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

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.

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.

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

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.

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’re also offering $1 off three films: The Onion Movie for $2.99, Batman Begins for $1.99, and 27 Dresses for $2.99.

And, finally, we have a Summer Movie Sale. 14 films to purchase, not rent, for $5.99 each: Snatch, Layer Cake, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, XXX, The Glass House, The Big Hit, Charlie’s Angels Full Throttle, The Devil’s Own, Donnie Brasco, The Quick and the Dead, Stealth, Desperate Measures, Cliffhanger, and Still Crazy.

And as a special deal, you can buy both Charlie’s Angels and Charlie’s Angels Full Throttle for a combined price of only $10.99 – you buy Charlie’s Angels for $9.99, and then receive a code to purchase Charlie’s Angels Full Throttle for just $1. Details here.

As a side note, I thought I’d mention that The Ultimate Matrix Collection on Blu-ray is now available for pre-order. That’s a seven disc set – five BDs (The three live-action movies, The Animatrix, and ‘The Matrix Experience’) and two DVDs of bonus material. All for $90.95.

Picked up from Stephen Mack’s Zeigen.com.

And secondly there is a ‘Rent a Hit for $1.99′ deal with three titles: Jumper, Fool’s Gold, and Rambo.

The new streaming service will apparently be called Amazon Video on Demand, and it will be distinct from Amazon Unbox, Amazon’s purchase and rental download service. The Times reports Amazon will have 40,000 titles available for instant streaming. I don’t see the new service as a replacement for Amazon Unbox, but rather a compliment. After all, you will need an active Internet connection to stream video on the new service. Unbox allows you to download video to watch later, off-line – such as on your laptop while on a plane, or on a PMP while traveling. And it is a fairly open secret that Amazon intends to offer HD content through Unbox, and true HD content does not lend itself to streaming on today’s networks. Streaming vs. downloads vs. physical media (DVD/BD) really lay along a convenience vs. quality curve, as a generalization. Streaming is instant gratification, but the lowest quality. Downloads take longer, but will generally offer higher bit rates and hence higher quality. And physical media, in the form of DVD, offers yet higher bit rates. As well as extras, often times audio formats not found on downloads or streams (5.1 Dolby Digital or DTS), additional languages, subtitles, etc. But with the inconvenience of a wait to receive the media. And Blu-ray is at the end of the scale with the highest bit rates, full 1080p HD, often 7.1 lossless audio, etc. All of these options compliment each other and will appeal to different users, or under different circumstances to the same user. (I myself buy a number of Blu-ray discs and love the quality. I also still buy some DVDs, though less now with BD. But I also use Amazon Unbox through my TiVo to check out movies I don’t have as strong an interest in, or impulse rentals due to sales, etc.)

Currently, aside from a PC, Amazon has a deal with Sony to make the streaming content available via Sony Bravia HDTVs. Today that requires the Sony Bravia Internet Video link, which is a $300 add-on. But in the future Sony is expected to build the Internet connectivity directly into new models in the Bravia line. Amazon says they’ll pursue relationships with other TV and Internet device vendors. Which, of course, begs the obvious question – what about their current flagship CE partner, TiVo?

While TiVo isn’t mentioned in the article, I really have to believe this is in the works. TiVo releases H.264 and video streaming support, and they just happen to do so on the same day Amazon makes their streaming service available to the first users? TiVo and Amazon already have a relationship with Unbox, an apparently very successful one, so you know they had to discuss the streaming service early on. With the infrastructure in place with 9.4, TiVo could throw the switch at any time just by updating the HME application that is used for all of the broadband video options. No further software update would be required in the field. I think it is a safe bet that we’ll see Amazon Video on Demand on the Series3 & TiVo HD in the future, perhaps the near future.

Picked up via EngadgetHD.

UPDATE: I went looking around Amazon to see if there was any information on the streaming trial, and on the Amazon Unbox page there was a link in the upper right to sign up for the beta. It says space is limited, so I’d jump on it, don’t procrastinate.

And just to fully confirm that Unbox downloads are not going anywhere:

The goal of this Beta is to test our new instant streaming feature. Don’t want to wait for your video to download? Want to avoid downloading additional software? Want to watch Unbox videos on a Mac? Amazon Video On Demand is the solution to these common customer requests. Purchase or rent a video and you will have instant streaming access to your video from any PC or Mac. All of the existing Unbox functionality remains. You can continue to download your videos for offline playback on a PC or TiVo.

Those are some great films, Dr. Strangelove is one of my all-time favorites. And while I prefer the original Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven is a great adaptation.

First up, they have a few titles up for $.99 rental: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, West Side Story, Man of La Mancha, The Awful Truth, From Here to Eternity, and It Happened One Night.

But that’s not the only rental sale running, there is also a $1.99 July 4th special featuring 10,000 B.C., Rambo, and Untraceable.

