Jeff Bezos leaked a little nugget of news during an interview on stage at the D conference this morning: Amazon is getting ready to release a pay-per-view streaming service for movies. Buried in Eric Savitz’s notes from the interview:
Next topic: music and video downloads. Bezos says he is “very serious” about the business; he says it is in some ways harder because there are so many participants. It has a glamor element, that attracts people; he says they are working on for-pay streaming service that will be unveiled in a few weeks; will start instantly, a la carte for pay. (Hey, actual news!)
Bezos didn’t get into many more details, and Walt Mossberg, who was doing the interview, didn’t ask him (Planning a review, Walt?). But it would make sense to add streaming as an option to Amazon’s existing pay-per-download Unbox service. As we noted last March, Unbox has not been doing so well and Amazon sent out a survey to users to try to figure out what was missing. In our informal poll, free video streaming with ads scored as the most sought-after feature. Paid video streaming was No. 7, out of ten options. Here’s a snapshot of that poll as of this morning (you can still vote on it if you go to that previous post):
Is instant-on video streaming going to make that much of a difference, or is there something else keeping Unbox unloved?
I suspect that DRM has something to do with UnBox’s lack of popularity. I’ve purchased TV shows from Amazon in the past only to find that they can’t be transferred to any of my other devices, including my iPod.
Not sure if this has changed since then or not.
While I’m sure everyone would prefer free-streams supported by advertising, it’s something that the content rights holders (i.e. studios) need to give permission. So far, the studios appear to prefer a pay-as-you-consume model.
interestingtransaction for Amazon from book agent to movie provider
Price - when they drop to some 99c rentals on the weekend i sometimes watch one. Charging equal or more than the local brick and mortar, when you off far less (less quality, less play back options, less time to watch, etc).
TV - I watch stuff on a TV, not a PC (crazy huh?). I have a TiVo so *some* of the movies I can download to the TiVo, not all. Not everyone has a TiVo - there is a hardware piece of the puzzle missing here - waiting for someone to make a non-vendor locked playback decive that’s not a full blown PC.
MAC OS - I would love an alternative to Itunes.
Amazon, you still have the best video widget out there, hopefully this will intergrate with that somehow.
Their Microsoft DRM prevents me from being able to watch their movies on my monitor, my TV, or my cellphone. It really puts the “un” in “unbox”.
Amazon is probably watching NetFlix’s ppv service closely and seeing what improvements can be made. Obviously the studios are compensated by NetFlix, otherwise they wouldn’t be in business. So I don’t think it’s a matter of having a problem getting permission. Streaming is a matter of fact and not fiction and big companies like Amazon have enough money to make it work well.
Being the last commercial media website to do this should give them an advantage. Learning from everyone else prior should at least give a better quality video stream. We know they have the tools and server space so I can’t wait for it too happen…
It’s absurd that, “Movies without DRM” are not on the list, since that’s my #1 reason. I bought a $50 itunes giftcard from costco. 9 months later, it still had $36 on it. Since Amazon’s drm-free high-bitrate mp3 store launched, I’ve probably spent at least a hundred bucks, maybe more.
If you want to stream with ads, that’s fine. If you want to give me a download with ads for free, fine. If you want me to pay money, I want a copy that can never go bad, no matter how technology changes. That means a DRM-free copy. I’m sure all the MobiPocket users who have DRM’d books they can’t use on the kindle know the dangers.
@Darren,
Actually the Netflix streaming catalog is quite poor. Over time this will likely change, but if a studio believes that their content is worth $2.99 for a 24-hour rental, then they are not going to undermine their own pricing with an ad-supported model offhand.
Yeah, Amazon Unbox does well for me as an Amazon Associate only on those TV episodes that people REALLY want to buy.
Other than that, I suspect people don’t like Amazon Unbox as it stands now because you’ve gotta download that clunky Unbox Player — and then when I ordered and paid for a comedy special, it seems to have taken a whole day for the thing to show up!
So video on demand should be great news for us Amazon Unbox sales people — but of course, free streaming shows with ads would be the ultimate!
Are you reading this, Jeff Bezos — and most importantly, all you other TV and movie people trying to shut down sites that are taking advantage of the market you’re neglecting?
What’s stopping Comcrap or the At&t deathstar from curving this bandwidth away from Amazon, hell even Netflix..
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