New Amazon video store targets ‘couch potatoes’
p2pnet news view TV | Advertising:- In a, “significant step toward vanquishing the local video store and keeping couch potatoes planted firmly in front of their televisions and computers,” Amazon.com is today launching Amazon Video on Demand, a new online store of TV shows and movies, says the New York Times.
It’s struck a deal with Sony Electronics to put the store on the Sony Bravia line of high-definition TVs, it says.
Customers will be able to immediately watch movies and shows because they stream, unlike most online video stores such as iTunes and Amazon’s first video store, “which require users to endure lengthy waits as video files are downloaded to their hard drives,” says the story.
But tit’ll cost —- $300, to be exact.
The money will go on the Sony Bravia Internet Video link, the, “tower-shaped device that funnels Web video directly to Sony’s high-definition televisions,” says the NYT, continuing:
“That is an awkward extra expense, for now. But future Bravias are expected to have this capability embedded in the television, making it even easier to gain access to the full catalog of past and present TV shows and movies, over the Internet, using a television remote control.”
But only a, “limited number of invited Amazon.com customers” wil get to try the store.
Will the new and unexciting Amazon store go the way of Unbox, Amazon’s original XP-reliant, DRM-loaded online through whihc it was trying to flog old movies such as Office Space (1999) for $13.45, or newer movies for $19.62?
“Amazon Video on Demand is not expected to generate significant profits for Amazon, which must pay large royalties to Hollywood studios and develop the costly technical infrastructure required to make the service operate reliably,” says the New York Times, adding:
But Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, may have another goal in mind. Establishing a foothold on televisions could be a way to let couch potatoes and television advertisers link up to the rest of Amazon’s online store with a click of the remote control.”
“[...] let couch potatoes and television advertisers link up”?
‘Let’ means ‘allow’. Like, couch potatoes want the adverts?
Pass.
.
.Stumble It!
New York Times – Amazon Plans an Online Store for Movies and TV Shows, July 17, 2008
XP-reliant, DRM-loaded – Amazon Unbox with DRM, September 8, 2006
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July 17th, 2008 at 11:25 am
The only reason for “the Box” is to strengthen and maintain control of what people watch and when they watch it. If they offer commercial supported content do you think you’ll be able to fast forward through the adverts? The fact that set top boxes are on the rise in an age when they should be going the way of the dinosaurs is just one more indicator of how screwed up and just plain mean greedy the “content industry” has become. Any decent computer with an HDMI video out can do all this box can do and more (at least as far as things you and I would WANT it to do). The only features it brings to your home that you don’t in all likelihood already have are for the benefit of the service provider and content “owners”, at your expense. Set top boxes BAD (not just Amazon’s, ALL of them). They might as well be a lock with the providers holding the only key. And they want YOU to PAY for it.
July 17th, 2008 at 11:44 am
I don’t know about other people but I’m finding page loading reeeeeeel slow. Is your old problem back again?