Amazon Looking At Download To DVD Plan

from the watch-now,-put-on-shelf-later dept

Amazon has been notoriously hesitant to get into any business that involves offering downloadable products. However, apparently, they're now looking at more creative ways to use digital downloads to encourage more DVD purchases, recognizing that the download adds value. It's not entirely clear what form it will take, but one method may be that you pay a small amount to download some content, and if you then buy the DVD, that amount gets credited. Another, more likely, approach would be that when you buy a DVD, you automatically get access to watch the movie streaming over your computer. It's unclear how locked down this will be, or for how long you'd have access to the streaming version. What would be nice is if Amazon acted as a backup locker for the content you bought, but somehow that seems unlikely. Of course, they're trying to come up with ways to do this with Hollywood's approval, which should get around some of the problems that some music dot coms had years ago when they tried to do similar things without the recording industry's approval. Though, since Hollywood's approval probably means the content will be locked down to a ridiculous level, it may make the service a lot less interesting to many people.
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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 27 Jan 2006 @ 11:50am

    No Subject Given

    and ppl can't just download the DVD file to their comp. and burn 1 (ONE) copy to a DVD using DRM as an option other than having it shipped?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 27 Jan 2006 @ 12:35pm

    Re: No Subject Given

    Why would you want to? If we do that, we're removing the _one_ good thing about actually buying DVDs, the packaging.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    ccc, 27 Jan 2006 @ 8:22pm

    Re: No Subject Given

    They'll never get hollywood's approval, because as far as the MPAA is concerned, if you get a DVD and a download that's two things you should be paying for, not one.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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