Confirming the rumour we heard a while back, Amazon have announced Amazon Unbox, their video download store.
It seems to offer downloads of episodes of popular US TV shows and offers a selection of feature length films to download as well. There also appear to be features like ‘renting movies’ via download - presumably where DRM comes in to play to prevent you from keeping the movies too long or watching them too many times.
Unfortunately for us Brits, it seems that Unbox is currently only available in the US, but should it do well in the US, it’s quite likely to come over here fairly quickly.
I hope it doesn’t do well but I’m the exception to the rule. My opinions on how online movie downloading should work are strange.
[...] Amazon Unbox, which we covered here, has been given quite a harsh reception from the blogosphere and the reactions are mainly based around Amazon’s DRM and restriction technology that’s built into the service. [...]