Tag: Amazon Video

Kindle Thoughts: A Day Later

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SANTA MONICA, CA - SEPTEMBER 6: Amazon CEO Je...

Yesterday, we quickly wrote up a few stories reporting the important details of the Amazon Kindle announcement. A day later, it is time to reflect.

Amazon has said it is about content. And they are. They started out as a bookseller, and despite being very technically adept, they’ve always used hardware as a way to move along their various content ecosystems. But we don’t quite believe them they aren’t being shrewd about the hardware too.

  • The base Kindle is now $69 with offers. We had thought it might go as low between $30 and $50, but at $69 it is still in the impulse buying range. It is almost disposable.
  • The Kindle Paperwhite is $119 with offers. It incorporates Amazon’s latest screen improvements, including a new lit design that allows for night reading as well as better contrast during the day, and still with amazing battery life. (8 hours). The 3G version is $179 with offers.
  • In the case of all three, to disable the offers is an additional $20.

So, let’s talk about a few things in the e-reader family before moving on to the Fires. Text to speech, a formerly touted feature, is gone on all Kindles(the Keyboard is still being sold, but that is legacy).

This appears to be because they will be offering Audible/Kindle book bundles in the future. To be honest, an e-reader really doesn’t need audio capability, and few people wanted to hear a book read using text to speech. More would prefer a human. So we’d imagine there wasn’t much interest in the feature, although vision impaired individuals are likely trying to figure out what they will do.

The Kindle DX is dead. No surprise there. A larger e-ink screen has its place, but there wasn’t sufficient interest.

Moving on to the Fire Line.

  • Kindle Fire(2nd generation) – $159. This is basically the same as the old Fire, but boosts the performance, memory, and battery life, also adds stereo speakers.
  • Kindle Fire HD – $199/(16GB), $249(32GB) 1280×800 resolution compared to the Fires 1024×600, Dolby Audio Speakers, dual-band/antenna wi-fi, bigger battery and more sensitive touchscreen.
  • Kindle Fire HD 8.9 – $299(16GB), $369 (32GB) – 1920×1200 display with anti-glare technology, faster processor
  • Kindle Fire HD 8.9 4G – $499(32GB), $599(64GB), adds 4G LTE and the option of a $50 a year 250MB data plan.

Some interesting facts about the new Fires.

  • Cloud Drive Storage included
  • Ads on the Lockscreen
  • Bing is the default search engine
  • Based on Android 4.0. Original Fire based on 2.3

A lot of the features that Amazon focused on were improvements to their content.

  • Whispersync for Voice, and between Audible books and Kindle books…this is just smart marketing. You can sell people the book twice by bundling them together and allowing them to switch back and forth.
  • X-Ray for Movies – They do own IMDB, and this allows them to use that data to make it easy for people to find more content…which they can now sell to you.
  • Kindle Serials – a serialized model for selling stories. A good move for a different product they can offer individuals as part of the book market.
  • Kindle FreeTime – Custom Profiles for users to restrict usage…an upgraded parental control
  • Whispersync for Games – Allowing you to sync your game data across platforms. Developers will have to build this in, but an API is likely out or will be.

There’s a lot there, but we can’t believe Amazon’s insistence that they want to be everywhere. The Kindle Fire has been out for a year, and yet there is still no native Android app for Amazon Video, and the Amazon Mobile app is not even tablet compatible. If Amazon wants hardware to advance content, they also have to release their software. The Kindle app, in varying qualities, is on everything. They should innovate features so that every device has access to the full range as soon as possible.

Then, they can truly be the indispensable source for content.

More on this in the future…but…who is going to order one of these?

 

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Downstreaming: Is Amazon Set to add a Subscription Service?

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Free 2 Day Shipping With Amazon Prime
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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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Downstreaming: The State of Internet Video on Demand

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Diagram of Streaming Multicast
Image via Wikipedia

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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Downstreaming: The Roku Box

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Netflix Roku Box - III
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Last week, Roku announced they served their one billionth stream of content after announcing they’d sold one million units. We first started talking about the Roku box two years ago when it was for Netflix only. Since then, Roku has unveiled countless channels…some good, some useless…well, to us at least.

Also, the base price for a Roku box has gone down to $59.99, and now offers Hulu Plus, Amazon Video on Demand, Pandora, MLB.Tv, NFL Gamecenter, NBA Gametime, Radiotime, etc.

Roku’s current offering is three boxes: The Roku HD, XD, and XDS. The latter two offer the options of 1080p and Wireless-N. The XDS offers a USB port and component video and optical outputs(which were built in on the original Roku). We did read of multiple complaints with Roku customer service, but never had a problem with the device worth calling about, nor has anyone else we know personally, so we cannot confirm this. We read through a lot of reviews about overseas technical support and TV connection quality, but have been unable to reproduce it.

