Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

photo credit: David Zatz

It seems like Amazon may be looking to bring HD to their catalog, but they aren’t officially talking about it just yet.  Such secrecy.  No doubt the jump to HD titles is a bit of a “let’s play ball” reaction to the very recent release of HD movie titles on iTunes. 

The Amazon site does already have some links to HD TV show downloads.  They just won’t really do you any good at this point since the actual details page isn’t available yet.  It looks as though they will be the same price as iTunes charges ($2.99 a pop), and a complete season will run you up to $53.

Digging into Amazon’s HD video

I emailed Amazon to see if I could get any further confirmation on the whole thing, but it seems I got back the standard email response that others have gotten from their Public Relations department. 

“We said many months ago that we intend to bring HD titles to our catalogue in 2009 but we have no further details to announce at this time.”

I took the same path others have taken, and tried running a search related to Amazon’s Video on Demand via Google, and the results were interesting.  Shows like “Law and Order” and “House” came back in the search as a HD version.  (I was hoping for “Fringe,” but that one didn’t show as HD to date).  Yet, when I clicked on the link, it simply took me to the regular Video on Demand Start page for Amazon.  And there was no HD title shown.  Hmmm. 

You can run, but you can’t hide.

Yet, Amazon’s little “recently viewed” section showed I had recently viewed all three shows (including the non-HD Fringe).  Okay, so ever curious, I click on those links right within Amazon.  Nope.  Still no working link that actually takes me to an HD download page.  It again just bounced me to the VOD Start page. 

When you click through the detailed part of your browsing history, it comes up showing a screen again listing the HD version complete with price and the option to purchase the whole season.  This seems as though Amazon does use the Google bot to sort and list content not available to joe schmoe public.  It also led to this page which offers a season HD pass.

Just recently, David Zatz reported that Amazon is performing beta-testing on its HD service with limited users on TiVo devices.  His source let him in on the fact that the current catalog features a decent amount of HD TV shows, but not a whole lot of HD movies.  The video quality is said to be “very good,” and their HD progressive downloads are going to feature surround sound.  Nice.

Amazon HD vs. iTunes HD

So, are they going to actually be any kind of competition for iTunes?  Well, at iTunes launch the other day, HD movie rentals go for $4.99 and to buy one will cost you $19.99.  HD TV isn’t new to iTunes, they’ve had it since last fall, with their shows running the same as Amazon’s are expected to at $2.99.  iTunes HD passes aren’t exactly cheap, the House pass is $59.99, so Amazon seems to have them undercut by at least a few dollars there.

But is all of this still going to be enough to make people pay for HD downloads?  I mean, why not just buy the DVD for less money?  Or, we all know we can watch a show free on Hulu.  Is video and TV download really going to make it long term especially with where the economy is at right now, and so many people are still obviously using other means to get their media.  You know, those means they don’t have to pay for. 

So, what’s your opinion?  Do you pay for downloads?  Will you pay for downloads?  And if you will, what kind of price are you willing to spend for the service?  I’ll be interested to see how this latest venture fares for Amazon.

via: newteevee