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Amazon MP3 Drops Linux Support, Adds DRM-Lite

DRM Is Killing Music

As we’ve previously mentioned, we’ve been redoing our music collection. Now, after weeks of part-time ripping, and some cleanup, it is time to upload the music to various sites, as a test.

Amazon has discontinued its music downloader for Linux and is no longer allowing Linux users to download the .azw file for use with a third-party application. The AZW files are used to download an entire album when purchased.

This occurred concurrently with the rollout of their new Cloud Player product, which included one other fun feature. DRM. Not on the file level. Amazon proudly sells DRM-free MP3s, but to upload or download albums, you need to authorize your device. You are allowed a maximum of 10 devices, you can deauthorize a device and the slot will reopen thirty days later. This includes Android devices. If you don’t do this, you can only download albums one track at a time.

We wanted to see who else was pointing out that this is a DRM-like feature, and came up with an interesting analysis of same by The Leisurely Historian. His theories are: (Comments are ours)

  • Compromise negotiated with music labels over cloud player – This seems the most likely. But, is increased monitoring of download/uploads really an unreasonable restriction? We made a complete backup of all of our Amazon purchases locally and we can copy it anywhere(even back to Amazon Cloud Drive, ironically.
  • Back door to DRM – We agree that DRM on Kindle and Video has been good to Amazon. But they can’t reverse course on music. So, they’ve created this hybrid model to support keeping people in their ecosystem.
  • This is all about User Tracking – This is quite possible. We have the tab…”You listened to ___, people who listened to ___ also bought ____.” This is the classic Amazon upsell method of getting you to buy more, based on offering you things they think you will like.
Basically, Amazon wants people to use Cloud Player and the Cloud Player apps. This keeps people inside their garden. So, bad enough we are forced to boot up Windows, which we never use, to retrieve/upload our music…but there is no indication from Amazon that they plan to restore Linux support in the future.
Even if they do not want to write Linux apps, they could provide developers with an API to build support into their products, but third-party support is not what they want on any platform.
Just to be fair, the web player does work on Linux. And, while we gave them $25 for a year of service, it does not mean we will next year…although it would cost more to store the same amount as data on Amazon S3(although there is always Glacier). It is just disappointing.
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Published on August 27, 2012
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Downstreamer’s Realization

TV Guide Network 

It’s been a while since we’ve updated our Downstreaming series. The concept of downstreaming was one of simplification, and how you can downgrade your paid cable

 

bill and look at internet based alternatives. Some people talk about cord cutting…but it is clear the alternatives aren’t quite there for everything.

 

The Wall Street Journal featured an article which was written as a tearful goodbye to the author’s cable service.

 

“Everyone’s getting their shows and movies through the Internet these days. I’m sorry. It’s just the reality of things… Yeah, I’ve changed, but you know what? You’ve changed more. I mean, come on. How many shows about housewives are there? I like chefs, but I don’t need to see them on television 24/7. Ghost hunters? Dancing celebrities? Talent shows? “Shark Week”? Celebrity ghost-hunting talent shows during “Shark Week”? It’s too much of too little. You’re full of a lot of inescapable crap.”

 

And we have to agree. Television is catering to someone, and it isn’t us. The Sci-Fi Channel is SyFy, and where’s the Science Fiction? The TV Guide channel no longer shows a tv guide. The Learning Channel….what the heck are we supposed to be learning on it now? There are so many channels, and how many of them do you actually want.

 

In a recent appearance on the MythTVCast, our editor was commenting on how hard it was to figure these things out. Too many channels, not enough package choices, and a resistance to changing with the time. And our own conception continues to involve. We continue to realize things about ourselves and our habits that we want to use to change what we do.

We’ll be back with more on this, including an analysis of how much cable we actually watch. Have you downstreamed? Cord Cut? What has your experience been? What realizations have you come to? Are you just emotionally hanging on to your cable?

 

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Published on January 11, 2012
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The Last Nail in the Boxee Coffin

“In an Internet/on-demand world your primary concern is the quality of your content, since you are held accountable by the consumer.” – Avner Ronen, CEO, Boxee, 2009

Version 1.5, just released, of the popular media software, Boxee, will be its last for the PC.

