Comments on: Amazon Unbox: A Linux user’s perspective

By: Brian

Brian — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 15:07:06 +0000

I do like the unbox service in because I was able to watch Battlestar Galactica when I had time to do so. However I also use linux for most everything and do not like rebooting to windows to watch my movies. I also have a zune and was very disappointed that I couldn’t put the portable versions on it. All the videos have drm protection so you can’t even burn them to DVD without going through a very long conversion process with 3rd party software. You CAN stream the videos to an XBox in windows but even that was glitchy, with my videos stopping in random spots and the XBox reporting that it “might” not support the video format. Right…that makes sense.

By: Jon

Jon — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:39:29 +0000

Besides the lack of Linux & Mac support (a big killer), the Amazon app requires the user to be a local system admin. For a lot of business users (read: people who travel a lot and would like to catch a movie during the downtime), this prevents them from using the service on an otherwise capable system. Hrumph…

By: Kenneth

Kenneth — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:39:14 +0000

It’s an called an Apple TV not iTV.

By: Radioactiveroach

Radioactiveroach — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:51:44 +0000

Don’t worry from what I heard it doesn’t work on windows either.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 03:31:56 +0000

I agree with Yin and Oliver. On Oliver’s comment, I too first check for a “legal” Linux compatible download. If one can’t be found I fire up Bit Torrent and download what I want…usually at a lower quality than what I’d like, but at least I get what I’m looking for. I don’t mind paying for what I want…the problem is it’s usually not available.

At least Amazon’s digital music is easy to get and play on Linux!

By: Oliver

Oliver — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:38:30 +0000

I couldn’t agree more with Yin’s comments. Looking at the timestamps I see that the best part of a year has past between our posts and very little has changed, and not just in the American music/movie industry. When will content distributors realize that the online distribution should not be viewed as theft but competition? If I could get content from a secure and trusted source with the same easy that I can find and download illegally, I would choose to pay for it every time.
The technology exists and is only getting better, someone needs to come up with a good business model to exploit it.

By: Yin

Yin — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 06:13:52 +0000

The American music/movie industry is pissing me off. I already spend huge chunks of money on content and my issue is not that, but getting it. The movie rental shop doesn’t stock enough films and renting DVDs online is a pain. I see no reason I should not be paying more than 75 cents to watch an episode of any show given I can rent a DVD for $4 with 5 or so episodes usually. Considering they already broadcast these shows over the air with advertisements I see no reason I should pay anything at all for them on the net. I don’t mind the advertisements, and so long as they are charging for DRM content I won’t be a party to it= and WILL steal. The world isn’t fair- and the movie industry can loose money (even though they aren’t) for all I care if they won’t do what WE as consumers demand of them.