Detour: Amazon's Unboxed Service
Earlier this year, I mentioned that I gave Rhapsody a try. I can say that I've really enjoyed the service. Over these last several months, I've explored all sorts of music sources, many of which I simply new of but hadn't given a listen, and many others that where new discoveries. I can't imagine how I'd use iTunes, since it requires a payment for each song listened to.
Anyway, another new service that I've tried recently is Amazon's Unboxed service, which lets you download TV shows and movies. This is definitely the kind of service that many have been predicting (including myself) but this year the floodgate seems to be opening. Earlier, I used iTunes to download several episodes of a TV show Nadine and I wanted to watch. iTunes worked like a champ and the service is great. However, I had to download the shows to a notebook computer, then hook that up to our TV, then use a mouse to control it rather than a remote control. (Yes, I admit it, I'm not using a Windows Media Center machine at home. There are a number of reasons for this that I won't get into now.) Well, a few months ago Amazon and TiVo teamed up and now I can purchase TV programs from Amazon and have them download directly to the TiVo unit. The same goes for movies as well. It has a few quirks, but overall, its very convenient and I like the service a lot. Now recording shows when they air is still the way to go (although the download quality beats the recorded quality), but on the other hand, it may be cheaper to cancel our cable subscription and simply buy the shows I actually want to watch. Hmmm, I'll need to think about that one.
(BE111)