I’m a big, big fan of Amazon.com. They really won me over when I bought a $4,000 camcorder from them a while back, and I’m also a member of Amazon Prime which is an $80 annual fee for unlimited next day shipping.
Amazon has now launched a new service they call Unbox which I suppose is a competitor to Apple and WalMart’s movie download services. Anyway, I haven’t had time to check it out fully, but it looks pretty cool. One really interesting feature is that you can “rent” a movie for $1-4 and play it back on a Tivo, iPod or whatever. Hmmm. That would sure beat Blockbuster by a mile! No more driving to the video store, paying $4 per night, and them not always having what you want anyway.
Also, I like this little widget they’ve put together which serves as a sort of virtual bookshelf and lets you scroll through and watch video previews without having to continuously reload the page. Makes it very easy for me to remember which movies I want to add to our current library of hundreds! (Yeah, we’re movie addicts at the Pozadzides’ hacienda.) Also, when you are watching a trailer look at the right bottom corner of the video window and you can click on the little square to make the video take up the full window!
Anyway, if anyone wants to try it out the download / rental thing and give us a review please share the info!
If anyone does know of a good system like this that actually works in Canada please let me know. I have been looking for something like this for a long time, but it seems the great white north gets left out the mix.
I used it last week and it’s great! It’s not as fast and easy as the service from Netflix, but it does offer downloads that you can purchase and keep. I marathoned the first season of Heroes at Netflix and watched the first episode of Season 2 at Amazon. (I also liked the Instant Watch service at Netflix.) It was fantastic!
They do not support Macs right now, but for Windows users things go well. It’s just a short download and then it hooks up with Windows Media Player for viewing. I’m using Vista and a relatively new computer, btw. I’ll definitely be using the service again.
Hey that is really cool! I just reviewed a site very similar yesterday, but, it was for independent films. Very cool to see we can watch the mainstream stuff, too! If I can ever get my ThinkPad to connect to the internet again, I’ll give it a try – so I can watch movies in bed at night!
Just looked into this, was sadded that it too does not seem to work in Canada. I’ve heard it takes you money okay but you can’t download the movie. Have yet to try it myself though.
If anyone does know of a good system like this that actually works in Canada please let me know. I have been looking for something like this for a long time, but it seems the great white north gets left out the mix.