I was on the fence regarding the wisdom of Amazon selling groceries. But there is little doubt regarding their new video download service, dubbed unbox. It’s positively bone-headed.
For $13.95 you can download a copy of Office Space (a terrific movie). This file can exist on at most two computer and comes with no other materials. If you wish to watch the film in the living room, your computer must be hooked up to your TV, which makes you highly atypical.
Suppose you want to bypass all the hassle and just purchase the DVD with free shipping. Well, that would cost you the same $13.95, for which you get actual media that can be played on any number of computers and DVD players, as well as packaging, etc.
Oh, and if you own a Mac, as we plan to shortly, you’re just plain out of luck.
update:Tom Merritt finds that not only does unbox run every time Windows starts, it also establishes a Windows service that runs in the background and phones home quite a bit, a no-no that many will consider tantamount to spyware. Neither of these annoyances can be disabled through the software’s preferences, and uninstalling it was a cumbersome chore that required logging in to his Amazon account. It looks like unbox is headed for the same fate as Flexplay.
There is another option. If you have a wireless TIVO you can download the movie to your TIVO. When you want to delete it, you still own it for that price and can redownload any time in the future at no charge. Instant movies!