Skip to main content

Amazon.com Unboxes Online Video Store

Amazon.com today took the wraps off Amazon Unbox, its new digital video download service for Windows which offers DVD-quality movies and television programs from nearly three dozen studio and network partner.

Amazon Unbox makes videos available for either rental or purchase, and operates using Amazon’s own Unbox software available only for Windows XP (Macintosh, Linux, and Windows 2000 or earlier need not apply. And you’ll really want broadband Internet access.) Amazon claims the material offered via Unbox is encoded at 2,500 Kbps using the VC-1 Advanced Codec (an alternative to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC which, it just so happens, is supported by Windows Media Player 9 and later); Amazon says this offers DVD-quality images and triple the video quality of current digital video leaders. At no additional charge, Amazon also includes a second version of the video optimized for playback on Windows Media-compatible portable devices. Amazon’s Unbox software is capable of progressive downloads, so users can begin watching their video before it has been completely transferred to their computers—Amazon says that for users with typical cable broadband connections, customers may be able to start watching video within five minutes of purchase.

"Amazon Unbox offers TV and movie enthusiasts a fast, convenient way to watch thousands of their favorite videos from around the world," said Bill Carr, Amazon.com’s VP of digital media in a statement. "Now Amazon.com customers can choose to get videos delivered to their doorstep from Amazon’s DVD store or choose Amazon Unbox and download DVD-quality picture movies or television shows to their PC."

Amazon Unbox also features Unbox Remoteload, which lets customers purchase video using one PC (say, a PC at work—that that anyone uses office PCs for personal purchases!) and downlad the videos to another PC at home or elsewhere. Amazon will also bundle together purchases in a new Amazon Your Media Library, a personalized part of an Amazon.com customer’s account which organizes media purchases from Amazon, including Books, CDs, DVDs, and (now) Unbox Videos. Users can download Unbox videos to an additional PC from the Amazon Your Media Library if they haven’t already loaded the video on two PCs.

So here’s the catch: while the files representing Amazon Unbox videos can be burned to DVD for storage, there’s no way to burn a standard DVD of videos purchased through Amazon Unbox. Further, the only way you can watch the video is through the Amazon Unbox software, so if you want to push use (say) a Windows Media Center PC to push the video to your home theater, you’ll need to install Unbox on that system as well. But you (probably) won’t be able to push it around to additional systems from there: Amazon Unbox videos are limited to use on two personal computers at the same time, but each of those computers can in turn transfer the video to a single portable device. See Unbox’s Terms of Use for more interesting tidbits.

But if there’s one thing Amazon Unbox gets right, it’s having tons of content available at launch. There’s no point in mentioning specific titles—there are too many—but here’s a taste of the networks and studios involved:

Television Studios
A&E, Adult Swim, Animal Planet, BBC, The Biography Channel, Cartoon Network, CBS, Comedy Central, Discovery Channel, Discovery Health Channel, Discovery Kids, E! Entertainment Television, Fine Living TV Network, Fox, Fuel TV, FX, HGTV, The History Channel, KBS (Korean Broadcast System), Logo, MTV, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, The N, PBS, Speed, Spike, Travel Channel, TV Land, VH1.
Movie Studios
20th Century Fox, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, MGM.

See anything missing? Yup: Disney and anything associated with it, like Buena Vista, ABC, and Pixar. You can gbet that has something to do with new Disney board member and largest single shareholder, Steve Jobs.

Amazon Unbox prices television episodes at a very familiar-looking $1.99 apiece, while movies are priced between $7.99 and $14.99. Amazon is inviting customers to try out Unbox by offering selected television episodes for free—or, if customers prefer, taking a $1.99 discount on a higher-priced download.

Your move, Apple!

Geoff Duncan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more
AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying
Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."

Read more