Dissecting Amazon, iTunes downloads
We review the Web sites' new movie services
By Samantha Clark -- Video Business, 9/14/2006
SEPT. 14 | The movie download market got a major infusion with the launch of Amazon’s Unbox and iTunes Movies. But whether they’ll build the market faster remains to be seen.
Users can download Sony's Spider-Man 2 on Amazon's Unbox.
Just like Apple’s iTunes, Amazon’s Unbox service requires you install software on your computer. At first glance, the software isn’t very intuitive. A method for downloading a movie isn’t front and center. Instead, the small word “shop” is almost hidden in the top right corner.
When you click it, a new Internet browser opens to Amazon’s Unbox Web site. As you would expect from Amazon, browsing the Unbox site is pretty easy. Movies and TV shows are available by genre or studio/TV channel, and the site offers previews.
We downloaded Warner’s Poseidon and Sony’s Spider-Man 2, two action-packed films that should offer a good test run for Unbox. Each took about two hours on our DSL line.
Once you’ve purchased your movie, the box art will appear in the Unbox software. You can view it in a small 2x2-inch screen, through the “Player” for a bigger screen or in fullscreen.
Amazon claims its downloads are “DVD quality,” but we were disappointed with the picture. The edges were soft, blacks weren’t exactly black and movement seemed pixilated. Thinking it might just be our 17-inch laptop screen, we popped in the Spider-Man 2 DVD and compared the two pictures side-by-side, scene-for-scene—The DVD was much sharper and the colors deeper than on the Unbox download.
When we bought Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl from iTunes’ new movie service (Disney is the only studio offering movie downloads through iTunes for now, but has not signed a deal with Amazon), the picture quality was even worse than Amazon’s when played on the computer, but this download is designed for playback on the video iPod.
|
|
Unbox delivers two versions of its movies—one for play on the computer (a little more than 2GB files for each film) and one for a Windows Media-compatible portable device (around 500MB for Poseidon and only 492MB for Spider-Man 2). We tried to get Unbox to recognize our iRiver H320, but no luck. Then we noticed in the Unbox “Help” section that it supports only six portable players—and not one we own.
With its brand recognition, Amazon has the opportunity to open up this market, but not unless its quality gets better. And neither Amazon nor iTunes offers DVD extras, so packaged media doesn’t have anything to worry about just yet.
