Cool Tech Reviews

Amazon has been testing a video on demand service since July and this week it became generally available as Amazon Video on Demand and absorbed the old Unbox video download service as well.

The finished Video On Demand service is now compatible with a wealth of device types: Windows PC’s, Macs, suitable TiVo models, Windows Media Center extender boxes (like the Xbox 360), the Sony Bravia Internet Video Link TVs used in the beta, and many portable media players. Amazon is offering a vast catalog of 40,000 movies and TV shows. Some are free, but for most of them the prices are:

• Movie rentals: $2.99 to $3.99
• TV rentals: $1.99

All rentals expire 24 hrs after purchase and all offer a 2 minute preview.

If you aren’t interested in rental and streaming, you can still purchase and download movies as before using the Unbox application and they will always be available in your personal video library. Rentals will be there too (at least for 24 hours) in case you get interrupted while watching or want to watch on a different system than where you order.

Initial reviews indicate the Amazon Video on Demand service is quite usable albeit with some video glitches reported, so you might care to try some of the free videos before plunking down some cash. A bigger question if you are a TV fan is whether or not you might prefer the Hulu service which is free, but has commercials. (Hulu does offer some movies as well.)

Finally, my perpetual rant is that Internet video won’t take off until it is dead simple for the average consumer to use and use in the room where they have their TV set. Amazon Video on Demand goes quite a way towards solving the simplicity problem. As for getting that video into the room where the TV resides, Amazon does its best with the available technical options and is way ahead of most alternatives with the enhanced TiVo lashup which now supports streaming rentals.

Considering that the 2008 Summer Olympics start on August 8th, there was a rather odd announcement by the International Olympic Committee yesterday that Google’s YouTube will provide "about three hours a day of exclusive content from the IOC’s Olympic Broadcasting Services on a dedicated channel during the Games." The content will include highlights and daily wrap-ups provided by the IOC, but not live coverage. No word on how many languages will be supported.

Hold on a sec - what about NBC which has partnered with Microsoft’s MSN to show the Games online in the USA? Not to worry - the IOC sells exclusive national online rights just like they sell national broadcast rights and YouTube will be geotargeting the Olympics channel so that only Internet users in "77 territories - South Korea, India and Nigeria among them - that aren’t officially covered by Olympic sponsors" can view it.

This likely isn’t a bonanza for YouTube since they will only be allowed to sell ads to Olympic sponsors and and if there was much online video viewing interest in the Olympics in these countries, someone would already have picked up the franchise. While all of this makes sense from a monetary view, doesn’t the national restriction of Internet rights seem a trifle wacky?

The national franchises do get around the language problem and provide enhanced coverage of contests of particular national interest, but I guess the bottom line is that there is no single online site that could (or wants to do) the whole worldwide job. On the other hand, bootleg Olympics videos have already started appearing on regular old garden variety YouTube.

Amazon.com got into the Internet video business in 2006 with its Unbox video download store which, after a rocky start, had seemed to be perking along although achieving minimal success. However, it seems that Amazon has been rethinking the whole market and has now decided to give sales of streaming video a try:

Amazon.com will introduce a new online store of TV shows and movies on Thursday, called Amazon Video on Demand.

Customers of Amazon’s new store will be able to start watching any of 40,000 movies and television programs immediately after ordering them because they stream, just like programs on a cable video-on-demand service. That is different from most Internet video stores, like Apple iTunes and the original incarnation of Amazon’s video store, which require users to endure lengthy waits as video files are downloaded to their hard drives.
…
The video store will be accessible through the Sony Bravia Internet Video link, a $300 tower-shaped device that funnels Web video directly to Sony’s high-definition televisions. That is an awkward extra expense, for now. But future Bravias are expected to have this capability embedded in the television, making it even easier to gain access to the full catalog of past and present TV shows and movies, over the Internet, using a television remote control.

Mr. Carr said Amazon would pursue similar deals with other makers of TVs and Internet devices. “We can support both streaming and downloading,” he said. “Our goal is to continue to establish partnerships with all companies who have a connected device.”

Amazon Video on Demand will be accessible to a limited number of invited Amazon.com customers on Thursday before it opens more broadly to other users later this summer.

One interesting touch is that once an item is "purchased" it is stored in "Your Video Library" and can be watched repeatedly, even from different locations and devices.

Frequent readers will know my mantra that Internet video won’t take off until it is dead simple for the average consumer to use. Amazon Video on Demand certainly fits the bill, but the not-unexpected expense of the intermediate box and its relative rarity is certainly going to slow acceptance. Moreover, details on the technical requirements for the customer’s Internet connection have not been revealed. It will be interesting to see how fat a pipe you have to have to your home to play.

RealNetworks’ Rhapsody music service has joined the ranks of online stores selling DRM-free MP3 music:

RealNetworks on Sunday announced several improvements to its Rhapsody music service, including a new online music store and integration with Verizon’s V Cast mobile phone music service.

