Newly launched Friday, the Amazon Unbox has media watchers atwitter with ad-free TV and movies downloadable a la carte or by subscription. Yep, feature films are “coming soon to a laptop near you.”
The convenience intrigues, but I sure hope their service isn’t as clunky as their name.
Impact on kids? Not sure yet. I highly doubt kids will be bopping around the schoolyard watching movies in math class or clustering around laptops at lunch break to see a favorite TV episode they missed last night.
First of all, Amazon’s Unbox plays only on a Windows viewer gizmo. You can’t watch it on an ipod or burn it to a dvd. (bummer)
Second, if kids were going to sneak and peek digital downloads, they’d be doing that already, since Apple’s iTunes has housed that type of content since late January. (thousands of MTV music videos, TV shows, Pixar/Disney shorts, and feature films coming any minute too)
It’s so easy to toss a used dvd in a backpack, and so cheap to rent or buy online, it seems digital video (DV) will sort itself out in the marketplace with media savvy teens who will weigh value for quality, instant gratification, and how well the dang thing works.
At $1.99 per TV episode and $3.99 for movie rentals the fees are well within allowance ranges and prepaid cards for tweens. (to buy it’s $7.99-$19.87, no bargain bin there, which makes me wonder what all the fuss is about, really.
Some are hand-wringing it’s more media coming kids way, and I should be one of them. But I guess I differentiate it as a distribution system for convenience, much like Slingbox, which can already fling TV programming to a laptop and soon will be able to deliver it to a mobile device.
It’s the cruddy content that I have a problem with. (Raise the bar, people!) THAT toxicity is much more pervasive than the umpteen deliver methods.
I recognize kids have a voracious appetite for new media technology, and the ‘bring it on’ banquet is bound to be a challenge.
How can we balance the excitement of emerging technologies that give consumers choice and convenience, with the ‘always on’ wired dynamic that can alter, define, and damage kids’ lifestyles and behavior?
Some kids are sampling delectably with pick and choose restraint like a cruiseline buffet while other ones are unable to resist gorging themselves in reckless abandon in a gluttonous smorgasbord until their little psyches virtually explode.
Will kids’ media consumption leave us with a culture of over-exposed myopic vidiots, or a highly sophisticated pool of wired, techno-savvy inter-connected global thinkers?
Regardless, an all-you-can-eat media diet clearly takes its toll.
Some of our Shaping Youth research is revealing social behavior that’s downright sad on K-5 playgrounds. And last week I had a firsthand glimpse of the teen scene extremes of living wired at a dry sauna while at the pool. No joke. A sauna. It’s enough to make you sweat just visualizing it:
Two 15 year-old neighbors were share-plugged to a smart phone watching a music video, having a staccato, horrifically banal conversation, while scrolling between ‘contacts’ to call a gal pal, and being ‘interrupted’ by a phone call from mom. (custom ringtone of course) I felt as if I’d been transported into a bad sitcom script.
Talk about a ‘plug-in drug’…The ipod wires made the girls look like they were hooked up to an IV feed with media coursing through their veins. Scary.
On the flip side, I’ve seen some wickedly intelligent commentary in user-generated media that rivals the pros. Most recently from a 9 year old ‘tween.’ Also a bit scary.
Shaping Youth is all about using the power of media for positive change, so I’ll end this post on an optimistic note.
What would you do with the Amazon Unbox? Imagine. For under $5 the “surround sound and watch-while-loading” features could be immediately accessed to calm cranky airport patrons.
Seriously! They could pop open their laptop and defuse their angst in silence instead of ranting into their cellphones at high decibal levels pacing around like caged baboons.
Now if that doesn’t qualify for positive media change, what does? 😉
Amazon Unbox At a Glance:
Over 30 studio and network partners are in on this deal, minus the mouse house, so this is no small potatoes.
A third of Amazon’s rev stream is media sales, and Amazon also operate IMDB.com, the internet’s most popular movie resource with 18.7 million visitors in July alone.
Walt Disney Pictures is the only major holdout, which may smack of sandbox play but it’s just business. Steve Jobs became the major Disney shareholder after his $7 billion Pixar deal earlier in the year which placed him strategically in the Disney driver seat. With Apple iTunes Music Store coming competing directly with Amazon Unbox, this could resemble “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.”
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