Posts Tagged ‘Amazon’

Amazon VoD & TiVo Working Again

Saturday, February 7th, 2009

Back around November or December, an update to TiVo killed the Amazon.com Video on Demand (VoD) service. That really sucked, as I loved being able to download movies and TV shows from Amazon.com to my TiVo boxes. It had been a while, so I figured surely to God they have this thing fixed now. And yesterday evening, I logged into Amazon.com and told it to send me a copy of Supernatural Season 4 Episode 1 to my living room TiVo. I’m happy to report that the service is working once again, though it is a bit slower than I remember… but then, that could very well be my network or something wrong with Comcast.

While I am thrilled that the service is working once again, I must say that I am rather disappointed that I wasn’t notified by Amazon.com or TiVo and informed that the service is working again. A simple email from Amazon, or a notice sent to my TiVo messages should have been extremely easy for them to pull off. Had they notified me, I’d have probably been downloading a lot more moves rather than using the crappy Comcast OnDemand service.

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Update On Amazon on TiVo

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

Just received a follow up email from the Amazon team. For those that don’t want to read the entire message, the gist of it is… it’s broke, we know it, they know it, no clue when it’ll be fixed, TiVo is working on it, and here is a refund.

Additional information is available after the jump. (more…)

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TiVo Update Killed Amazon VoD

Monday, December 1st, 2008

I’ve been using TiVo for about 5 years now, and I absolutely love it. It’s a fantastic service that has forever change the way I watch TV. It’s kind of like broadband internet, I cannot imagine going back to the way things were before.

One of the cool things I’ve enjoyed about my TiVo for the last year or so is the ability to rent movies from Amazon Video on Demand (formerly Amazon Unbox) and have the movies downloaded directly to my TiVo. Not only is it a easy to use service, but the cost of most rentals is around $3.99 a whole buck cheaper than what Comcast charges for their extremely slow OnDemand service. And just to throw it in there, renting movies from Apple via iTunes is about the same cost as TiVo-Amazon. ;)

That Amazon-TiVo service worked great until a few days ago when TiVo issues the Fall 2008 Update. The new update changes some of the menus, adds the ability to order pizza from Domino’s, download video on demand from other providers, and unintentionally bricks the Amazon VoD service.

It took me three days of contacting Amazon (email and phone) before I finally got someone on Sunday that actually identified the problem as the TiVo update. Right now when you rent a video, it’ll start to download, and then just vanish. If you check for an error, you get the extremely vague “an error occurred while downloading the video.”

Yesterday morning when I spoke to a rep, they were estimating it’d be ~20 hours before the service was restored. This afternoon when I spoke to someone, there was “no new information.” So Right now, all I can do is wait.

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What I Want From iTunes 8

Monday, September 1st, 2008

Today is the first of September, and if the Kevin Rose rumor is true, a major update to iTunes could be just over a week away. What could be in store for us with the next version of iTunes? That is a very good question, here are some of the things I would like to see. (more…)

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10% Off Amazon.com On Over 900,000 Books. — But Not That Much Cheaper

Thursday, January 19th, 2006

I’m not sure if anyone has seen the new Buy.com commercial yet. I’ve actually only seen it on TV once myself. Buy.com’s new advertisement campaign is claiming 10% off Amazon.com’s prices on over 900,000 books.

10% off Amazon Book Prices at Buy.com!
Doesn’t sound to bad, does it? Especially if you are after technical books, which cost an arm and a leg to begin with. Well, I found out today that the offer isn’t as great as it sounds.

I just ordered two books from Amazon.com, because the true price difference between the books was only $0.02. Yes, you read that correct. Two cents.

First off, here are the two books I ordered and the prices at each store, using A to represent Amazon.com and B for Buy.com:

Now, it doesn’t take a wiz to figure out the totals came to A: $52.78 B: $47.50. Looks good for Buy.com, right? Well, for some people that would be enough. A $5.28 price difference, which is exactly 10%.

But wait a minute now, we’re ordering online. That means shipping. Now, both stores offered free shipping. But I decided to compare this using the standard 3-5 day shipping.

Once again, Amazon.com was more expensive. Charging $4.98 to ship to the 37849 zip code where I live, while Buy.com only wanted $4.36. This brings our totals up to A: $57.76 and B: 52.86. Buy.com still with a cheaper price. So what’s the big deal? Tax. Buy.com charges it, and Amazon.com didn’t. That added another $4.88 to Buy.com’s price. And, as I said earlier, that bring the total to two cents less than Amazon.com. Not really saving enough for me to fool with Buy.com.

Now the only problem is, I ordered the wrong book. I wanted a book that was strictly MySQL 5. Not PHP5 + MySQL. So, I’ll be returning that book.

To be fair, I decided to run the test once more to see what I came up with. I used the following books:

  • Universal Command Guide: For Operating Systems (ISBN: 0764548336)
  • Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (ISBN: 0060987103)
  • From Emeril’s Kitchens: Favorite Recipes from Emeril’s Restaurants (ISBN: 006018535X)
  • CCNA Certification Library (CCNA Self-Study, exam #640-801) (ISBN: 1587200953)

Price total + standard shipping + tax (Buy.com only) came to A: $127.26 $126.17. A buck difference. Big enough deal for you to choose one over the other? Probably not for me. I guess it just really boils down to who you like shopping with more.

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