This weekend Amazon VOD brings the $0.99 sale back to frightening levels with the Scary Movie Sale. Ten titles each $0.99 to rent: John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Forgotten, Asylum, Beetlejuice, Twilight Zone: The Movie, fear dot com, The Eye 2, The Nun, and Candyman 2: Farewell To The Flesh.

This weekend Amazon VOD isn’t offering up the traditional $0.99 rental sale. But all is not lost, there are a few interesting freebies. NBC is offering up the season two premier episodes of Chuck and Life gratis. And Michael Moore’s latest movie, Slacker Uprising, is also available for free. (I checked out the new Chuck – look for a little TiVo product placement early on.)

And there are more traditional sales as well. Rent one MGM film and get a second rental free. The instructions are on the right hand side of that page. There’s also another $5.99 movie sale, purchase any of ten films for just $5.99.

Nothing two impressive this week from Amazon Video On Demand, though there are a number of free downloads that tie into the new fall TV season.

There is a Romantic Movie Sale which is offering twelve movies for purchase, not rent, at $5.99.

This weekend Amazon Video On Demand, the service formerly known as Amazon Unbox, isn’t offering their usual style of sale with discount prices. Instead they’re offering a rent one, get one rental free deal on MGM titles. That’s 101 titles to choose from. Be absolutely sure you follow the instructions on the right of the page if you don’t want to end up paying for the second title. The offer expires 9/30/08, and the free title must be claimed by 10/14/08.

TiVo is running a promotion through 1/15/09, buy the TiVo Wireless Adapter for $59.99 and get five movie rental downloads from Amazon Video On Demand. That’s a $20 value. (From the fine print it sounds like it is really a $20 credit which can be used for movie rentals, the five movies is just based on a $4 average rental price.)

I guess I can’t call it Amazon Unbox anymore, it is now Amazon Video On Demand. They’ve rolled out the online streaming on demand to the general public, it is no longer just for beta testers. I’ll have to update the blog category… later.

Of course, you can just buy the adapter from Amazon.com for $39.99 and save the $20 up front.

Thanks to Davis Freeberg for the tip on the TiVo promo.

This weekend marks the return of real sales to Amazon Unbox. There are five titles being offered as $1.99 rentals: The Bank Job, Vantage Point, Definitely, Maybe, Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (Unrated), and My Mom’s New Boyfriend.

Also, The Summer Movie Sale continues to run, labeled the Labor Day Movie Sale this week. There are 56 titles available to purchase (not rent) for just $5.99. OK, for some inexplicable, freaky reason Leonard Part 6 is in there for $9.94.

Not much on offer from Amazon Unbox this weekend. Nothing by way of the normal discounted rentals, but if you’re into football they have a selection of twenty NFL highlight clips available for free.

And The Summer Movie Sale is still rolling on. Purchase, not rent, any of 56 titles for $5.99 each.

Amazon Unbox seems to be skipping the usual weekend sale this week. There don’t appear to be any discounted rentals available.

But there is one bright spot, The Summer Movie Sale is still running. The sale offers titles for purchase, not rental, for $5.99 each. There are currently twenty titles in the sale. Once again they’re calling it a Teen Comedy Sale this week, and once again it is really teen comedies and cheesy action movies.

This weekend the Amazon Unbox sale is back with $1.99 rentals. There are five titles on offer: Vantage Point, Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (Unrated), In Bruges, Drillbit Taylor, and The Other Boleyn Girl.

The Summer Movie Sale is also still rolling, this week it is a Teen Comedy Sale with 18 titles to purchase at $5.99 each. It actually looks more like ‘Teen Comedy and Cheesy Action Movie Sale’, really.

They may not be ebony and ivory, but as I’ve said in the past, Blu-ray and video downloads can live together in perfect harmony. When I see people saying things like ‘Blu-ray is DOA’ because downloads will kill it, I tend to either snicker or roll my eyes, or both. Because, while I agree that someday downloads will probably kill off physical media, that day is years away. Many years. People point to music download services, like iTunes, as an example – and I’ll point out that the vast majority of music is still sold on physical media, and downloads have a long way to go before they kill CD. (I buy all of my music via download, CD is a last resort.) And video downloads are many times the size of music downloads.

With video downloads it is always a compromise between speed and quality. For instant gratification you have streaming video, but that’s the lowest quality. Broadband speed limitations restrict the maximum possible streaming bitrates. Downloads can offer higher bitrates, but still require fat pipes to be feasible, and, of course, storage. But even the best download services don’t come close to matching the picture quality of Blu-ray, because they can’t match the bitrates. And don’t even get into bonus features, lossless audio (Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD-MA), multiple audio and subtitle tracks, etc. With most commercial Blu-ray titles using between 30GB or more of disc capacity, we’re not going to be downloading content at that quality in the near future.

So I was a little gratified to see this article in CE Pro, entitled Blu-ray and Downloads: Why Both Are Worth Offering. CE Pro is an industry magazine with a primary audience of consumer electronics professionals, the kind of folks who install custom systems in high end homes. The article focuses on Blu-ray for physical media and VUDU for downloads, but Amazon Unbox on TiVo, iTunes on Apple TV, Xbox 360, PlayStation3, NetFlix, etc, are all possible broadband video options for the consumer. Downloads aren’t about to replace discs for those who prefer a quality viewing experience, but downloads offer the kind of instant gratification that discs can’t match. I think having both available is the best approach, the best of both worlds.