Comments on: Amazon to the TV before Apple

By: Is Amazon Rethinking Its Movie Download Service?

Is Amazon Rethinking Its Movie Download Service? — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 07:04:29 +0000

[...] launched Unbox, its movie download service that competes with Netflix and iTunes. Amazon has a partnership with TiVo to allow people to download movies straight to their TV set-top boxes. But Unbox doesn’t [...]

By: Just a random blog !

Just a random blog ! — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 08:33:50 +0000

[...] users have been able to purchase or rent movies from Amazon Unbox since March. Previously this required users to make the purchase on the Amazon website. From today, TiVo Series [...]

By: TiVo Users Get Amazon Movies Direct From Box

TiVo Users Get Amazon Movies Direct From Box — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 07:43:49 +0000

[...] users have been able to purchase or rent movies from Amazon Unbox since March. Previously this required users to make the purchase on the Amazon website. From today, TiVo Series [...]

By: 1-LITE WALL SCONCE

1-LITE WALL SCONCE — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 11:56:08 +0000

Today’s Links…

[...] If you’re interested in learning more about this stuff, I suggest you go to this site: [...]…

By: JP

JP — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 22:14:51 +0000

Apple and its iTV is very disappointing. Apple TV delivers very poor video quality using compressed mpeg4 files that is not even up to VHS standards. Huge step backward from HiDef TV. Tack on expensive and tedious downloads, and the fact that it’s more expensive than better quality alternatives.
It’s criminal that the payola Apple ponies up to get featured as “news items” on MSNBC, CNN, Good Morning America, etc. works. It just proves that the American media have no integrity and Apple certainly takes advantage of it.
Only a fool would buy Apple TV online without comparing it in the store next to the signal coming back from a (cheaper, faster, better) hi-def video recorder like Tivo.

By: Ryle

Ryle — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:04:42 +0000

I just tried this. I probably won’t do it very often in the future because it takes too long to download movies.

If I have to wait this long for a movie, I’ll just use Netflix. It’s cheaper, is an easier habit, and I assume it has a better selection (Amazon’s interface is so bad, I wouldn’t really know)

When I finish watching a movie on Netflix, I mail it back. I’ve already signed up to pay the $18/month, so it’s in my best interest. Then a new one comes, eventually I watch it. Repeat.

When I finish a movie with unbox… I do nothing. Then when I want to watch another movie, I go to the movie store. I am not going to wait 5-10 hours to download another one, and didn’t have the foresight to do this yesterday.

If they figure out how to speeed up the download, and allowed you to watch the movie once it is downloading (assuming you won’t run out of movie early), and increased the number of movies available, this service would be great. But, that is a difficult problem, and that’s why I’m buying more Netflix shares.

Otherwise, they should just copy the Netflix queue system. If there is one thing I’ve learned, consumers are extremely lazy/averse to planning (Netflix manages to do an ok job at aligning incentives to get around this). Mailing DVDs strikes me as an extremely inefficient idea, but somehow works pretty well.

Also, one huge problem is that now all of my newly recorded Tivo programs look like crap. Apparently saving the Unbox movie to my Tivo takes up so much space that there isn’t much room left for new shows, and so Tivo lowers the recording quality (just a theory).

By: Don Burnett

Don Burnett — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 14:34:06 +0000

are streaming already. Also I’d note on an unrelated thing about the XBOX 360, their media store is WONDERFUL.. I have no reason to even think about iTunes or AppleTV with it. They have all the series I like from TV, it downloads and plays right on the 360 in SDTV and HDTV formats and movies too.

I am glad about the TiVO developments but it’s obvious you need something better than series 2 TiVOs to really take advantage of the service (for more than an hour of episodic tv)

By: Don Burnett

Don Burnett — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 14:30:20 +0000

On my x-box 360 connected to my media center pc, it has something called a media center extender. It’s all connected together. Xbox360 like appletv can stream from another source. I would just tell you that on my wireless g network, standard TV programs that I have recorded to the hard drive stream great, even from the basement of our house. I think as broadband bandwidth increases streaming will be a great option for all of these platforms. Just ask the digital cable box folks, they

By: David Mackey

David Mackey — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 06:21:58 +0000

The company that will win this fight is the first one to accomplish two things. One, the mass increase of the amount of media available. It has to be equivalent to what is currently available from Blockbuster or Netflix. And secondly, they will probably need to offer the hardware for free.

By: rack pallet

rack pallet — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 15:50:27 +0000

Looks like a build up of a war…

- No one winds in a war. Everyone loses, just in lesser amounts.

- Rbowles

By: Eric Nagel

Eric Nagel — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 13:26:22 +0000

To those commenting how much better the cable VOD service is: there are still a few of us with satellite dishes. Like 29 million (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dish_Network and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirecTV) of us. While we can buy PPV movies, we can only choose from a handful at a time.

However, since the DirecTivo unit hasn’t had an upgrade with enhanced features since… well, I can’t think of any, I don’t think this matters to us, anyhow.

Perhaps it’s time to weigh the benefits of DirecTV versus cable…

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 04:33:01 +0000

It would have been interesting if Apple purchased TiVo–or at least if the two worked more closely together in some partnerships.

Mac fans have wondered for years why Apple doesn’t include PVR functionality in the iMac. Heck, some iMac’s have vesa mounts. They make great computers/media playback devices, so why not add the ability to capture and store TV?

