bill Carr, Amazon vice president of digital media, said customers could now choose between DVDs delivered to their door or DVD-quality downloaded content. "Amazon has built the ultimate solution for anyone who has ever had a friend or coworker tell them that they missed a great TV show last night," he said.
Amazon Unbox enables users to download movies to keep for between USD 9.99 and USD 14.99. TV shows can also be downloaded for USD 1.99. The content for Amazon Unbox, comes from studios such as 20th Century Fox and MTV, will be copied protected with digital rights management (DRM) so that it can only be viewed on computers or portable video players that use Microsoft’s Windows Media Player.
Unfortunately Amazon has a long list of can't-dos for its new Unbox movie download service. They are:
You can't use it with a Macintosh or an iPod.
You have to have Windows XP Service Pack 2 installed on your machine. It also works with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Update Rollup 2.
You can't use the Unbox movie player to play movies downloaded from other vendors. It only works with Amazon purchases.
You can't download more than one video file at a time.
You can't watch the movies on your television unless you have some way to connect your PC to your TV usually with an S-cable for video. But S-cables only transmit video; you still have to play the audio part on your computer or on speakers.
You can't burn a movie to a DVD and then play that disc on a DVD player. You can only burn a movie to a DVD for backup storage purposes.
You must watch a video rental from Amazon within 30 days, or it expires. And once you begin playing it, you have 24 hours to watch the whole thing before it expires.
The question for Amazon, as well as Apple, is whether the market is ready for or even interested in online video downloads. There are already video download sites, such as Guba and Movielink, that have so far not drawn huge throngs of eager downloaders.
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