Taking a cue from competitors such as Amazon and Napster, Rhapsody’s new Web-based music store sells a catalog of universally compatible (DRM-free) MP3 files from all four major music labels (Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner, and EMI), as well as a selection of independents.

The new Rhapsody store represents a departure from the strictly software-based music subscription model on which the company was founded.

Rhapsody’s Web-based MP3 music store offers the majority of its catalog at $.99 cents per song and $9.99 per album. While Rhapsody’s MP3 pricing is competitive with the industry-leading iTunes music store, it’s slightly more expensive than Amazon and considerably more expensive than eMusic.

As a competitive advantage, the new Rhapsody’s store allows users to preview entire songs prior to purchase–a stark contrast to the 30-second song previews shoppers have come to expect.

The more the merrier, I’d say. There’s more by following the link, but also note that there is a kickoff promotion:

Open an account and your first album is on us

Shopping for music online just got easier. The new Rhapsody MP3 Store lets you listen to entire songs before you buy them, provides recommendations, and delivers high-quality MP3s that can be played on your iPod or any other MP3 player.

If you’re one of the first 100,000 to create an account by Independence Day, we’ll automatically apply a $10 credit to your first album purchase. The credit must be used by midnight Pacific time, July 4, 2008 – so sign up and start shopping today. Limit one per household.

Yesterday, Google released the Google Media Server:

In the old days, we used to watch a simple device called a television. Nowadays, all the stuff worth watching and listening to tends to be stored on or accessed through a computer. To help remedy this, we are pleased to release the Google Media Server.

Google Media Server is a Windows application that aims to bridge the gap between Google and your TV. It uses Google Desktop technology such as Desktop gadgets for the administration tool and Google Desktop Search to locate media files. All you need is a PC running Google Desktop and a UPnP-enabled device (e.g. a PlayStation 3).

And then you can play all your PC media files (videos, music, and photos) on your TV as well as the unique features of displaying Picasa Web Albums and playing YouTube videos through your TV.

If you are having a hard time breaking the code, UPnP is the acronym for Universal Plug and Play and Google Media Server running on your PC is technically a UPnP AV MediaServer which can send audio-visual data to "UPnP media render hardware" (the UPnP-enabled device above) which also includes the Xbox 360, HP MediaSmart LCD televisions and various networked media players.

If you have one of the right gadgets you probably already know it, but this all seems rather needlessly complex:

Imagine a world where your computer, cellphone, games console, storage devices, media streamers and other hardware all play nicely together, so that, for example, music, photos and video can reach the television or Hi-Fi no matter where in the home it originates.

That world is one which the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA), an industry consortium backed by big name consumer electronics, computer and mobile device manufacturers such as HP, Microsoft, Nokia and Samsung, is aiming to create through support for the UPnP (Universal Plug ‘n’ Play) AV standard. For end consumers this means that any ‘DLNA certified’ device should, in theory, be able to share or access media on the same home network — a message that DLNA members have largely failed to communicate, which is especially sad considering that many people already own a number of compliant devices …

Someday, I suppose it will all work, but unless you have a Xbox 360 or a PS3 you’ll have to do your homework to get it all working.

SanDisk’s attempt to crack the Internet video market with their TakeTV hardware and Fanfare download service has ended:

A terse note on the Fanfare Web site indicates that the “Fanfare beta has come to a conclusion, and the Fanfare application will be disabled as of 5/15/08.” As for the TakeTV hardware, a representative for SanDisk has confirmed to CNET that the TakeTV is no longer being sold. However, she went on to point out that existing users still will be able to use the product’s drag-and-drop feature for watching a variety of (non-Fanfare) digital videos on their TV. In other words, unlike those stuck with oversized paperweights when the Akimbo and MovieBeam services shut down, the TakeTV, at least, is still a usable product.

The problem was simple - customers were just not buying into the concept and in fact the Fanfare shutdown on May 15th was not noticed until June 6:

… had two things going against it:

1.) It was kludgey. You had to plug a USB device into your PC, download content, then put that USB device into another device that hooked up to your TV. Yeah, that’s easy.

2.) Lack of content. If you want people to buy a device that downloads TV content, you’d better offer lots of TV content. TakeTV’s Fanfare portal had deals with CBS, Jaman, Showtime, the Smithsonian, The Weather Channel and TV Guide Broadband. No ABC, no FOX — not even The CW. TakeTV had announced a deal with NBC, but it looks as though that never got implemented.

Not to mention the fact that SanDisk was facing heavy competition from better-known companies like Apple, TiVo and Xbox — all of which provided more content and an easier solution for downloading shows to your TV.

Sigh - all of the current alternatives for bridging the PC to TV gap are proprietary and/or kludgey and/or have limited content choices. Anyhow, strike Sansa’s TakeTV off the list.