Apparently Amazon is taking on television and the movie cinema industries - not to mention digital entertainment juggernaut Apple Computer.
The new Amazon Unbox online store offers movies in the form of sub $10 video downloads that people can watch on their computer.
Amazon.com Unbox Video: Movies / Science Fiction & Fantasy:
Unbox Video %u203A Movies
Science Fiction & Fantasy
What I found notably missing was an in-depth description of the DRM (digital rights management) software/rules/license that Amazon's products use and depend upon.
Seems to be, that is the number one thing someone watching a movie on a computer should ask themselves. Especially, after the huge entertainment industry fiascos involving that very thing last year.
Sony's reputation, for example, will probably never be the same. They might sell a lot of things in the next few years, but one they will probably find harder to move than ever now is trust.
Apple is very up-front about their DRM policy. They are very explicit about what it is, how it works, what its limits are, and what it lets you do with the music and shows you buy from Apple via iTunes.
Amazon requires you to get the Amazon Unbox video player. It is a SETUP.EXE file.
Apparently, a lot of people's bad experiences last year began with an .EXE file and ended with wide reaching computer problems.
Also, .EXE files do not run on a Macintosh, Linux, Unix, and probably whatever operating system people will be running in five years or so.
In fact, the fine print says you need a PC that runs the Windows XP operating system. Okay, well that is scheduled to be obsolete in 4 months. In 6 months (2 months from then), you probably will not be able to buy a PC that has Windows XP anymore. A few years from now, Microsoft probably will not be offering support for Windows XP.
Amazon is not saying who wrote the software application that you are required to install on your computer to play the videos. No idea what the reputation of the firm is currently, and not idea of they even have a reputation at stake in the first place if the product turns out to be a nasty can of worms.
Additionally, it requires Microsoft .Net 2.0 Framework and Windows Media Player 10.
Usually, companies specify a version number to tell you (a) it will not work with other brands of products, (b) it will not work with older brands of the same product, (c) it may not work with the next brand of the same product.
Apple iTunes is simply an application. It does require QuickTime but it is not part of a particular operating system. It runs on different platforms. Right off the bat, most people can tell you that Windows Media Player 10 and .Net 2 do not run on any OS but the current version of Microsoft Windows.
Think that is not a problem? Ask the Katrina survivors/refugees about all the problems they had when they tried to contact the government for emergency assistence. he
public
web site tried to download software onto the computer they were using that only worked on a computer that had the latest version of Microsoft's OS, it had to be running Windows, it had to have the latest version of Internet Explorer, and I seem to recall it might have even required you to have some version of .Net.
Mac? Sorry. Linux? Too bad. Old PC with old version of MS-Windows? Tough luck, its not like this is the world wide web. Oh, it was - but it was not fully compatible with the web. Just a certain eclectic mix of software brands and versions that translated out to
you need to own a new Microsoft computer to get emergency assistance
.
Sound like a good platform to begin investing in? I guess not.
Just imagine, if a less stringent set of software requirements got in the way of someone getting emergency assistance from the government - watching a movie you buy today 2 years from now has probably got worse odds at working than a not-so-late-model budget PC had of raising a call for emergency assistance.
Even more daunting, the previews run in Flash. Flash was a product sold by MacroMedia, before they got bought up in a merger with Adobe. Now, I guess it is an Adobe product.
Following the merger, Adobe dumped a lot of MacroMedia products. Just as they dumped a lot of Aldus products after they bought that company.
PC software comes and goes; like the proverbial mayfly, it comes one month and it is gone/broken/dead another month.
Before I sunk more than $4 or $5 in downloadable videos, I would make sure:
* the DRM was not going to be a disaster
* the Player software was not going to be a disaster
* the Player software was not going to modify my operating system
* the software was not going to alter my OS in any way I did not know
* the companies involved were going to be around a long time - and the software would be continually supported on old - and future - computers and operating systems
* I could reinstall my OS and buy a new computer after the current one crashed/died - without having a funeral for my downloaded movies at the same time
People are still feeling their way with downloadable digital entertainment files and player software. Some companies have really taken advantage of that. Sony, for one - but other companies would like to do that too.
Apple has a reputation. They are not going to squander it. They have brand name recognition and it is for software - and reliable computing.
Sony, for example, is not a software company. They can claim ignorance, blame unfamiliarity, and exclaim it is no big deal if the $2000 computer of a consumer goes awry after buying/playing a $10
music
CD.
Apple sells computers, an operating system, some renowned movie playing software and hardware, and pays to air a lot of TV commercials each year. They want that whole suite of products to be more appealing to people than Brussels sprouts on a 5-year old's dinner plate.
Apple cannot claim ignorance, blame third parties, or shrug off people's computer problems - and they won't. They will do what it takes to make good deals, sell good product, and give people a nice experience.
