I'm taking a look at the Amazon Unbox Video service. And on the cover - it doesn't look too bad. I mean, to be able to download whatever you might want directly to your hard drive (admittedly with a bit of DRM annoyances built in) is a pretty damn neat idea.
However... (You knew there was going to be a problem, right?)
I've got two minor and one major beef.
The first minor one - their series downloads are irregular as hell. For instance, I'd like to download year 2 of Stargate Atlantis... but it's not available. Year 1 is, and Year 3. Not Year 2.
I'd like to download some Dr. Who, especially the early episodes.... and they're frustratingly incomplete. They're pretty spotty on classic and semi-classic SF. It's a GREAT concept, and there's a fair bit of stuff out there that I wouldn't mind paying a couple bucks an episode for...
BUT THEY DON'T HAVE IT!!! AARGH!!!
Second - their pricing is really odd. They can 'rent' me a program for $3, or sell an episode for $2, but some of the movies are $7-10-12 or more... and let's be honest here, once it's onto magnetic media it ain't gonna cost more than bandwidth to get it to ya, and bandwidth is cheap. I'll buy and download five digital movies at $3 each, but I won't spend $12 to buy one that I won't even get a DVD for. They need to work on the pricing.
Now the major beef... the Amazon UnBox software.
It had some major issues with the DRM (digital rights management) software on my system. No problem - I'll simply remove it and reinstall... didn't help. Called up Amazon Help (which was pretty good, BTW, I'll give them points for that) and talked to a tech who suggested using Windows Media Player, because the UnBox software's got some bugs. Update early and often for best function...
Okay, I didn't sign up to be a beta tester, but I'll tolerate this. However, Amazon needed to have a bulletproof, WORKING system BEFORE they started this.
Well, it's still in the early stages. I can... tolerate it. But I'm going to be reluctant to buy anything more than I've got. (Half of Season 10 of Stargate SG-1 - second half isn't out yet...) And with the limited selection, it's not hard to find an excuse to not buy...
J.