The Apple TV looks nice for people who are solidily in the Apple/iTunes camp. It will work well, it’s slick and it has good basic features. But, yes it is a 1.0 product. It will only get better, just like the iPod has over time.

Another interesing rumor is that Apple is going to include bittorrent functionality in Mac OS X Leopard (or in future iTunes?). If they do, that could greatly reduce download times for feature movies.

We over at http://www.hungryflix.com are very excited about Apple TV, as it allows users to move our great indie films into the family room.

By: tim

tim — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 03:44:06 +0000

stop it alaska, you’re killing me!

By: John C

John C — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 03:32:49 +0000

This discussion is in nerd/yuppie-ville!

I’m glad I fucking rock.

By: Vanni

Vanni — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 03:21:57 +0000

UP!

By: pwb

pwb — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 02:17:44 +0000

No service has the right configuration yet:
Apple doesn’t offer rental/pay-per-view
All except Apple are Windows-only
Only Apple, Amazon & Microsoft offer viewing on your TV.

By: Brent

Brent — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 01:23:34 +0000

Tried this yesterday and it works very well. Great quality, downloads start immediately. I don’t mind waiting 30 minutes vs. planning a day ahead to see a real movie or waiting overnight to receive one in the mail with NetFlix.

And for those not paying attention, Apple TV doesn’t do a damn thing yet.

By: MySchizoBuddy

MySchizoBuddy — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 00:50:06 +0000

To Alsaka Miller.
Apple TV does stream from 5 computers. Steve mentioned that in the keynote.
so stop with ur nonsense.

By: mathew

mathew — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:36:21 +0000

“1.5mm TiVo subscribers can now buy or rent digital movies (and buy TV shows) from Amazon’s Unbox service and download / watch those movies on their TV via their TiVo. Nearly 600,000 of the 1.5mm compatible TiVo boxes are connected to broadband Internet connections.”

And from those 600,000, subtract all the ones who don’t use Windows…

By: Alaska Miller

Alaska Miller — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:34:48 +0000

To Mike: Amazon Unbox streams. I just rented a movie, waited for 30 minutes and was able to watch as it downloads. Why do I want to wait 2 hours? Cause I dont’ want to deal with it stopping. This is a network issue, not a system issue.

To Matt: Hi retard #4, guess who doesn’t have an Xbox? How about everyone who’s not 14? And even then most would want a Wii over everything else. It’s cute to consider Xbox as a contender but for real adults, meaning people with disposable income to buy content, TiVo or Apple TV works great. The rest of the kiddies hacking their way to make Media Center work with pirated movies, yeah sure great. We’ll see you in grown up land when you’re done though.

By: Alaska Miller

Alaska Miller — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:30:42 +0000

To freeloader: You’re an idiot. 90 million ipods sold worldwide and on average they figured a consumer has 1.4 iPods. Why the heck would 15 million user base continue to get multiple iPods? Not everyone has that luxury.

To HAB: You’re an idiot. The next morning is because of download time. It takes 2 hours to download a 2 hour long feature movie. Guess what, genius? In iTunes it takes about that long as well. Yeah, go ahead, go to iTunes and download a movie. See how long that takes. TiVo is 802.11b which is pretty fast enough for broadband and it’s already pre-synced. With Apple TV you buy it on iTunes, store it on your computer and when you want to watch it you wait for it to be synced onto the 40gb hard drive and then watch it. You want to stream? Oh snaps, sorry, not going to work very well.

By: Ayal Rosenthal

Ayal Rosenthal — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:30:16 +0000

I was a little hesitant to rent a movie from Amazon, but it worked well and I was satisfied. Its was a pretty good experience and I’d recommend it for people who don’t watch enough movies to warrant subscribing to Netflix.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:10:47 +0000

Microsoft beat them all to the living room. Try the Vista Media Center and you’ll know why. I don’t have the XBox 360, so I can’t comment on the Live store. It sounds like the XBox media sales are doing the best of the services so far.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:08:26 +0000

Might I add that TiVos (series 2 and below) feature USB1.1 for network connectivity. Although you plug-in that new 802.11g adapter, your actual connection is much slower as it is limited by USB 1.1’s 11mbps theoretical top speed. While that might not be a problem for downloading movies from the Unbox service (as USB 1.1 is still faster than your cable/dsl connection), it is a BIG problem when transferring programming to/from the device. It takes roughly 2 hours to transfer 1 hour of TiVo programming to/from your home computer.
And why do you need to wait for the entire show to download from Unbox before watching it on TiVo??? TiVo already has the capability to watch shows while they are transferring from other networked TiVo boxes. I think this is the most major drawback of the partnership. Who wants to wait two hours for a movie to download before being able to watch it? I’d rather make the twenty minute drive to Blockbuster (although my patience with Blockbuster is just about at wicks end). Unless TiVo fixes this shortcoming, it won’t even stand a chance against Apple TV. In fact, I might purchase an Apple TV despite owning a TiVo just because of this “delay” factor.

By: John C

John C — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:07:23 +0000

Anything Apple does is huge. Period.

Not one of the persons above has mentioned what a podcast is, and how this will play a vital role for the future of television.

Look at http://www.rocketboom.com

This website is incredibly popular and incredibly stupid. Anybody can set up a website just like it, and have people subscribe to their television channel through iTunes. The Apple TV basically then becomes a cable box for the internet, beaming the contents of iTunes to your TV. For the moment, there’s nothing notable to watch at the iTunes store. But in the next year we should see the free programming there become the next YouTube. I can almost guarantee it.