Amazon's Digital Video sneak peek: "Amazon Unbox"
It seems Amazon might soon be launching their digital video download store, called "Amazon Unbox Video". According to what I can find, it'll have purchase and rental capability, as well as support for devices other than your PC (Your TV and Creative Zen Vision at least).
Context & Ripple Effects
Seven months after Google pushed play on its video store in January 2006, Amazon looks ready to answer with "Amazon Unbox Video" — though both the store itself and the device-support details remain unconfirmed reports at this point. The claimed structure matters more than the name: purchases plus rentals, and playback pitched beyond the PC at TVs and Creative's Zen Vision player.
The story's spread beyond gadget blogs — it was picked up on 2006-08-18 by Hacking NetFlix, a site whose readership tracks DVD rental — signals that the interesting question for observers is whether downloads start competing with disc-based home viewing, not just with iTunes-style PC files.
First-order effects
- Google's January 2006 video store gets its first large-retailer rival: if the rumors hold, Amazon brings an existing customer base and billing relationship to buy-or-rent digital video.
- Creative gains a marquee storefront for the Zen Vision, while any TV-connected playback path moves the download market out of the office and into the living room.
Second-order effects
- A rental option from Amazon pressures the economics of mail-order and brick-and-mortar disc rental, since instant delivery removes the trip and the return deadline becomes software rather than postage.
- Other consumer-electronics makers face pressure to negotiate store compatibility of their own, turning portable players and set-top boxes into distribution battlegrounds between content retailers.
Third-order effects
- If buy-and-rent downloads prove out at retail scale, home-video value shifts from owning discs to controlling the storefront-and-device pipeline — the position Amazon, Google, and Apple are all maneuvering for in 2006.
- Persistent questions about format lock-in and library longevity surface here: purchases tied to one retailer's DRM raise the durable problem of migrating a personal media collection across platforms and devices.
The trend: Digital video is moving from PC-bound file downloads toward living-room devices, with big retailers racing platform companies to own the storefront.