AtomicBaboon!?!

Amazon.com and TiVo teamed up to make Amazon's Unbox service available on the TiVo. So, I can bring up the menu on my TiVo and browse movies for rent or purchase and have them downloaded directly to my TiVo. I grabbed "Smoking Aces" and "The good Sheppard" last night.

The first movie downloaded was Smoking Aces which is just under 2 hours long. It took longer than that to download it. It started downloading around 6:54 PM and didn't finish until sometime after 10:00 PM. They aren't DVD quality videos so I did notice some compression artifacts, but they weren't bad. They are better than the picture I get from cable.

I also have a 16:9 television, and have my settings in TiVo adjusted to account for that. However, since the resolution of the movie was lower than that of my screen it was stretched out when I played it. It didn't look bad except that it only stretched horizontally. This struck me as odd since the movie was wide screen. So, I ended up having to use the zoom feature on my television to stretch it vertically. After that it looked great. The sound was good and the picture wasn't bad. That said, I would rather watch it on DVD. I bought a fancy TV and Stereo because I like a good picture and sound.

The rentals cost me $3.99 for each movie. This is comparable to a normal video rental price-wise, but what you get in return leaves a bit to be desired. As I stated before, it isn't DVD quality and I had to fiddle with some settings to get it to display correctly. Another issue is that once you press play you can only keep it and watch it for 24 hours before it is automatically deleted. So, to get the "convenience" of being able to download movies directly to my TiVo without leaving the house I have to sacrifice picture and sound quality, the ability to watch it more than once in a week, and I had to manually adjust things. Add to that the fact that it took at least 3 hours to download the movie I am not sure it is worth it. I could have driven to the video store and picked up the movies on DVD and been back watching them in 20 minutes.

It is a neat idea but they need to work on it. Dropping the price would be a good start. I could see paying maybe $1.50 or $2.00 at the most, but $3.99 is pushing it. I should also be able to watch it for 3 to 5 days like I can when I rent a regular movie. I would even be interested in a Netflix like system where I download say 3 videos at a time for a flat monthly rate, and when I am done with a movie I can delete it and the next movie in my queue will download automatically.

The limitations are due to the same stupidity we hear about from the MPAA all the time. People in charge of the industry that are trying to fight where technology is sending us instead of embracing it. Until they figure that out cool ideas like this will be limited by their short-sightedness.