Amazon Lets You View DVDs Online
from the always-advancing-the-e-commerce-world dept
It's still surprising that Amazon.com seems so much farther ahead of the game than just about any other online retailer in terms of overall features and user experience. They continue to do more to give potential buyers more information about the products they offer. The ability to listen to snippets of songs from CDs that are being sold is well known. More recently, they introduced the ability to search through entire books and view the pages online. Now, they're experimenting with a similar offering for DVDs. They're going to let people watch a full scene from a soon-to-be-released DVD. This is similar to promotions that have been done a few times to let people watch the first five to ten minutes of a movie online to try to get them hooked. As more people get broadband connections, it wouldn't be surprising if DVD sellers (Netflix, anyone?) started to offer such functionality as well.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
amazon needs help
For example, you cannot cancel an order on amazon, nor change an address that is incorrect in amazon once the order is in process. Pretty simple and pretty basic customer support request, yes? Impossible at amazon. Once it is in the pipeline (5 seconds after the submit, even for a 10 day delivery), it is on its way, no matter what.
Your only recourse, according to amazon, is wait for it to be returned as undeliverable, and then you will get credit 4 weeks later.
Or you go to your credit card company and cancel payment. And move all online book buying to powells.
Why cant these companies get the basics right before they add the whiz-bang features? Too hard? Not enough ROI?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
hmm?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: hmm?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: hmm? For Mike
Think anyone would rent Terminator if all they saw was the lame hotel seen where Micheal B confesses is love to Sarah Conner ?
On the flip side, I'd probably rent lots of movies that show that 'one great scene' but were banished to obscurity because the other 20+ scenes pretty much stunk or were un-moving.
Granted, Trailers can make a dog look good and/or hide a great movie but you at least, usually, get a multitude of scene pieces for review.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: amazon needs help
Why can't you take responsibility for NOT checking to ensure YOUR address was correctly inputted by YOU, PRIOR to placing the order ?
I get dolts like you every day pissing & moaning about things like this when frankly, it's not my fault you don't know how to input your address.
Too hard ?
Not enough intelligence ?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: hmm?
I'm not sure what the distinction is between downloading a trailer vs. the first 5 minutes. It's not a technological one. If the studios thought the first 5 minutes of the movie were its best representation, then that would be the trailer.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: amazon needs help
fyi - the mistake was on amazon's part. they pulled up an obsolete address for one click and admitted such, but could not change the sending address once it was submitted.
A simple change the address is all that is needed, but probably some marketing exec argued it is better to lock in all purchases at commit to prevent buyer's remorse from eating away at sales.
[ link to this | view in thread ]