Yesterday on a whim, I connected baby Tivo to Amazon’s Unbox service…the things I’ll do for $15. Unlike Tim, I haven’t purchased or rented anything, yet. While the prices are competitive (and more convenient) than purchasing DVDs it isn’t that competitive against our Netflix subscription ($15/month/rental vs. $18/month ).
I see Amazon + Tivo perfect for impulse purchases – when I can’t adjust the Netflix queue fast enough – or Target’s closed. That said, I’m not much of a impulse purchaser.
If I find something that looks interesting, I’ll let you know – at this point, Netflix wins.
Looking through Amazon’s current Unbox selection, I had a clash-of-rating-systems moment: I kept clicking the customer star rating expect it to change. It didn’t.
UPDATE: 20 March 2007
Tivo was empty last night and we’re between Netflix. Hmmmm. Seems like a great time to try out Amazon Unbox. After scouring the selection to find anything interesting – I bought the Bones pilot. Unfortunately, Unbox doesn’t stream. Simultaneously, Jen and I disappointedly exclaimed, “Aweeeeeee.”
We called it a night before hitting play. So much for impulse buys.
I’m sticking with Blockbuster online for two reasons right now. The first is the selection of titles; the second is a selection of HD-DVD’s. Once Amazon/TiVo solve those objections, I’m off optical media altogether. For TV shows, however, this thing is great.
Watched my first download rental last night; although the content was crap (‘Corkscrewed’; more on that at Winecast soon), the picture quality was great.
Download a movie with that credit and enjoy it this weekend.