Image representing Boxee as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

“We believe the future of TV will be driven by devices such as the Boxee Box, Connected TVs / Blu-Rays and 2nd screen devices such as tablets and phones. While there are still many users who have computers connected to their TVs, we believe this use case is likely to decline as users find better alternatives. People will continue to watch a lot of video on their computer, but it is more likely to be a laptop than a home-theater PC and probably through a browser rather than downloaded software.”

Boxee started with community support. We showed up at every Boxee NYC event. Nearly a year ago, we asked if Boxee had ‘sold out‘. They had slowed their PC development to a crawl, and now they are releasing a final version, after which they will focus solely on their embedded hardware. There are complaints about numerous firmware issues on their hardware.

We threw a lot of support behind Boxee early on, because they seemed to understand the HTPC hobbyist. They started with trying to create a seamless and social experience based on top of XMBC, an open-source media center with extensible plugins. We understand the needs of a business to make money, but each decision has been a nail in the coffin. There are many less expensive options for streaming. Roku boxes start at $50. Many of these features are integrated into TVs and Blu-Ray players.

Boxee may have missed its chance, and is floundering for a way to succeed. We can say we are very disappointed. We still remember when Boxee CEO Avner Ronen had a very public debate with Mark Cuban about the future of video, from which the quote at the top of this article appears. Ronen was referring to cable providers, but he should remember his own words:

The concern should be quality, for you are held accountable by your consumers. 


 

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Published on December 27, 2011
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Downstreaming: Amazon Prime Instant Video

Amazon Prime
Image by zcopley via Flickr

Amazon Instant Video for Prime Subscribers is a great idea. Many think this is Amazon’s move to compete withNetflix and Hulu. Amazon already has a well-reviewed pay-per-view service and a rental service can get access to movies that a subscription service cannot.

Amazon Prime is a service that offers 2-day shipping on any Amazon purchase for $79 a year. Now, for that $6.58 a month, you get 500 TV Shows and 1800 movies. These are generally library titles, as opposed to first-run movies, but the selection will improve. And classics still have entertainment value.

Prime is a way to get $79 from their customers, but more importantly $79 that encourages people to buy Amazon products over other vendors. By adding video subscriptions, they make that more appetizing. We wouldn’t suggest you get the video without the two day shipping, but together, they are a compelling deal.

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Published on March 14, 2011
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Downsteaming: Hulu Plus

An evil plot to destroy the world. Enjoy! (Log...
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It was in December that we took our Roku on the road, visiting relatives, and vowed to spend the entire weekend watching only things on Hulu Plus. Some compare Hulu Plus to Netflix, which is easy. They are both streaming services, both $7.99 a month, and both offer TV shows and movies unlimited for a single price.

Hulu Plus, for one, offers all current season episodes of 45 popular shows. It is, by itself, the closest replacement for popular TV, but it has one annoying limitation. Some of the shows are web only. If you use a HTPC, that isn’t an issue. However, if you want to use a piece of dedicated hardware, such as a blu-ray player, Roku box, etc…you are out of luck.

In trying to pick all of the programs we would watch in a week, a majority of them, despite being available for free on Hulu, were web only, and not available on Hulu Plus enabled devices. So, pay for more, get some nice back episodes, but get less than you get for free. That seems rather unfair, and until they fix that, we can’t in good conscience fully recommend this prouct.

Hulu Plus, aside from that, like Netflix, offers a good back catalog of titles. If you want to be entertained, and are not looking for current TV, you can certainly be so with Hulu Plus. What do you think? Is current content a must? Or just a good selection of decent content, regardless of year of release?

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Published on February 13, 2011
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Downstreaming: Is Amazon Set to add a Subscription Service?

Free 2 Day Shipping With Amazon Prime
Image by adria.richards via Flickr

Amazon Prime is a service for Amazon users offered for $79 a year that offers free shipping on Amazon purchases, no matter the order size, with a small upcharge to one-day shipping. If you are a habitual Amazon user, it is a great deal.

Engadget offered screenshots yesterday of Prime members who were noticing “Prime Instant Videos”, unlimited streaming on select movies for those who join Prime. It includes the note: “Your Amazon Prime membership now includes unlimited, commercial free instant streaming of 5,000 movies and TV shows at no additional cost. If this is confirmed and the selection is good, we could very well give their our money without hesitation, as Prime by itself as a shipping option is already tempting. Too often have we waited to buy Amazon products till we could fill a $25 super saver requirement.

