Amazon Unbox sticks toe in stream
The Amazon Unbox appears to be a couple of weeks away from opening up pay-per streaming video.
Amazon chieftain Jeff Bezos told the D: All Things Digital conference (in golfy Carlsbad, Calif.) that he was “very serious” about music and video downloads as a business.
This comes in the same week that Netflix’s Reed Hastings predicted the DVD end of his business was headed for a fall in five to 10 years.
Amazon’s streaming option would differ from the existing Unbox video downloads in that the movie would start right away and not hog space on your hard drive. And, we hope, will work on Macs, unlike the Unbox. This being 2008 and all. …
Update: Bezos told Silicon Alley Insider that the new streams would deliver rentals and purchases and pricing will be the same as the Unbox downloads. So the big deal, he says, is the movie starts right away. The lack of a price drop doesn’t make much sense. If I own it, why would I “store it” at Amazon?
Apple’s iTunes store rents movies at a lower rate, but they’re downloaded onto your computer and self-destruct after 24 hours. If you wait a minute, you can start those movies while they download. </update>
Meanwhile, Netflix’s Hastings told investors that the transition to streaming wouldn’t come cheap:
“Our key challenge is growing earnings per share and subscribers while funding streaming, which should give us years of subscriber and earnings expansion.” He said these investments would be “fairly inefficient” short-term.
Hastings added, “Once we’re in streaming … we can attract well beyond 20 million subscribers worldwide.” That’s about 2 1/2 times Netflix’s current subs base.
In another strategic move this week, the Starz premium cable outfit said it was walking away from the Vongo online video platform, in which it pioneered on-demand Internet movies.
Replacing Vongo is Starz Play, which will charge $5.99 a month for access to more than 1,000 movies.
Verizon, which continues to push into broadband entertainment, will be the first to carry the Play product. Its broadband customers can download the movies or watch the Eastern feed of Starz on their computers.
(Disclosure: I own stock in Amazon and Netflix. They don’t make money.)
Robin Cook web series: ‘Foreign Body’
One hundred minutes to go before Robin Cook’s latest medical “thriller” hits the bookshelves. That’s on Aug. 5. Here’s how that loopy math breaks down:
“Foreign Body,” the book, comes to market following a 50-episode online prequel from the four guys at Big Fantastic who brought us “Prom Queen” and “Sam Has Seven Friends.” Five episodes go live each week, to the tune of two minutes each.
The promo scheme was put together by Michael Eisner’s Vuguru and Putnam Books, a first of sorts with old media picking up the trail of new media. Big Fantastic shot the web series in under a month.
The first “Foriegn Body” webisode just went live on the project’s web site, taking a mere 60 seconds to get a beauty into her underwear, sex traveling at the speed of “Prom Queen.”
The action begins in New Delhi, India, where a mysterious hot nurse puts a mysterious injection into an older woman, who seems fast-tracked for the final suprise. The nurse works for “cutthroat medical entrepreneurs” for “their own mysterious ends.” A mystery, apparently. Something to do with medical tourism. (Spoiler here.)
Then it’s off to Malibu, where “dangerous Indian beauties” advance the plot by frolicking in the surf (possibly outside Eisner’s digs).
There’s your two-minute fix. Short Attention Span Theater. Let me know how it turns out, will you?
Netflix boxes up free movies
Netflix’s stock forgot which way was down this week, spurting up on news that the DVD rental outfit would offer free streams and downloads of older movies via a new set-top device.
You have to be a Netflix subscriber (at the $18 rate) and you have to fork over $100 for the Roku black box, which is capable of HDMI video/optical audio hookup. You’ll need to run an ethernet chord or use the home wireless net.
Then comes “free” access to about 10,000 free movies, mostly older films and TV shows. That’s far less than the Netflix catalog for mail rentals, but it’s still a hell of a lot of content. The box even preloads movies that are on your DVD wish list.
Reviewers are crabbing about the tired selection of movies and series, but you have to be seriously lacking in film knowledge if you can’t find plenty to watch. I’d start with “The Killing Fields” and “Cool Hand Luke.”
Users interact with the Roku box via their usual Netflix online account interface.