Hundreds of millions of people will continue to buy iPods, iTunes movies/shows, and songs from Apple.
Tens of millions of people are no doubt going to try Amazon's new experiment, running on a tossed salad of 3 or more different Microsoft software products, perhaps some Flash stuff, and whatever other 3rd-party software Amazon has
cobbled
together to build their in-the-moment movie player.
One question that remains regardless of who/what flops in downloadable movies the way Dyvx DVDs died out completely a few years ago.
That is, what is television going to do about it?
Broadcast TV is getting squeezed by: gargantuan cable TV industry with a lot more channels and shows than they have, DVD sales/rentals, downloadable movies from Apple iTunes, and so on.
Broadcast TV has gotten spooked about iPods, TiVos, and other gadgets - even VCRs, at one time. Those are not the enemy.
Their real enemy is this. People have a limited amount of money, a limited amount of time to watch/read/learn/listen to entertainment/information - and the prices of other mediums are coming
down. The price of television sets is going
up.
The TV industry needs to reinvent itself. It has to become faster, nimbler, more portable, more amphibious, more technology/brand/player independent.
Their revenue comes from ads but frankly, if no one watches them - their ad rates fall through the floor and then so does their income. Their costs will not fall when that happens, though - and that is a problem.
Television's cachet is that it creates celebrities faster than any other medium, gives you info/entertainment while you are standing up, lying down, or out at a bar/restaurant/coffeeshop. It is these things that right now - PCs and Macs do not do all that well, though they are starting to be able to do that.
Macs and MediaCenter MS-Windows PCs come with remotes, for instance, and of course can play DVDs and downloadable movies people are buying online.
Broadcasters should stop fighting timeshifting and spaceshifting. They should start enthusiastically embracing/supporting it. They should make it a fad and even a celebrity.
They should push for the merger of information via web and discs and software and downloadable files - and RF broadcast commercial television programming. They should start thinking synergy and stop worrying if they need a eulogy.
They should not buddy up to any one single partner. IBM learned that lesson hard, and did they ever, when they come to rely 100% on Microsoft - and discovered during a joint press conference, that Microsoft relied 0% on IBM.
Second sources and partner independence are crucial in technology. Put all your eggs in one basket - and the basket owns you.
The TV industry needs to forge a new platform that itself is platform independent. It should be catalog, TV Guide, planner/scheduler, organizer, Wiki, blog/journal, product research, education, news, and entertainment center all in one.
Hard disk drives are huge today, screens are really big, wireless networking is everywhere and connecting everything.
TV broadcast corporation execs should not be just wondering how to fit 20 and 40 minute boxes into 30 and 60 minute
slots
- and selling ads for/on a diminishing kingdom. They should be figuring out how to get people to spend one hour a day with them, and think they benefited from it in a unique way.
They should not be bemoaning how technology and culture shifts are playing into a few companies' hands, at their expense. They have to figure out how they can grow; leveraging their present assets into their future position.
Here is what TV should be doing:
1. Figuring out how to not just tolerate TiVo in the home - but exploit its presence and use it as a stepping stone to synergy with other appliances/viewports/repositories/networks/assets/resources in busy households.
2. Get a certain amount of content that is created each week to be "open source". Every meme needs a "carrier". They should be able to figure out how to fit their ideas and interesting information together in impactful/communicable 30 second video capsules with an information document/database attachment.
3. Create a product, something uniquely theirs. TV is a service. Services compete. Broadcast TV is part of a rapidly growing pie but their slice is the one that is not growing any, and in fact is shrinking. Digital TV was supposed to give us more channels; it looks like it is giving us fewer stations, though.
4. Create a unique branding, logo, brand name, look-and-feel, visual style/design. Mass produce it, sell it, rent it, distribute it, franchise it, donate it, differentiate it, and tailor it.
5. Try to become the TiVo on steroids, instead of waiting for TiVo to do it.
6. Don't play stupid and sell the clothes off your back for $1. In the 1980s, Bill Gates bought the digital rights to the most famous masterpiece paintings in the world. He paid hardly anything for that right because the sellers charged him based on the maximum potential experience quality that TV/computer screens offered in the 1980s: crap. Bill knew resolution would be incredible in 2006, so he got what would prove to be an unimaginable bargain over time. Don't make deals you wish you did not have to keep, but you do.
People think of cornering markets and eliminating competing products as the way to get rich. They forget that the people who create markets and invent products/services also can get very rich.
TV guys should be trying to see how many billions of little tiny financial and info/knowledge/entertainment transactions they can get into with billions of people per day.
Someone will, and if it is not them - they will disappear - along with the box in the corner.
It might still exist. But they won't be on it anymore. They will have moved to a new time slot.
The past.