On a practical level, free shipping aside, $79 a year turns out as $6.58 a month, a full $1.41 less than Netflix. Of course, Netflix is estimated to have four times the amount of movies at 20,000. But with a good quality selection, and Amazon negotiating and increasing the selection over time, launching with this number is promising for the future.

As Business Insider points out, Amazon already sells and rents digital content. It is already on a variety of boxes, and sells many of them on their site, and could engage in a variety of great bundling deals. Just like Amazon getting into the Android app store space, Amazon in the video subscription space could mean a lot of changes to come.

We look forward to an official announcement.

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Published on January 30, 2011
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Downstreaming: The State of Internet Video on Demand

Diagram of Streaming Multicast
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Last week, TNL.net did some analysis of how the top streaming video services were doing in terms of the most popular video entertainment of 2010. They compared Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Video-on-Demand, and iTunes.

Looking at the top 50 TV shows of 2010, the results were not promising. Current seasons of shows are a strength for Hulu Plus, and a weakness for Netflix. Out of these top fifty shows, Netflix offered partial content from 10 of them, Hulu 18, Amazon 31, and iTunes 41. Bear in mind that Amazon and iTunes are pay-per-episode models, which may allow them to secure more content. For current offerings, that would include the last or current season of shows, those numbers dropped to Netflix 2, Hulu 12, Amazon 28, and iTunes 39.

How did movies measure up? Checking out the top 100 box office hits of 2010, Netflix offered 10 of them, Amazon 48, iTunes 46, Vudu 46, and 74 of them are out on DVD. We haven’t discussed iTunes or Vudu yet, as we do not have devices capable of using them, but we will cover them in the future. This is not very surprising though, that a per-rental model is one that studios would prefer to an unlimited use model.

Beyond that, Amazon, iTunes, and Vudu offer an ownership model, although Amazon specifically allows you to buy something they might subsequently take away, as we mentioned when we discussed the service. Ownership means, theoretically, you can stream the title whenever you want…for the rest of your life, or the life of the service, whichever comes first. Even more titles are available on this basis.

The gap between what is available on disc, and what you can stream is closing, but it is likely the rental or the purchase models will see more adoption by the studios than the unlimited consumption models. What we are lacking are streaming models that resemble the offerings of TV stations. Would you subscribe to a service that offered a limited selection of streaming content that rotated each month, but by doing so, allowed you ultimate access to more content over the year, for example?

Specialty streaming subscriptions may be the future in this regard. It won’t happen this way, but would you subscribe to a month of instant SyFy channel, where it would give you all the movies/TV shows scheduled to air on the SyFy channel for the next month, and change on a month to month basis? Or any other cable channel?

What do you think the future of streaming is? What will companies try?

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Published on January 30, 2011
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Downstreaming: A Month of Netflix Streaming

In 1998 Reed Hastings founded Netflix, the lar...
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Netflix has been around so long that people might be surprised it took us until now to discuss it, or that we’d never tried it, and we still have yet to try their more traditional DVD by mail product.

Netflix is an obvious choice for someone looking to downsize their monthly entertainment budget. However, they are making the transition from their old business model, movies by mail, to the new one, streaming. For those who are HD purists, there are problems. Back in October, users were complaining that despite the premium for a blu-ray subscription, Netflix wasn’t acquiring catalog titles in blu-ray, and was generally neglecting that aspect of their business.

So, that said, let’s focus on the streaming. They offer an unlimited streaming plan for $7.99 a month. Netflix does offer HD streaming on some titles, but it is a limited subset of their overall catalog, and it is not yet perfect, by any means.  Overall, watching SD content, we found it of acceptable quality. The big issue is selection.

Netflix is aggressively negotiating deals with content providers to get their content on its service. However, in looking at the most current popular TV shows, Netflix tends to offer older episodes, and not as large a selection, and is significantly behind Hulu on overall popular TV content offerings. If you want classic TV and related offers, Netflix offers a great overall selection. In popular movies of 2010, Netflix is offering only about ten percent. But this is a problem for streaming overall.

To be honest, if it was a matter of content, there is enough on Netflix streaming to give us many many hours of entertainment. In that regard, it is a great service. We can sit around and catch up on older content we missed, as well as dozens of movies. To make this point, let’s look at instantwatcher, a third-party Netflix watching site. At the time of this writing, the most popular movie being watched was Get Shorty, circa 1995, which had just become available to streaming two days earlier. There were a few breakout hits from the last few years in the list, such as Shutter Island, as well, but again, this is where streaming is lacking. The selection is slowly improving as Netflix makes new deals.

