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August 18, 2006

Amazon video download pages discovered pre-launch

Marshall Kirkpatrick

29 comments »

Web developer Alan Taylor has used some creative thinking and the power of Google to unearth what appears to be a series of pages from Amazon.com’s forthcoming video download service - Amazon Unbox. Amazon announced in late July that they would begin offering video downloads in mid August. The company said that the service would be called Amazon Digital Video, would be subscription driven and would use a desktop client.

Now the unearthed pages indicate that the service will be called Amazon Unbox. Taylor found a main page and pages for Twentieth Century Fox, the Sci-Fi genre (see also this discovered page titled Lumier Digital Video) and a page for downloading the desktop player. The player is sparse looking but includes a tab labeled “devices,” downloaded videos will be viewable on PCs, TVs and portable devices. It will be very interesting to see how the portable devices play turns out.

TV shows will be offered for $1.99 per episode, DVD movies for between $9.99 and $14.99.

While you’re checking out Alan Taylor’s page, see also his del.icio.us linkbacks bookmarklet - long one of my favorites.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Friday, August 18th, 2006 at 11:15 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

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  9. iTunes - When do we get movies in the UK? « Geeks Have Feelings Too

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  10. Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Amazon Unbox goes live

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    September 7th, 2006 at 1:31 pm

  12. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » Amazon Unboxがいよいよオンエア

    September 7th, 2006 at 2:11 pm

  13. My Blog » Blog Archive » Unbox

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  14. Amazon Unbox goes live » JenIT

    September 9th, 2006 at 7:27 am

  15. Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Movie Downloads: iTunes v. The Rest

    October 15th, 2006 at 8:24 pm

  16. Movie Downloads: iTunes v. The Rest » JenIT

    October 25th, 2006 at 9:52 am

  17. Karib Corner-Blog Reports » Blog Archive » Movie Downloads: iTunes v. The Rest

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  18. Dvd movie blog » Blog Archive » iTunes To Have Movie Downloads This Month

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  19. 'ILLEGAL

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Comments

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  1. poitch

    August 18th, 2006 at 11:48 am

    Did you notice the “Devices” tab in the player? Does that mean they are going to use Plays For Sure or did they team up with some manufacturer to have a player. This would be so much better than just a software…

  2. Nick

    August 18th, 2006 at 11:58 am

    Maybe they’ll take on PornoTube :-)

  3. Erik

    August 18th, 2006 at 12:36 pm

    Nice find, I’ll be interested to see what formats you can download in, aside from the amazon video download and if we’ll be able to use the files on our IPODs/other portable video playing gadgets (even though it says portable devices I’ll wait to see:))

  4. Thyaga

    August 18th, 2006 at 12:55 pm

    I went to the Amazon Video link that was mentioned but obviously, the link had been taken down by then :(.

    Now the Video landscape has opened up indeed. Who is next? - EBay?

    – Thyaga

  5. pwb

    August 18th, 2006 at 2:26 pm

    If there’s no renting, it’s DOA.

  6. Matt

    August 18th, 2006 at 5:19 pm

    People need to realize that media is shifting and any person that enters into this arena and can garner the support as well as make some deals for content will make money. I think this will have to be a non renting venture as DRM may be a hassle. Pricing will dictate success. At leat in my humble opinion.

  7. Alan Lewis

    August 18th, 2006 at 7:06 pm

    Interesting that the system requirements for the player (2nd pic) show it is Windows only. Mac-heads: pounce… now.

  8. Phillip G

    August 18th, 2006 at 7:27 pm

    Looks pretty ugly (I wonder why they don’t hire a grapghic artists or someone from the desktop customization world to make a skin for it).

    But will it work? (I wonder if what program they used to make this player? DeskopX?)

  9. Matt

    August 19th, 2006 at 8:57 am

    Plays For Sure is the best choice for them, so it will play on hundreds of different devices and work with viiv and live.

  10. pwb

    August 19th, 2006 at 11:38 am

    All these video services are identical to Movilelink and CinemaNow (except Amazon apparently won’t offer rentals, making it a non-starter; this isn’t music, folks). However ML and CN have three fatal flaws: 1) Windows only, 2) terrible selection and 3) far too short, 24 hour viewing window. The DRM works fine and is appropriate.

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