Reviews of Tivo/Amazon Unbox Service

Posted March 13th, 2007 by Jose Alvear

Did some searching and found some pretty good reviews of the Tivo and Amazon Unbox movie download service. WebWare (a CNet property) has some pretty good details. Here’s a summary of what they say:

  • Hard to Find Tivo Downloadable Content. “A separate section of Amazon Unbox would be preferable,” says WebWare.
  • Not Enough Tivo Content. Even though Amazon Unbox has lots of videos available for download, not all of them can be transferred to TiVos. Webware says that there are “1,433 videos labeled TiVo, which includes TV shows and movies.
  • Biggest Disappointment? Tivo doesn’t do widescreen. A movie had to be switched from Wide to Normal.
  • Not DVD Quality Video. WebWare said it’s a “pretty significant step down from watching a DVD.”

In a world of HDTVs, DVDs and high quality media, Tivo and Amazon Unbox should step up their quality. As WebWare points out, why not just rent the video for the same price as the download? Or order pay-per-view?

Another blogger says, why bother? Is there an advantage to using Tivo? There’s definitely less portability than a DVD.

TechCrunch points out that Tivo/Amazon beat Apple’s AppleTV product out the gate. They also offer rentals, whereas Apple TV will not. Having that lower price point( $4.99) sure helped me to try out my first Unboxed Tivo rental.

Anyone else have any experience with Tivo/Amazon Unbox?

[tags] Amazon, Unbox, Tivo, DVR, PVR, digital video recorder, personal video recorder [/tags]

Posted in Digital Downloads, Tivo

One Response to “Reviews of Tivo/Amazon Unbox Service”

  1. Craig Says:
    March 16th, 2007 at 4:32 am

    I am disappointed in the way Amazon Unbox and Tivo work together. The issues I have all deal with management of the movies on Tivo.

    1. You must have enough room available on your tivo to download the movie. I had to manually delete shows from my Tivo in order for the download to work. Until I did that Unbox kept taking the movie out of the download queue without telling me why. All my shows are marked ‘Keep until space needed’ and Unbox would still not download the movie automatically.

    2. Movies are automatically deleted off your Tivo to make room for shows, this INCLUDED rentals, shows that have a 1 download limit. I paid 4 bucks for a movie I never saw, because Tivo deleted it. I am unable to redownload through Unbox.

    I do not recommend the service.

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