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Amazon rolls out Cloud Drive

This isn’t the first service of its kind and it won’t be the last. Cloud storage has been around for many years. But, Amazon is promoting Amazon Cloud Drive differently: as a way to access your music anywhere.

This isn’t even a new concept. But the leading company to allow uploading of your own music for playback anywhere you like has shut down. Lala was purchased by Apple and then canned last year. The speculation was, and still is, that Apple is planning on creating a cloud-based music service for iTunes. It looks like Amazon is getting a jump on this early.

Of course, knowing the history of public reaction to Apple news, when Apple introduced their own version of cloud-based personal music streaming, it will be touted as a brand new revelation. It will be “magical.” And everyone will forget that other companies have been doing the same thing for years.



Amazon Cloud Drive begins with 5GB of free online storage. You can upload any files you like, including music, photos, videos, documents, etc. The files will be stored in Amazon’s extensive server network securely, meaning you won’t lose any data if your laptop gets destroyed. All of your data can be downloaded or previewed from virtually any internet connected device or computer.

The new killer feature though is Amazon Cloud Player, which will play your stored music on your computer, Android mobile device, or even on your web-connected HDTV. Any new Amazon MP3 Store purchase will automatically be stored in your Cloud Drive account, for download or playback at any time. These purchases do not count toward your total Cloud Drive storage limit, meaning they are stored for free. And if you buy an MP3 album, you get an additional 20GB of storage free for a year.

There are seven Cloud Drive plans to chose from, including the 5GB for free. Paid plans are 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 and 1000 GB, each of them costing $1-per-GB per year.

Fallout over Netflix original program “House of Cards”

In the wake of news that Netflix purchased the exclusive rights to the new serial drama House of Cards, the competition has reacted. We mused this was a challenge to established premium TV channels such as HBO, Starz and Showtime. These companies have certainly seen it this way.

Showtime has announced they will not be allowing streaming of currently airing first-run series, such as the popular Dexter and Californication.

More noteworthy is that Starz has also chosen to delay release of first-run titles, starting with Camelot, 90-days after air date. In the future, they will also add a window with movies. Starz has been an important partner with Netfilx, providing a huge portion of the Netflix instant library, including new release titles from Walt Disney and Sony Pictures. Starz owns the rights to an extensive library of movies in addition to their original programming, and many believe Starz made Netflix streaming what it is today.

Going forward, Showtime will treat Netflix more like syndication for canceled shows, while Starz will continue providing content, just with a lag time after they have aired it themselves. Both companies wish to retain their subscribers through traditional cable and satellite operators.

HBO does not have an agreement with Netflix yet to stream any titles.

Netflix instant streaming down temporarily

Netflix instant streaming is down right now. No word on when it will be back up.

Visiting the Netflix website brings up the following announcement:

We’re sorry, the Netflix website and the ability to instantly watch movies are both temporarily unavailable.

However, our shipping centers are continuing to send and receive DVDs so your order is in process as usual.

Our engineers are working hard to bring the site and ability to watch instantly back up as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience and, again, we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. If you need further assistance, please call us at 1-877-445-6064.

I captured this screen shot:



Service may not be down in all areas, as Netflix uses a decentralized network of servers to deliver content quickly. But it certainly is down for me.

It seems like this has been days in the making. Over the past several days while I was watching instant movies, the video would stop to buffer. Last night was atrocious with the movie stopping every few seconds to buffer. I even got a few “cannot connect to Netflix” error messages.

Let’s hope this is very temporary and we’re back up soon.

Netflix original programming

Netflix announced today that it has secured the exclusive rights to distribute the serial House of Cards through their internet video streaming service.

This is a groundbreaking venture for Netflix who has previously licensed properties from other content holders, such as Starz, NBC Universal, Fox, Sony Pictures, and others. This exclusive arrangement means this program will only be available from Netflix.

House of Cards features Academy Award-winner Kevin Spacey’s first regular role in a series, and the pilot will be directed by Oscar-nominated David Fincher (The Social Network, Zodiac). The show is based on a novel about British politics under the Margaret Thatcher government. The first season is scheduled to have 26 consecutive hour-long episodes, and Netflix has said it’s possible the episodes will be released in batches instead of one per week.

With 20-million subscribers, Netflix has nearly matched HBO’s 28-million subscribers. HBO has rejected attempts by Netflix to license their property for instant streaming, including popular dramas such as The Sopranos, The Wire and Treme. It appears Netflix will be challenging established pay-TV distributors for content going forward.

Netflix currently has more than 20,000 streaming titles in their library, with subscriptions starting at just $8 per month. HBO is usually bundled into premium programming packaging which can cost at least $13 per month.

Warner streams movies on Facebook

Warner Bros. is testing video-on-demand through their Facebook movie page. Currently the only movie being tried is The Dark Knight. Simply “Like” the movie’s page and it offers to use credits to watch the movie.

The credit system is a little confusing. A lot of companies have used a credit system to mask the actual cost of the sales, most notably is the PlayStation Store on the PS3 where you purchase credits ahead of time and redeem them for purchases.

The Dark Knight uses 30 credits, which amounts to $3.00 USD. Access to the rental will be available for a 48 hour window after the movie is activated.

Warner Bros. CFO John Martin said social media is an opportunity to not only add revenue, but to mine their customer’s behavior and trends, which could affect how movies are made in the future. Think of Facebook as a giant test market.

This isn’t a special deal made with Facebook, simply an application utilizing Facebook’s API, just like thousands of other Facebook applications.

Warner may not be the only studio to be looking towards Facebook for distribution. Sony Pictures has also hinted at the possibility.