It has a thriving community of enthusiasts and many private extra channels beyond what Roku provides…and they grow their list regularly. Even without paying for some of the subscription channels, there are hours of content to entertain, organized in a simple interface The issue with the internet is that content is everywhere…organizing it is the hard thing.

The truth is this…a HTPC will do a lot more. But it is an HTPC. The Roku is a tiny box that is basically plug and play. Even if you have an HTPC, you may not have it in every room. For us, using Linux for our DVR, services like Netflix are unavailable to us. This fills in those gaps. It also lacks a large amount of HD content, but this is more a provider issue. Full HD content online is in its infancy.

Basically, if you want a simple device that puts a lot of content in on place with very little setup required, that is not much larger than two decks of playing cards, this is the device for you. If you want something more complex…we’ll get to that in future editions.

Update: Roku has refreshed its offerings . We’ve updated the below links accordingly.

[asa_collection]Roku Collection[/asa_collection]

 

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Downstreaming: Amazon Video on Demand

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Amazon VOD on Roku
Image by programwitch via Flickr

For the first installment of Downstreaming, we’re going to explore Amazon Video On Demand as an option for acquiring content.

Amazon Video on Demand, formerly known as Amazon Unbox, is Amazon’s video streaming service. It is not subscription based. It is an ala-carte video service that offers both rental and purchase. You can also purchase passes to TV shows and receive a discount.

Amazon VOD support is built into the Roku Box, Google TV, Tivo, and select televisions and blu-ray players. You can also stream it using Adobe Flash on a computer. It offers both SD and HD rentals. We’re just waiting for an HTML5 version, and iOS and Android apps for the mobile platforms.

We decided to give it a shot, taking advantage of an offer for the popular movie Inception for 99 cents for a 48 hour rental. It included a $4 credit if we choose to buy the movie afterward. Video acceleration on the Linux version of  Adobe Flash can sometimes lag a bit, so we used a Roku Box to test the service. The movie playback was great, and there is a good selection of daily/weekly/monthly deals and some free content.

One of the nicest value added additions Amazon VOD offers is Disc+ On Demand. This is an Amazon program for those who purchase physical media. On select discs, you will automatically get a digital version of your purchased movie in your Amazon Video on Demand library. The problem is, so far, in movies we’ve bought, this is a limited time rental. We think many people would pay extra for a movie, or a premium to get disc plus digital copy provided by Amazon VOD.

Many movies are now being bundled with a digital copy that is time limited. An Amazon VOD redemption option with each movie seems like a better idea for studios, even if it is only a discount on getting the streaming copy. Teleread, for example, recently commented on how the code to use the digital copy included with the latest Star Trek movie expired…before they had purchased the movie. Yet the discs are still being bundled. The issue with buying content…excuse us…licensing content that is stored in the cloud is if the service provider ceases to provide the service. Then…what do you own?

Amazon VOD, in their terms of service, states, “Purchased Digital Content will generally continue to be available to you for download or streaming from the Service, as applicable, but may become unavailable due to potential content provider licensing restrictions and for other reasons, and Amazon will not be liable to you if purchased Digital Content becomes unavailable for further download or streaming.” We would feel more comfortable if, like their Kindle scandal a while back, Amazon was forced to ensure that even if they can no longer sell an item, that anyone who purchased it is still entitled to enjoy it in perpetuity, as the term “Buy” implies. But, for rentals, the service is a good alternative.

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Roku Video Player Preview – Amazon on Demand

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Amazon VOD on Roku
Image by programwitch via Flickr

Roku upgraded Engadget’s Roku Netflix Player to the new offering for Amazon Video on Demand. The Netflix Player, to reflect this, will now be known as the Video Player. Amazon Video on Demand is the second service to be offered on the player. Roku is opening the platform to third-party channels, so eventually the $99 box will be able to stream from all kinds of sources.

Check out their thoughts, as well as a video of their testing here.

In the meantime, we’ll continue to wait for things like streaming from a home computer, Hulu, etc.

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Roku Update

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Image representing Amazon as depicted in Crunc...
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Yesterday, we wrote both on Roku Netflix Player, and on Amazon Video on Demand. EngadgetHD reports today that Amazon Video on Demand will be available on the box after a free software update early this year. Any of Amazon’s 40,000 other titles will be able to be purchased and played back to the TV for a 24 hour window. Unfortunately, the maximum bitrate is only h.264 compressed 1200Kbps. No HD as yet.

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