Redbox Instant (Streaming)
Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2013 10:49 pm
I just got 1 month of free streaming to the new Redbox Instant Beta service.
I have had it for seconds...
The first thing I'm doing is looking at the titles. It seems to have quite a few notable movies that Netflix does not have. It includes "The Lorax", "Ted", and "Jaws". Based on doing semi random searches for the listed movies I'm going to guess it has a decent amount of notable movies that Netflix does not have.
Edit: I wasn't signed in... I'm keeping this though because I was looking at subscriptions. Something is broken here.
The problem? Unless I'm doing something wrong there only seems to be 28 total movies to stream. If it is going to continue to have only that amount of movies it is something to keep in mind. However... There are reports that it is only going to be $8 a month and that includes 4 rentals a month from the kiosk, so it really is only $4 for the streaming.
Edit: I was doing something wrong. I wasn't signed in.
The streaming movies seem to either be "current" movies or movies that are old, but still have mass appeal ("Jaws" for instance). All the instant movies also seem to have previews which is nice. Sure you could just start watching the movie, but the fact that you can watch a quick trailer to get the concept of the movie is nice. Sure you could just go to YouTube when using Netflix, but to have it all in the same place is nice.
Something I don't like is that it wants your credit card information in order to start the free trial. At the moment I'm going to trust them. Of course we all know what their game plan is next month when the free trial ends.
The streaming player seems typical. Something that I like to check out with a streaming player is how it seeks. Currently Amazon is the worse by a wide margin and Netflix is the best by a wide margin. I like a player that will skip ahead 5 or 10 seconds at a time. Windows Media Player Classic does this (Winamp does 7 seconds I think). This is a killer feature. Amazon skips ahead, but the buffering issue is a disaster. Netflix tries to fix this by skipping ahead 10 seconds at a time, but instead of buffering it pauses and shows you the scene from that period in the video. If you want you can continue to seek before it buffers and starts playing again. Netflix doesn't have it perfect, but it's probably about the best you can hope for when watching movies in the cloud.
So how does Redbox buffer? I didn't expect this. It uses the arrow keys as a fast forward/rewind button. It doesn't show the video, but it shows the time code. I still like the way that Netflix does it, but this isn't a bad way to do it either. Honestly the reason I fast forward the most on steaming services is to skip past the title screen. On Amazon it isn't worth it. On Netflix it's worth it, and if you know how long the title screen is it's probably near perfect on Redbox.
For anyone that is curious Redbox uses Silverlight for the video player. I used to feel that Silverlight was the best video player, but now I'm not sure. I've seen YouTube use flash for some high-profile events (namely the Olympics) and make it work better. I guess it really comes down to having people who know how to use the platform that they deploy on. To say that Amazon doesn't get how to use the platform they chose would be a major understatement.
Using credits to rent a movie seems pretty straight forward. I'll have to try it Sunday when I work again.
I have had it for seconds...
The first thing I'm doing is looking at the titles. It seems to have quite a few notable movies that Netflix does not have. It includes "The Lorax", "Ted", and "Jaws". Based on doing semi random searches for the listed movies I'm going to guess it has a decent amount of notable movies that Netflix does not have.
Edit: I wasn't signed in... I'm keeping this though because I was looking at subscriptions. Something is broken here.
The problem? Unless I'm doing something wrong there only seems to be 28 total movies to stream. If it is going to continue to have only that amount of movies it is something to keep in mind. However... There are reports that it is only going to be $8 a month and that includes 4 rentals a month from the kiosk, so it really is only $4 for the streaming.
Edit: I was doing something wrong. I wasn't signed in.
The streaming movies seem to either be "current" movies or movies that are old, but still have mass appeal ("Jaws" for instance). All the instant movies also seem to have previews which is nice. Sure you could just start watching the movie, but the fact that you can watch a quick trailer to get the concept of the movie is nice. Sure you could just go to YouTube when using Netflix, but to have it all in the same place is nice.
Something I don't like is that it wants your credit card information in order to start the free trial. At the moment I'm going to trust them. Of course we all know what their game plan is next month when the free trial ends.
The streaming player seems typical. Something that I like to check out with a streaming player is how it seeks. Currently Amazon is the worse by a wide margin and Netflix is the best by a wide margin. I like a player that will skip ahead 5 or 10 seconds at a time. Windows Media Player Classic does this (Winamp does 7 seconds I think). This is a killer feature. Amazon skips ahead, but the buffering issue is a disaster. Netflix tries to fix this by skipping ahead 10 seconds at a time, but instead of buffering it pauses and shows you the scene from that period in the video. If you want you can continue to seek before it buffers and starts playing again. Netflix doesn't have it perfect, but it's probably about the best you can hope for when watching movies in the cloud.
So how does Redbox buffer? I didn't expect this. It uses the arrow keys as a fast forward/rewind button. It doesn't show the video, but it shows the time code. I still like the way that Netflix does it, but this isn't a bad way to do it either. Honestly the reason I fast forward the most on steaming services is to skip past the title screen. On Amazon it isn't worth it. On Netflix it's worth it, and if you know how long the title screen is it's probably near perfect on Redbox.
For anyone that is curious Redbox uses Silverlight for the video player. I used to feel that Silverlight was the best video player, but now I'm not sure. I've seen YouTube use flash for some high-profile events (namely the Olympics) and make it work better. I guess it really comes down to having people who know how to use the platform that they deploy on. To say that Amazon doesn't get how to use the platform they chose would be a major understatement.
Using credits to rent a movie seems pretty straight forward. I'll have to try it Sunday when I work again.