Amazon and Tivo - Unbox Boxed?

The TiVo blog this morning reports that Amazon may be distributing movies via the TiVo set top box. According to the Yahoo! report, however,

Shares of digital video recording pioneer TiVo Inc. gained in premarket trading Friday on a report it is in discussions with Amazon.com Inc. to create a feature that would allow consumers to automatically transfer downloaded movies to their set-top boxes.

These sorts of things always sound like a good idea up front - especially if Amazon would let you download the movies directly to your TiVo. But it sounds more like you would have to download a movie using Unbox and then transfer it to the TiVo. I tried Unbox out and wasn't impressed with the quality, selection, or overall experience when I hooked my laptop up to my HDTV. Neither was anyone else.

I don't think this will go anywhere (sorry, Zatz). I'll take a Netflix set-top instead, or a Mac iTV.

Just a Great Essay On TiVo and Cable Co's

From Engadget's The Clicker:

Make no mistake about it -- TiVo and cable are not friends. Cable views TiVo as not only a threat to its large rental revenue but also as endangering the billions of dollars they expect to come from add on services (PPV, music and DVD purchases, etc.). There is no way that they're going to open their arms and help the process. The best we can hope for is that shame, public perception, and the FCC will keep them close to honest. In the meantime, it's fun to watch them both pretend they're like BFF. It's a little like watching the Simple Life -- one, drunk with power, and the other doing its best to hold on to the spotlight.

See the whole post! It's good, but I don't necessarily agree with all of it. I love to see companies that are not direct competitors work well together. Cable's core business is really wires to homes, combined with distributing media content over the wires. Tivo's business is allowing customers to control their media as they wish. That's what people pay those companies for.

I do appreciate the FCC's role in promoting and enforcing cable card technology. But the cable companies need to realize how much value could be created just by working together - many people have upgraded their service for TiVo. More people will want more HD programming with TiVo series 3 - playing nice would be win-win-win for everyone.

Amazon Unbox vs. Apple iMovie

The facts (rumors?):

• Apple's Movie Download Service iMovie is expected to be announced on Sept 12.
• iMovie should allow movie purchase for $10-15.
  
• Amazon's Movie Service Unbox is expected to launch today, Sept 7.
• Unbox should offer movie rentals at $4 and purchases for $15, as well as TV show purchases for $2.
• Apple should offer Disney movies (including Miramax and Lion's Gate). Amazon gets just about everyone else: Warner Bros., Fox, Paramount, MGM, Lionsgate, Sony and Universal.

What I think:
iTunes clearly has the marketing advantage. They have a strong iTunes user base (understatement of the year) to offer the iMovie service to, and as rumor has it, a wide-screen video iPod is coming to show the movies on. Apple has proven that they can sell media downloads with sufficient protection and has users trained to do so via iTunes.

Amazon has an uphill battle to fight, but has one thing in their advantage: rentals. Though DVD sales has been strong, most people prefer to rent. Like I've said before, music is great to buy since people listen to it over and over. Movies are different because you don't - you're not going to watch anything hundreds of times. Being the first to actually offer Internet rentals will give Amazon an advantage over others like iTunes, or Netflix.

I'll try them both, and there are many other factors to consider like picture quality, audio quality, and DRM. But the next few months will be great for trying out new products - like Netflix's set top box and TiVo Series 3.

UPDATE: Zatz gives us a preliminary review of Unbox. I'll need to check it out this weekend.

Movies on iTunes

The rumor mills are abuzz with chatter about news that iTunes will start offering movies for download by the end of 2006, at prices ranging from $10 to $15. Apparently this has been "confirmed" by Business Week. TechCrunch says,

Apple is pushing for, and apparently getting, $14 wholesale movie prices on new releases. They plan to retail new releases for $14.99 and older movies for $9.99. Normal wholesale DVD prices are $17. Walmart pays that normal wholesale rate, and now anticipates losing a significant share of their 40% market share in the $17 billion annual DVD market. Given that it will be trivial for iTunes users to simply burn a DVD of these movie downloads, Walmart has good reason to be worried. Netflix should be nervous, too.

Being able to purchase movies online will be great - and many folks will probably go out and purchase a Mac Mini [UPDATE: new and improved Mac Mini] that they can hook up their iTunes downloads to their huge HDTV's pretty easily. And when they add HD movies, the endless debate over HD-DVD and Blu-ray will go the way of the Laserdisc. But Apple still needs to prove that people want to actually purchase (rather than rent) movies.

Music is great to sell outright because most people listen to songs over and over again. Movies are very different - with few exceptions, most people watch each movie once or twice. And while no one will argue the success of DVD-sales, it remains to be seen whether the rental business model or actual sales will prove most successful. Apple doesn't seem to like offering subscription, at least for music, but maybe they can make an exception for movies.