Amazon starts with digital DVD downloads
The competition for digital music and video market is getting another strong player: Amazon on Thursday announced the launch of a digital video download service that will set the online retailer against other major players including Apple’s iTunes service. Amazon said its new Unbox service would offer customers thousands of television shows, movies and other video content from more than 30 studio and network partners from Hollywood and around the world. Amazon said its service would be the only one to offer DVD-quality pictures. The technology would also allow customers to buy from one PC, such as an office computer, and download the content to another at home.
Video over the internet has become a major growth market as broadband penetration has increased, fuelling the success of YouTube and other video-sharing sites. Amazon’s move will be seen as a threat to online DVD rental companies such as Netflix and to the smaller video sites. Amazon’s announcement came with endorsements from six major Hollywood studios, including 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros., as well as TV networks such as CBS and Fox, and cable channels such as Comedy Central and E! Entertainment. May be a lot of people will be downloading new episodes of their favourite tv shows like Prison Break pretty soon. I’m sure this will have a decent success, even if it costs some money…
Comments(1)
Hmm, are these the downloadable movies that start deleting themselves as you watch?
I don’t think those are out yet, but the DRM the mpaa and riaa have planned, and are trying to push thru, should make legal downloads very interesting indeed.
I mean, it’s not like they’ll force you to download their player or anything, heh, and surely they wouldn’t put a rootkit into it, i mean hell, that would be like Sony BMG putting horrible rootkits on almost all of their cds.
wait……….