Unbox, You've Done Me Wrong

I've heard about Amazon's Unbox video service. The idea is that they want to compete with iTunes by letting users buy and rent content to watch with their software player. While I'll occasionally watch a missed episode on the computer, I'm not a big fan of watching content on the computer, and I'd rather watch it on my TV. However, last week I was enticed to download an advance episode of NBC's upcoming show, "The Bionic Woman," and I decided to get the jump on the Fall Season.

So, I headed over to Amazon, and found the show. As part of the intro, it was free, but it did have to go through my Amazon account, and let them know which credit card to charge my free episode to (???), but the transaction went through. Next I had to download a 6 meg player. All right, so far, so good. The player then found my purchase, and started the download.

This one hour TV show, that's barely 45 minutes without commercials was a full gigabyte download! If I wanted it with the additional files for a portable player, it was a whopping 1.2 gigs! Seriously, on my DSL connection via WiFi, this was a daunting download, and just about as big as anything I've ever attempted to squeeze through my narrow broadband connection of 768/128 kbps. Amazon should remember that not all of us have a fiber optic connection, and compress things more aggressively. Still, I persisted.

The Unbox player intimated at first that I would be able to watch the episode in a streaming format where I could start viewing after I downloaded some, and keep downloading the rest simultaneously. In fact, the entire gig needed to be on my hard drive before the viewing could begin.

OK, after hours of grabbing data, I had the full gigabyte of video, and the player ready to go. I had a week to watch the episode before my license expired. I eagerly started the Fall season and fired up my Unbox player. Hmmm. The graphics seem off on this show. This looks rather funky. Imagine turning the color setting back to 16 colors like in Windows 95, and that is what the episode looked like. I thought at first it was just the beginning, but it was the entire episode.

I went back now to try and grab a screen capture to show all of you exactly what I was talking about. Unfortunately, the saga continues. For whatever reason, Amazon Unbox won't even open, and the shortcut is missing or some such nonsense.

Let's summarize by saying that in my experience of one episode, I've found Amazon Unbox to be half baked. I've never had problems with any of the networks streaming content, and not had to download for days just to watch a single episode. I've also never experienced such poor video quality on any other video content I've watched on my computer. In the end, the price of free was just too expensive.

--Jonas

On the Eve of New Media Players

With AMD's Barcelona stuck in the starting gate, the major tech news story for next month is going to be digital media players. You know, the cool iPod versus "everyone else." Both camps have done a great job of keeping their new stuff under wraps, but speculation is rampant, and according to the Apple lawyers that keep handing out "cease & desist" order like Altoids at a garlic festival, some correct info just might be floating around.

Apple has a press event scheduled for 9/5, and it is widely believed that new iPods will be featured. Looking at the iPhone for clues, it does seem likely that the Video iPod, which was shafted on the last upgrade with minimal changes will get a full, no, make that full screen makeover. Whether it gets a virtual scroll wheel, or the iPhone interface is still up to speculation. The Nano is expected to grow to a healthy 16 GB capacity, and the Shuffle is expected to add a new color, red. The addition of the Mac OS X to the line should also add in some new possibilities. the open questions are what will be the hard drive capacities of the Video iPod which currently tops out at 80 gigs, and could double if they wanted it to. The other wild card is if the iPod line will incorporate WiFi like some other players have.

This brings us to the Zune. Microsoft's original Zune, a rebadged Toshiba Gigabeat, never really lived up to expectations in functionality. Still, it has a devout following among the anti-Apple crowd in search of hard drive capacity. What should we look for in Microsoft's sophomore effort? The Zune is widely expected to expand the lineup to include an entry level flash based player. This is clearly a good idea, and much needed to complete the lineup as the flash based players outsell the hard drive gear. The open question is what will happen to their flagship player. Will the hard drive capacity expand, and by how much? I'm hoping for a capacity that the Apple folks don't currently have, such as 40 to 60 gigs for the entry level, and a top end 120 or 160 gig player. That type of capacity at an affordable price should make up for its chunkiness, and less than svelte lines. The other issue is if it will continue to include WiFi, and will they make better use of it, such as internet radio, like the Sansa Connect does. Finally, is the Zune going to offer a full screen like the Video iPod is expected to, or else they will look like last year's Christmas with the same old screen size. Unless Microsoft gets more competitive here, and tries to leapfrog Steve Jobs & Crew, they will be perpetually playing catch up.

See you in September. I'm sure it will be an interesting month as we follow the introduction of these new players. Of course, I'll have plenty of analysis of whatever gets introduced, so stay tuned.

--Jonas