Re: No Unbox Video for you!


"Edwin" <thorne25@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:acWdnTaysolNYrDanZ2dnUVZ_qygnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
It costs too much (which it does).

That's a lie.

Looking at the top 15 movies on Unbox --

10 of them cost $14.99. You can go to pricegrabber and get most of them for
less than $17 new. Not to mention buying them used.








Rentals don't work on any portables?

That's a nit-pick.

How? If I want to rent movies when I'm traveling I definately don't want to
lug around a laptop -- unless you know of a laptop that can get 7 - 10 hours
of video on one charge and is as small as an iPod Classic 160GB.



You're limited to two computers and two portables compared to 5
computers, 5 AppleTV's, and an unlimited number of iPods for video
purchased on iTunes?

Now I see why iPod and iTunes are so popular. With terms like that, it's
the next best thing to stealing content.

So you're complaining that the TOS are not restrictive enough?


They are not the baseline, however, and Unbox's terms on the number of
allowed devices are reasonable.


So two computers are good enough? I use three on a regular basis -- a Mac
Mini connected to my TV, a Windows laptop and a work computer.




I would much prefer to watch
video on my nice big TV and guess what? Unbox works with Tivo.

IOW, you can watch it on your "nice big TV." What was I supposed
to
guess?

Why would I care about watching movie rentals on a computer?

So use TiVO or a computer with TV outputs to watch it on your TV.

If I'm somewhere where I want portable video, I definately don't want
to be lugging around a laptop -- that's what my iPod is for.

So you went from not wanting anything less than a big TV screen to
watch your videos on, to wanting nothing but a portable video player?

There is never a time where I would want to watch video on a computer.

My 37" LCD TV has a VGA input, amoung other types.

So how many people actually have their computer hooked up to their TV?

Why don't you shop around and notice how many televisions offer VGA and
other computer inputs?


Plenty of them do...but both MS and Apple and everyone else has failed to
get the computer into the living room.



If I'm at home, I want to watch video on my TV. If I'm traveling, I
don't want to lug around a laptop I want to use something smaller with
better battery life.

As if watching videos is limited to rentals.

So now you're going to buy a video that costs about the same as the DVD,

No, it costs less. That lie was already shot down in the big list of
complaints you snipped and forgot you presented.

Maybe $2.00 less if you don't shop around and you get lower quality and less
features -- no thanks.




without the featues of the DVD,

Downloads from Apple don't include those either.

And nor would I buy video from Apple. I would buy the DVD get all of the
features and have much more flexibility including....
1. Ripping them to my Mac Mini with all of the extras included.
and
2. Converting the movie to MPEG/H.264 for use on my iPod.



and it doesn't work with the portable device with over 70% of the market?

Since I don't own an iPod, and I never will unless somebody gives me one
for a gift, the large number of other players Unbox works with is enough.


But players practically no one owns....





And now you only want to rent videos, not buy them?

Why would I buy video that I can only use on a portable,

There goes your objection to not being able to use Unbox on a portable.

Again you have to *buy* the movie, taking away the whole idea of movoe
rental.

When did this become restricted to renting movies?

If you're going to spend $15.00 on a featureless, lower bit rate movie, why
not buy the DVD for about the same price (or less) and have more
flexibility?




a Tivo, or on up to two computers when I can buy or rent the DVD

Because it's cheaper than a DVD, arrives faster, and plays everywhere a
DVD can.


You can't burn Unbox videos to a playable DVD,

You can if you have video ouputs on your PC, a DVD recorder, and a little
bit of brains.

So now you're going to take a lower quality video, do a digital to analog
conversion which will lose information, and then another analog to digital
conversion/compression -- also losing information and still pay $14.99?



.... keep reading.

For more nonsense.

and use it on my iPod, TV, and any number of computers? At least with
digital songs I can burn them to a CD.

You can burn a DVD with Unbox.

From the official Unbox Blog:

http://unbox.typepad.com/amazon_unbox/2007/04/dvd_burning.html

One of the questions we get most frequently is why we don't support
burning Unbox videos to a DVD that can be played in a DVD player. We do
allow burning to a DVD to make a "backup" copy of the video files, but
these cannot be played in a DVD player.

There are several answers to this question.

1.. The customer experience in burning to DVD is not very good. In order
to provide the highest quality video, Unbox videos are provided as VC-1
encoded files (as opposed to the MPEG-2 encoding that is used for DVD).
So, burning to DVD involves not only the time to write the DVD (which can
take hours), but additional time and disk space to transcode the video
from VC-1 to MPEG-2. This is a computationally intensive process, such
that the entire time to transcode and burn could easily be four to five
hours. Plus, there is the small but significant chance that the burned
DVD will not play in a particular DVD player.
2.. Conventional DVDs include CSS copy protection. This is a proprietary
system that prevents (among other things) directly copying a DVD to a DVD
recorder. Until recently, this has not been available to PC DVD burning
software. Without this protection, most content owners will not allow
their content to be burned to DVD.
3.. Even though CSS copy protection is becoming available to PC DVD
burning software, the system requires compatible DVD burners and media.
This requires customers to either upgrade the firmware on their DVD
burner or purchase a new one, in addition to purchasing compatible blank
discs.
So the current process for burning a DVD to watch on any DVD player is
somewhat burdensome for the customer. We expect this situation to improve
as the technology matures. We are actively investigating this scenario,
as well as continuing to provide other ways to view Unbox videos on
television.

What's your point in all that?

You said you could burn the movie to a DVD. Amazon's official blog says
otherwise. I didn't know you were talking about doing something as stupid
as converting an already lower quality video source to analog and then
re-digitizing and recompressing it.





Purchased movies include a second file for your portable device. Oops!
You forgot the big deal you were making about portables, didn't you?

Again only videos you buy.




If I'm at home, I want to watch video on my TV and Unbox works with
Tivo.

You write this after trying to convince everybody what a crappy
service Unbox is?

No

You misspelled "yes."

you were acting as if Mac users were missing out on something because
they couldn't sit down to a computer and watch video from Unbox.

They are. That's why you produced a list of bull*** complaints about
Unbox, then was forced to reduce them to a single complaint about
watching rentals on a portable device.



Let's see...

1. Videos you rent on Unbox can't be used on portable devices

That's the single complaint you have left.

2. Videos you buy on Unbox can only be used on a few portable devices
that hardly anyone owns --

That's an outright lie. It works on many portable devices.

A few by Creative, Archos, and Toshiba? Who actually owns any of these
devices?



i.e. they don't work on the iPod (73% of the market),

That's another outright lie. iPods have a large percentage of the
portable music player market, not of the portable video player market.

And your source for this information?



on any Sandisk product (11% of the market) or the Zune (3% of the
market). (http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000038721)

There are a lot more portable video players out there than that.

Not that are officially supported by Unbox.....



3. Video you buy can't be burned to a DVD that plays on a DVD player.

But does include a second file to load onto your portable. It can also
be recorded to a regular DVD by anybody who's not a complete idiot.

Only a complete idiot would think an digital --> analog --> digital
conversion was a good idea?


4. The most useful way of watching video if you choose to rent it has
nothing to do with the PC or Mac -- Tivo.

It must, otherwise you wouldn't have spent so much time trying to tear
Unbox down.

So exactly what did this have to do with the Mac then?


.