So, never having a problem finding something to watch, if not always a currently popular item, means Netflix will keep you entertained. And its recommendation engine is relatively good, after it gets to know you, at making suggestions.

As a positive push, the company has ensured the ubiquity of Netflix streaming on devices. If you have a Windows or Mac machine, you can stream to your computer. Much to many people’s annoyances, it is not offered on Linux. The majority of network-enabled TVs and blu-ray players now embed Netflix streaming, as does the AppleTV, WD TV Live, and of course, the Roku Video Player, which started life as the Roku Netflix Box. A variety of game consoles, such as the Wii, PS3, and XBox also support Netflix.

We used the Roku box, as the least expensive and tiny piece of hardware, to do our testing, but clearly Netflix streaming support is now a core feature everywhere, to the point that Netflix has successfully arranged for a Netflix button to appear on many devices that have the service built in.

Should you get Netflix? We’d say yes, with a caveat. If you are putting in a Netflix plan to your overall budget and, as a result, justify a reduction in your cable service level, then it is certainly worth it. But, by itself, it is not a complete solution. More on that to come.

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Published on January 30, 2011
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Downstreaming: Case Studies in Cord Cutting

A modern Music Server made with Apple iTunes/M...
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This week, well-known blogger and co-founder of both Gizmodo and Engadget, Peter Rojas, announced he’d finally pulled the plug and cancelled his cable TV service. Rojas will be using a Mac Mini with a Silicondust HDHomerun, plus EyeTV, Boxee, Hulu, Netflix, and Kylo.

The SiliconDust HDHomerun, which we also use, and have mentioned repeatedly, is a networked single or dual tuner device. A new version is set to be released that will include cablecard support for those who want cable without a cable box. Using it with OTA/Broadcast transmissions requires an antenna and decent reception, but it is a great way to get programming for free.

It is hard to say whether or not Rojas will stick to it. Dan Frommer, of Business Insider, gave up his cable-less existence last year, after two years of trying to be a ‘Hulu’ household. But, what can you get from cable that you can’t online?

There are a few shows, of course, that are not available for free online. And HD content online is in its infancy. Most online content is in standard definition. If you are lucky you can get 720p on a handful of items.

Even one Time Warner Cable PR executive, Jeff Simmermon, survived without cable, including eighteen months while on the job. His argument about why he didn’t stick to it is a valid one: It takes work.

Aggregation is the big future of online content, because to find online content now, you often have to go to several different places and find it. This is the argument of Matt Burns, of Crunchgear. Nothing gives you the same experience as cable or satellite. If your requirement for a system is that it give you everything cable does when cable gives it to you, then this sort of idea is not for you.

But, even if you can’t give up cable entirely, perhaps there are parts of it you can give up. It won’t be exactly the same, but it can be, once the system is set up, easy to use on a daily basis and full of content to fill your day. Just remember, that if online content becomes as commonplace as cable TV, the prices for it will surely rise as well.

So, we’re counting on you, Peter Rojas. You are a trendsetter in the industry. If you can stick to your guns and stay off the cable, it will make others feel comfortable.

More to come….

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Published on January 21, 2011
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H264 vs WebM comes to a Head

HTML5 video icon
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Last week, the Chromium blog announced that it was terminating support for the H.264 video standard in the HTML5 video tag in favor of the open WebM and Theora codecs, neither of which have seriously taken off yet.

There has been a lot of criticism of this move by the community. H.264 is used by a variety of different video streaming sites and this will drive people back to using Flash as a delivery system for H.264, which will not help the larger goal of replacing Flash with native browser video playback. On the other hand, Firefox will never support H.264, and Firefox has a large percentage of the overall browser market.  The people behind the Opera browser are defending the move as well.

The truth is that this may go down as a horrible decision by Google, or drawing a line in the sand that led to greater unity on the web. The biggest issue right now is hardware acceleration. A lot of hardware now has built in H.264 hardware acceleration, which is important for widespread adoption. However, the WebM hardware development team is hard at work on this, and the first commercial chips that support hardware acceleration should be out in the first quarter of this year.

Either way, the support for HTML5 video tag needs a lot of work before it is more universally used, much as we wish that day would come soon.

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Published on January 16, 2011
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