Tech Review - Amazon Unbox

OK, long rant about Amazon Unbox.
Short version: Nice quality, but don't use it! Read on for more...

On Monday morning I realized that I had missed the Premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on Sunday night. I immediately set my DVR to record the first Monday night episode, but was a little disappointed that I might see it without seeing the Pilot episode. So, I went online and looked around. I found it for free on the Amazon Unbox download service. All I had to do was install their player.

Now, I've been burned by proprietary software before, but I'm also admittedly a huge fan of iTunes, so I'm willing to try new stuff. Unbox has been around for over a year. I even tried them once before to watch the premiere of the new Bionic Woman. But I had uninstalled the player right after watching the download. I never "lived" with Amazon Unbox. So, given that it was Monday night and I only had a few hours before the show, I downloaded Unbox and gave it a shot.

OK first the good. Unbox downloaded my movie in under 20 minutes. It also looked great on my 20" Widescreen Samsung PC monitor. There were no commercials to bother me. In fact, I forgot that I wasn't watching a DvD. Unlike Netflix "Watch Instantly," I was also able to watch it while my wife was playing video games! More on that later. So, even though it's a proprietary player, I was happy on Monday. I was so happy that I started to really look hard at their rental prices and compare them to life with Neflix.

That feeling, however, did not continue on to Tuesday.

On Tuesday when I booted up my system, I got the...

"Windows Needs Your Attention"

...message for Unbox, TWICE. That's right, Windows Vista stopped everything to inform me that Unbox wanted to load and contact the mothership. *Sigh* No worries. Messenger services, iTunes, Google Toolbar, and a host of other applications I use allow me to set them to only turn on when I want to use them. They all still remember that this is my computer! I went into the Unbox control panel.

"Windows Needs Your Attention."

I changed the settings.

"Windows Needs Your Attention."

I closed the player.

"Windows Needs Your Attention."

I exited the taskbar item.

"Windows Needs Your Attention."

In the span of 5 minutes, I got the Vista "Screw You" message more times than when I first loaded the system software. But, at least it was turned off, right? WRONG!

After dinner, a completely different program crashed, so I decided to reboot before re-launching that program. As I was logging in...

"Windows Needs Your Attention."
"Windows Needs Your Attention."

Both messages were caused by Amazon Unbox loading. Well maybe, I thought, there was a problem because of that crash. Let me check the settings.

"Windows Needs Your Attention."

OK, those are right, let me reboot. Upon rebooting and logging back in everything looks OK until...

"Windows Needs Your Attention."
"Windows Needs Your Attention."

Now, when you get this kind of message, you can always hit "cancel" and force the application attempting to load to stop. Well, no. I canceled and 2 seconds later I got...

"Windows Needs Your Attention."

Just to see how nasty this was, I launched the windows task manager. Everytime Unbox tried to load, I forced it to quit. Two seconds later, it started again. I had no choice but to accept and load Unbox or not use MY computer.

Now personally, I've never had a virus or a Trojan infestation on my computer, but I've dealt with plenty during my days in IT. Amazon Unbox, in it's persistence was behaving just like a virus. It insisted on doing it's thing. Even when I changed the settings, it continued to load. Even when I manually tried to force the application to stop loading, it continued to load.

Thankfully, the Amazon Unbox uninstaller worked just fine and only asked for my attention once!

In spite of my recent -- still unresolved -- purchase issues with that Amazon Marketplace partner Online Sports, I'm still a fan of Amazon's online retail service in general. Thanks to their crappy "Call the Mother Ship at All Costs" software, Amazon Unbox lost my business before really getting it. It's a shame because their picture quality was good. It's a shame because right now there are only 3 "quality" viable online movie services: Netflix, iTunes & illegal Bittorrent. A 4th major-player could have the effect of making Netflix better, lowering iTunes prices & squeezing Bittorrent out of the market the right way...through competitive, free-market pricing.

Oh well, back to Netflix! Speaking of which...

More on Netflix Online Service:
Coinciding with the announcement of Apple's Online Rentals (cost in line with Unbox, BTW) Netflix sent me an email informing me that my online service is now unlimited. I can stream anything in their collection. What do I think? Eh...

I do like the service, but it's flawed. As much as Apple failed to impress me with their rental fee, Netflix's Watch Instantly service has one major drawback. It streams. They determine picture quality for the show based on your available bandwidth when it starts. So, if the wife is playing a video game or streaming radio, picture quality suffers. I basically can watch a movie OR use the internet, but not both. Someone with FiOS (or any fat pipe) will probably be fine, but standard Cable doesn't cut it. Since, I want to watch movies during prime-usage hours, Netflix's online service still doesn't cut it.

Parting Shot:
Apple's announced prices for rentals is 50% too high for me to adopt it. Mathematically, I'm still doing better renting via Netflix even with the wait. If Apple was going to charge me $2 per movie, I would be interested. But their "old" movies are $2.99 and their new stuff is $3.99. AND you have to add $1 for HD. Thanks, but no thanks Apple.