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Posted By: CV Amazon Unbox - 11/26/09 10:13 PM
I decided to take advantage of $5 in credit at Amazon.com's Video On Demand store. I settled on the first season of Friday Night Lights in HD since it was only $15 for the whole season. I figured $10 would be a cheap way to try the service out. I decided to download the videos instead of simply streaming them. At 2 gigs a pop, it would take a while to download 22 episodes, so I let them download overnight. I was happy to find out they are WMV files, so streaming to the Xbox 360 would be an exercise in simplicity. I just now confirmed that it works without a hitch. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. I'll always opt for physical media when I can, but I could see using this for HD downloads of shows that aren't on Blu-ray.

Has anyone else tried it?
Posted By: ClubNeon Re: Amazon Unbox - 11/26/09 10:45 PM
Haven't tried Amazon's service. Only Netflix's HD steaming on the PS3. What resolution are their WMVs? Two gigs an ep, is a pretty large size. The TV shows I "find" on the Internet are only just over one gig, and are 720p.
Posted By: Micah Re: Amazon Unbox - 11/26/09 10:45 PM
Haven't tried it yet, but glad it worked out for you. Get used to this way of enjoying movies as I feel the next great swing in the movie industry will be switching to downloads over physical inventory. I could be wrong of course, but it seems to make too much sense not to do it.
Posted By: CV Re: Amazon Unbox - 11/26/09 10:47 PM
 Originally Posted By: ClubNeon
Haven't tried Amazon's service. Only Netflix's HD steaming on the PS3. What resolution are their WMVs? Two gigs an ep, is a pretty large size. The TV shows I "find" on the Internet are only just over one gig, and are 720p.


1280x720, Dolby Digital 5.1 (at least for this show). This is an hour-long show (42 minutes, I should say), so that's why the file sizes are bigger.
Posted By: Potatohead Re: Amazon Unbox - 11/27/09 12:02 AM
 Originally Posted By: Micah
Haven't tried it yet, but glad it worked out for you. Get used to this way of enjoying movies as I feel the next great swing in the movie industry will be switching to downloads over physical inventory. I could be wrong of course, but it seems to make too much sense not to do it.


I agree, but I do think it will be a very long time (decade or so) before it's adopted by the masses.
Posted By: ClubNeon Re: Amazon Unbox - 11/27/09 01:17 AM
 Originally Posted By: CV
1280x720, Dolby Digital 5.1 (at least for this show). This is an hour-long show (42 minutes, I should say), so that's why the file sizes are bigger.

That's the pic size, and sound quality of the MKVs I get, but they're AVC instead of VC-1, still one can except about the same quality for the same bitrate between those two codecs. So, Amazon is doing well at 2 GB per 42 minutes.
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