Earlier this year, Netflix got the ball rolling on this forward-looking economic model with the first version of the Watch Now service, limited to Windows PCs. The big difference now is the movie fare goes straight to your TV. No geek intervention necessary.
Will I buy a box? Nah, at least not now. Do I want one? Yep.
Update: David Pogue, the New York Times’ populist tech writer, posted the first reasonable review of the Netflix/Roku box I’ve seen. He calls it “a flawed masterpiece.”
Pogue writes:
In the game of Internet movies, the Netflix Player is revolutionary. It’s the first Internet service that delivers movies to your TV without a per-movie fee — an incredibly strange, liberating feeling. It’s also the first that doesn’t require you to download or store your movie collection. …
Is the Netflix Player, then, the movie box the world is waiting for? Not quite. It falls short on the age of its movies, the smallish selection of good ones and the not-quite-pristine video quality. And as with all Internet movies, you don’t get subtitles, director commentaries or any other DVD extras.
But it comes darned close.
(Disclosure: Your Download Movies 101 host is a grumpy Netflix stock holder.)
CBS signs guys behind ‘lonelygirl15′
In a sign that CBS is getting serious about original web video content, the network signed the “lonelygirl15″ team to a first-look production deal.
EQAL is the the “social entertainment company” founded by Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried, who also created “KateModern.”
The hookup aims to “create and produce multiplatform television, nline and mobile entertainment for existing and future CBS television productions,” burns the press release on the online video deal, straight from the advertising “upfront” sessions in New York.
The webisode team will advise CBS on spinning off online content from its traditional broadcast properties.
Web guy Beckett says EQAL has some ambitious plans, along the lines of what’s often said by TV execs but rarely executed:
“Until now, online content associated
with TV shows has had virtually no real connection to the show’s narrative
experience. What CBS and EQAL are coming together to create is
groundbreaking and will be the first time that television stories will be
extended and amplified online in a way that takes full advantage of the
Internet’s capabilities for interaction and community. The extended
narratives online will give fans and viewers the opportunity for a whole
new level of engagement both in between airings of the TV episodes and as
standalone plot lines.”
The first-look deal is non-exclusive. In English, that means CBS has right of first refusal.
The “lonelygirl15” success story compares poorly and dramatically with the online drama venture “Quarterlife,” from TV dramady specialists Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick. “Quarterlife,” with better production values and arguably better acting, tried to make the leap to strike-stricken NBC but the web series was cancelled after one miserable airing. A followup attempt on Bravo failed as well.
The obvious difference here being “lonelygirl” knew better than to leave home for Tinseltown.
Last month, EQAL debuted with $5 million in financing from investors including “Survivor” producer Conrad Riggs and web-browser pioneer Marc Andreessen.
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HBO shows command iTunes premium
Wasn’t too long ago that Apple and NBC Universal went to the mattresses over flexible pricing for TV episode downloads. NBC wanted it; Steve Jobs didn’t. NBC Uni walked.
The iTunes Store policy of one-price-fits-all is toast, however, thanks to the clout of HBO’s powerhouse series such as “Sex and the City,” “The Wire” and “The Sopranos.”
While the download price for “Sex and the City,” “The Wire” and “Flight of the Conchords” is set at iTunes’ standard $1.99 per episode, episodes of “The Sopranos,” “Deadwood” and “Rome” are priced at $2.99 per episode. HBO and Apple confirmed availability of the new downloads Tuesday and you can buy them now.
The iStore also has its version of a DVD box set: Entire seasons can be downloaded at prices lower than for DVDs. For example, season 1 of “Sopranos” goes for about $39.
For upcoming series, there’s a catch. Most TV nets allow their espisodes to go online a day or so after they air, but in this case it’s a package deal, with the series’ entire seasons going online day-and-date with their DVD releases, the New York Times reported in a story about the HBO-iTunes deal. This keeps the value proposition high for cable premium subscribers, but means the downloads will be something less than special, despite what your receipt says.
NBC Uni, meanwhile, last week unveiled a programming output deal with Microsoft for the portable Zune that covers hundreds of NBC shows. The price? Get this: a fixed $1.99. (OK that’s 160 Microsoft points.) Zune also now offers shows from Viacom’s Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and MTV.
Zune?
(updated 5.13 to reflect HBO confirmation of New York Times story)
