I tried out Amazon’s Unbox service tonight. It was perfectly adequate — I got exactly what I paid for with no drama at all.
I purchased the first episode of Firefly for $1.99. I probably could have started watching it after five minutes or so, but I let it download in the background. It took about 30 minutes (maybe; I really didn’t keep track).
Unbox comes with a little player app (much like iTunes), and it stores the library of videos you’ve purchased. For $1.99, I get to keep this episode and watch it whenever I want.
No telling how hard it will be to transfer the media from one machine to another, though Amazon claims you can get it out at a 300MB file and take it wherever you want. (I had a similar problem with iTunes — I couldn’t get music purchased under one Windows account to show up under another.)
The player was good with one irritation — when it full-screen mode, there were no controls. Normally, when watching video in full-screen, the controls will pop up if you move the mouse. But to get to the controls in Unboz from full-screen mode, you have to go back to windowed mode.
The episode was perfect quality — about what I expected. (Funny too. Firefly looks like it was a great show.)
There’s a tantalizing feature in the player called “Transfer to Device.” Sadly, I didn’t have any devices to which I could transfer, but it sure looks interesting. Can one of those “devices” be my TV?
All in all, it was a drama-free experience. It just worked. Not bad at all.
Amazon Unbox to customers: Eat sh*t and die: Cory makes a pretty compelling case that Amazon Unbox (which I liked), is evil and wrong. Amazon Unbox's user agreement isn't just galling for its evilness -- it's also commercially suicidal. No sane person will agree to this. Amazon Unbox user…
Apple's iTunes Music Store is down right now; all links redirect to this page. Guess that means Rob's comment is on the mark, and the heat will be turned up a bit for Amazon's Unbox. I'm thinking it'll be better than perfectly adequate.
Amazon.com Unbox Video: Well, here it is: bona-fide (read: actual Hollywood movies) video rental over your PC. Is this the first real entry here? Did Amazon actually beat Netflix to the plate? For all the press Google gets these days, Amazon is tearing the house down in my view.…
It's nice to a dissenting opinion. Everyone else seems to dislike it.