Internet Outsider: Rip Van Amazon Awakes, Plans Movie Downloads

March 10, 2006

Rip Van Amazon Awakes, Plans Movie Downloads

Having slumbered through the development of massive market opportunities like Netflix and iPod, Amazon is trying to drag itself out of bed in time to catch what's left of the next one: movie downloads. The company actually has a significant asset in this arena, the IMDB, which is apparently the most popular movie-related site on the net. If memory serves, Amazon bought the property back in the Dark Ages and has now grown it into something worth writing about.

From the WSJ:

People familiar with the situation say the online retailer is talking with movie studios including General Electric Co.'s Universal Pictures, Viacom Inc.'s Paramount and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. about making their content available on its site, both for Internet rental and purchase. Negotiations are continuing, but a service could begin this summer. Amazon declined to comment.

Posted by Henry Blodget on March 10, 2006 at 05:05 PM | Permalink

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Comments

There is an inherent bottleneck in terms of the good-ol'bandwidth issue when it comes to content made downloadable from an internet or ftp service.

This is from www.21CenturyVC.com:

The download of a 5 Gigabyte DVD-quality movie will take less than 1 minute with LBDC's 1 Gbps service. It will take 10 minutes at 100 Mbps, 1.5 hours at 10 Mbps, 4.5 hours at 4 Mbps, and more than 9 hours with 2 Mbps. There is an application on their site that will show you the download speeds of several types of downloads. You can download the exe file from te following page. http://21centuryvc.com/fiberspeedenglish.exe

Posted by: Neal Lachman | March 11, 2006 at 10:47 AM