Amazon just entered the online video business with its new Amazon Unbox™ service. On 7/27, I did a side-by-side comparison of Open Media Network and Google Video by downloading the same PBS program (NOW with David Brancaccio, "The Final Offer" episode) and playing them simultaneously. Today, after a hard time finding the Unbox collection on the Amazon site (I finally searched on the program host's last name), I downloaded the same program from Amazon and did the same comparison with OMN.
As with Google and OMN, the Amazon service requires downloading a client. Amazon's is a little smaller than the other two, but unlike the other two it also requires installation of the .NET 2.0 framework which takes significantly longer than installing the video client. PBS appears to have used the same WMV file for both OMN and Amazon (Google uses a proprietary codec). They are identical in size.
One would think that playing the two seemingly identical files side-by-side would result in the same experience, but it was a little different. Compared to the OMN file played through the standard WMP player, Amazon seems to be doing some playback processing -- or, as my son would say, it looks a bit "tarted up." The whites seemed a bit whiter and the primary colors seemed a bit brighter, though grays and muted colors seemed to be no different. In a couple of cases, such as when there was a pile of papers on the desk, the brighter whites resulted in washing out the detail among the papers. To me, the two seem to be a toss up based on personal preference.
Like OMN, but unlike Google, Amazon is supporting export to some authorized external devices. Amazon supports playback on a Windows Media Edition machine and a handful of portable devices. OMN also supports export to Series 2 TiVo boxes in addition to Windows Media Edition for big screen viewing and has plans to support a larger array of portable devices than Amazon now supports.
For video screens under roughly 36" diagonal measure, PBS seems to have encoded both the OMN and Amazon files at maybe double the bitrate that's needed. This may be a standard rate for Amazon because it publishes a size to time guide that implies the higher encoding rate. Perhaps it believes its market is larger screens. Maybe. There's no indication that Amazon will support HD downloads. OMN does and even has one or two short ones up in the public beta now, but be prepared for Godzilla size files.
Finally, a note about user experience. Google Video and OMN have a browsing experience that's familiar based very approximately on what the many other video services are doing (see my review of Google linked above for more details). However, Amazon's is very much the typical Amazon product layout. And per their practice, you can rate an item and write a review of it. Their tracking of your attention and that of other users will provide users with useful recommendations that neither Google nor OMN will provide. However, unlike the other two, Amazon will not let you track your attention -- there's no provision for tagging, so the only self-organized communities that will emerge are the ones they define. But I can't imagine that browsing for a program is going to be very satisfying once the collection gets much beyond its current relatively small size.
OMN is very close to its 1.0 release and I'll write some more about its capabilities when that happens.
Update, 12 Sep 2006:
I forgot to add, but a colleague who was trying to install Amazon's client had the same problem today, that my computer got stuck after installing the .NET Framework 2.0. I was able to get past it by finally hitting Ignore instead of Retry, and it seems to work OK anyway. I did mention above that I had trouble finding Unbox on their site. He did too, gave up, and found it by searching for it on Google (he-he).
See also critique by "ageitgey" in, Amazon Spends Over A Year Developing Movie Download Service Then Shackles It With Absurd Restrictions. Link: Uninnovate. Thanks to Fred Wilson at A VC.
Update 13 Sep 2006:
Staci Kramer notes slow download times and has other details in, Amazon Unbox Update: Download Times, Etc. She includes a number of links to other Unbox posts. Link: paidContent.org. I didn't time the 550 MB download I made on my university's big pipe, but it didn't seem out of line. --Dennis
