The big news today (aside from the appalling but nonetheless juicy pretexting scandal at HP. The WSJ didn’t break this story but it has the best coverage now) is Amazon’s launch of its long-awaited movie download service. The Internet retail behemoth, which already sells scads of DVDs, has launched Amazon Unbox, which will ultimately offer thousands of television shows, movies and other videos from more than 30 studios and networks.
Applying the price level set by Apple with its iTunes store, Amazon will sel TV shows at $1.99/episode, with movies selling for $7.99 to $14.99. Movies will also be available for rent for $3.99.
Practically all of Hollywood — except Disney, which is expected to announce a movie download deal with Apple next week — is on board including Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Universal Studios, Warner Bros., Lionsgate Entertainment and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (which is owned by Sony).
Some top TV programmers — again, excluding Disney-owned ABC — are selling their shows on Amazon, including all of the Viacom networks (CBS, MTV, Nickleodeon, etc.), PBS, BBC, A&E and Discovery, among others.
I’m still not sure why Hollywood is investing so much effort in doing online movie distribution deals, but then pulling the rug out from under consumers by allowing them to watch the films only on PCs (or mobile devices) and burn the films to DVD for PC-only playback. Hollywood presumably won’t make that last leap to allowing DVD-burning for TV viewing because traditional retailers, such as WalMart, might revolt. But hey, even WalMart is getting into the online distribution game, so perhaps it’s time for the studios to give up these playback restrictions.
In any event, just like most other movie download options, Amazon’s Unbox is restricting video playback to PCs or Windows-related mobile players. As Mike at TechDirt noted, this is the same-old, same-old for web-based movies:
There’s nothing new here and nothing compelling. Amazon has shown in the past that it understands a lot about making the online shopping experience work well for consumers. It’s too bad they were unable to transfer that knowhow to video downloads.
Update: I love this - here’s Richard Greenfield’s (Pali Capital) take on the whole you-can’t-watch-movies-on-TV-sets restrictions required of Amazon.
The rules and pricing scheme of Unbox, make us believe that movie studios do not want legal movie downloading to be terribly successful in the near-intermediate term.
Cynthia Brumfield at 9:28 AM|Comments(0)
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