Amazon Digital Video

Amazon just released their new digital video download capability called unbox, so I figured I'd give it a try. I went to download a TV show on my mac, which I use for my home audio/video, and found it's not yet supported. The prices are similar to iTunes, but they offer rental for movies at a much cheaper price. The downside is that they don't support iTunes DRM, so there's no taking the video and putting it on your iPod. Yet.

If I've learned nothing (TE) it's that Amazon likes to start small and grow from there if an idea works. I would guess that a huge number of the early adopters of downloadable digital video are iTunes/iPod users and that they'll have to figure it out sooner or later. The one thing I don't get in the pricing for any downloadable video in general is the price point. Shouldn't it be a significant savings if I'm buying something digital instead of the physical disc and box? Even more so with a rental. Paying $4 to rent a movie digitally for 24 hours, when I can go to Blockbuster and rent it cheaper for longer doesn't seem to make sense. Once Amazon supports the mac/iPod I'll give this a try again. I read that Apple is holding out for a $9.99 price point for library movies and $14.99 for new releases.

Tags: unbox, itunes, amazon, osx, mac