I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where, a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and perhaps what keeps the folks at Amazon and Apple up at night? As reported on TechCrunch and other sites, Amazon has beaten Apple out of the gate with their Unbox film download service. I am a long time Amazon user, and as a shareholder I am glad to see they are moving in this direction. I did subscribe to and download their player, which also serves as the media download app. At first, this part was a little confusing as I expected to see a download button on the site for the media. Aside from this, the site is relatively easy to navigate.

The player UI lists titles in your library, synopsis of each title, file size and size for your mobile device, airdate, etc.... There is also a link to IMDB, which is a nice touch.

I downloaded two titles to test, the "Twilight Zone" episode, "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" and the "Star Trek" episode, "The Paradise Syndrome".

You can also view your library on-line. Your media library also has sections for books (duh), your music collection, and of course, videos. You can also add your rating/review to the site via this page.

At $2.00 for each of the two titles I purchased, I do not care much that they will disappear after 30 days however, that is not the case with a title for $15.00. At that point, I would rather purchase the DVD and own it. There is another feature, which may irk some, namely you can download to only two pc's. Now, that does not affect me however, what about the family with two or three children and five pc's around the house? Between laptops, portable devices, and home entertainment units this is rather restrictive. This is where Apple has a better plan.

Viewing "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" full screen revealed clean quality for a .wmv file. The file for portable devices is an unknown format they have labeled, .amzn. In addition, files cannot be opened in an NLE due to DRM encryption. According to engadget, the application FairUse4WM can strip out the DRM protection from WM9 files, which is unfortunate. As a content creator as well as someone who likes to view portable media, I would like the model to allow for ownership as opposed to leasing content however, this is the current system. If you do not like it then let them know. I would not want to be the Indie producer whose content is being ripped off because someone wants to get around license fees; the fact that large studios can afford it is hardly the point.

I would also strongly recommend Amazon add chapter indexing so you can jump from one scene to another. Currently, if you want to move from one part of the movie to another you will have to scrub the timeline and guess. Yikes....

Net, net the Amazon system worked well and the quality on my laptop was excellent. I did not move to a portable device. It fell to earth, I know not where--we shall see where Amazon's arrow winds up.