Merritt fights with Amazon Unbox - Alpha Blog - alpha.cnet.com

One consumer has already written about his bad experience using the ill-fated Amazon Unbox software.

* requirement to install software, just to play a movie
* required software wants to jabber on the network (to Microsoft?)
* required software plays back purchased movie badly; would not even play at first
* required software very hard to uninstall
* required software wants his Amazon ID just to uninstall it (wow, maybe a couple credit cards too as it walks out?)

Tom Merrit on his fight with Amazon Unbox:

I do not recommend you try Amazon Unbox, and here's why. Yesterday evening I decided to give the video download service a try, especially since it gives you a free $1.99 video. A nice touch, I thought. I chose a Star Trek episode called "The World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky," because it's one of my favorites.

After the normal Amazon checkout rigmarole, I was prompted to download a proprietary video player from Amazon. It's the only way to complete the download. I wasn't too happy about this. It does download a WMV to a folder, so I figured, what the heck. At least I knew where the file was if I wanted to play it in another player.

Even after it downloaded fully, it wouldn't play.

I am happy to say I have never had any of these problems he reports when I play music and videos I bought from Apple's online store in its iTunes application.

Maybe he should write a review of him doing the same things - install, purchasing, playback, and uninstall - with Apple iTunes. It would be interesting to see how complicated/dangerous that is in comparison to the Unbox experience.

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