Tivo’s been looking for a movie download partner for some time now. There was a day when Tivo and Netflix were in bed together, but their dalliance bore no fruit. A couple of months back, Amazon replaced Netflix as Tivo’s bed-mate, announcing that Amazon’s “Unbox” video service would allow you to view movies on your Series 2 or Series 3 Tivo.

This is the kind of thing that gets announced and months later people are scratching their heads saying “Hey… do you remember something about Amazon downloading movies to Tivo? Did that ever happen?”… imagine my shock when Amazon and Tivo announced last week that you the service was now working.

They’re even offering a deal where you’ll get a $15 credit on Unbox purchases if you sign up your Tivo account before the end of April. Unbox movie purchases run around $15; rentals are generally $2.99 or $3.99; TV episodes are generally $1.99. The credit makes trying out this service risk-free.

So how does this work?

First, you need to have a Series 2 or Series 3 Tivo with a high-speed network adapter, and you need to have set up an account on tivo.com.

Second, you register your Tivo with Amazon. This is a quick process where Amazon sends you over to Tivo’s web site, you sign in and confirm that you want to register your Tivo(s) for Amazon’s Unbox service. Once you’ve done this, you’re all set and you should see your Tivo(s) listed in the “Download to” link when you’re looking at an Unbox video web page.

And that’s that! You’re now ready to download videos from Amazon directly to your Tivo. Your Tivo will check in every 15 minutes to find out if there’s anything to download, though it may take several hours for a download to complete depending on how long the video your purchased is and how fast your Internet connection is.

Once you’ve downloaded video from Amazon Unbox, you’ll see an “Amazon Unbox” entry in your Tivo’s “Now Playing” list. Any videos you’ve rented or purchased will appear there, and you can manage them like any other recording on your Tivo.

I’ve tried it with a couple of rentals now and I’ve been very pleased. The video quality was quite good and the process of purchasing and downloading was flawless. Renting/purchasing is a “one click” process and gives you the chance to tell Both films that I rented (Idiocracy and Descent) were letterboxed and looked great.

How do rentals work?

When you “rent” Amazon Unbox video, you can only download it to a single device (a Tivo or a Windows computer). It will automatically delete itself from that device after 30 days, or 24 hours after you first start to watch it, whichever comes first.

The first time that you start to watch each rental, your Tivo will warn you about the 24 hour period and give you the chance to not start watching the video at that time.

You can also only download the video once. If you accidentally delete it or cancel the download, you’re screwed.

How do purchases work?

When you purchase a video, Amazon allows you to direct where it should download to. Unlike rentals, purchased videos can be downloaded multiple times and viewed multiple times. You can download it to each Tivo you have registered, or your Windows computer or portable devices.

What are Unbox’s limitations?

Several things you should know, beyond the limitations on rented videos:

• No Macintosh support - you can download video files to your Mac but you won’t be able to view them on it.
• No iPod support - this should be obvious from no Macintosh support but you also won’t be able to view Unbox videos on an iPod or an Apple TV.
• No returns or refunds - this should be obvious, but Amazon doesn’t allow you to “return” Unbox videos and won’t provide you with a refund on them.
• No sharing videos from your Tivo - once you have Unbox videos on your Tivo, they stay there - you won’t be able to view them from another Tivo or extract them with Tivo-To-Go or similar software. If you’ve severely hacked your Tivo I have no idea how hard it is to access these videos.
• No Series 1 or DirecTV support. Series 1 Tivos never had official networking support or the Home Media Option, and DirectTV, in a big screw-you to their customers, never supported networking either, so neither of these classes of Tivos can work with Amazon Unbox. I’m not sure if it will work with any of the hybrid Tivo/DVD machines, or if you may be able to get it working with a hacked Series 1 box.

[tags]tivo, video download, amazon, amazon unbox, unbox[/tags]

|  Print This Post