And there’s still more – the $5.99 Summer Movie Sale is still running. This time featuring: The Pursuit of Happyness, Men in Black, Bad Boys II, The Patriot, Big Fish, Hitch, Men in Black II, Black Hawk Down, As Good As It Gets, The Karate Kid, Groundhog Day, Bad Boys, Charlie’s Angels Full Throttle, Charlie’s Angels, Can’t Hardly Wait, Donnie Brasco, In the Line of Fire, Ghostbusters, S.W.A.T., Roxanne, Sleepless In Seattle, Air Force One, 50 First Dates, Stuart Little, A Knight’s Tale, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Special Edition), Spider-Man 2,
Annie, Revenge, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Karate Kid Part II, Stir Crazy, Anger Management, Something’s Gotta Give, Ali, Spider-Man, Are We There Yet?, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Godzilla, Bewitched, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Zathura, Daddy Day Care, The End of the Affair, The Grudge, Maid in Manhattan, The Forgotten, La Bamba, Jakob the Liar, Casualties of War, And Justice For All, The Missing, The Deep End of the Ocean, Random Hearts, and Suspect.

That’s quite a line-up this week.

Wow, Dr. Goldfoot And The Bikini Machine, that’s some classic cheese right there. (And inspiration, along with the sequel Dr. Goldfoot And The Girl Bombs, for the line “Goldfoot’s machine creates another fiend so beautiful they make you kill” from the Rob Zombie song “Living Dead Girl” off Hellbilly Deluxe. Though I prefer the remix off American Made Music to Strip By.)

But that’s not all, the $5.99 Summer Movie Sale which started last week is still running, with a little title shuffling – some titles are gone, some new titles have been added. This week the lineup includes Hitch, The Pursuit of Happyness, A League Of Their Own, Men in Black, Real Genius, Bad Boys, Bad Boys II, Big Fish, Richard Pryor: Here and Now, Not Another Teen Movie, Punch-Drunk Love, Men in Black II, Mo’ Money, Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip, The New Guy, 50 First Dates, You Got Served, School Daze, Saving Silverman, Big Daddy, Bottoms Up, Stir Crazy, Beverly Hills Ninja, The End of the Affair, Stealing Harvard, High School High, and Ali.

You’d almost think Will Smith had a big movie coming out soon and they wanted to get people prepped for the release. (If you’ve been living under a rock, Will Smith has a big movie, Hancock, coming out July 4th weekend.)

And one other thing, the Amazon has an exclusive on the classic film Kiss of the Spider Woman. The DVD is only pre-order, but you can purchase it for download it now for $9.99 or a $2.99 rental.

There’s also a Sony Pictures Summer Movie Sale with 20 films each just $5.99 – to purchase. The sale includes: Real Genius, Richard Pryor: Here and Now, A League Of Their Own, The End of the Affair, Big Daddy, Punch-Drunk Love, Saving Silverman, 50 First Dates, School Daze, Not Another Teen Movie, Stealing Harvard, Big Fish, The New Guy, Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip, You Got Served, High School High, Stir Crazy, Beverly Hills Ninja, Mo’ Money, and Bottoms Up.

They are also offering a number of downloads for purchase at $5.99. Note, that’s purchase, not rental. The titles are Groundhog Day, Snatch, Memento, XXX, Bad Boys, Men in Black, Spider-Man 2, Black Hawk Down, Godzilla, Anger Management, Look Who’s Talking, Guess Who, A Knight’s Tale, Charlie’s Angels Full Throttle, Ghostbusters, Real Genius, The Legend of Zorro, Wild Things, Spider-Man, The Mask of Zorro, Are We There Yet?, Charlie’s Angels, Stir Crazy, The Mothman Prophecies, Daddy Day Care, Big Daddy, Multiplicity, and Casualties of War.

Launching Monday at ReframeCollection.org, the site will provide free digital copies of video and “at-cost” conversion of films to content owners, then rent or sell the digital download or DVD versions on a nonexclusive basis. Reframe will use Amazon’s DVD on Demand service for physical copies and its Unbox service for digital downloads to rent or sell.

The site is launching with 500 titles, which should expand to 1,500 over the next few months, with a goal of 10,000 within the next year. This could add some interesting rare content to Amazon Unbox, and hopefully it will be available via Amazon Unbox on TiVo.

Not all that exciting, though I will say I rented CSA a couple of weeks ago and it was worth it IMHO. If you’re looking for a deal, there are a number of free downloads available. Personally, The Venture Bros.: A Very Venture Christmas is the best of the free downloads.

Though there are some deals, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is just $0.99.

We are working on a new version of video on demand, a for pay streaming service we will release in the next couple of weeks. The streaming service will start instantly and it’s a la carte, for pay.

And that’s pretty much all we know. It sounds like they’re looking to head off Netflix. Amazon already has the download service with the broadest selection of video, and by adding streaming they’ll have downloads (purchase and rental) and streaming. Downloads appeal to those looking for higher quality, or those who don’t have a fast enough broadband connection to stream are decent quality. While streaming appeals more to those who are impatient and want instant gratification. And streaming could be extended to platforms that can’t handle downloads since the hardware requirement is lower (no storage). I do hope that there is some synergy – if you purchase a download from Unbox you should be able to stream it later since you own it.

Unlike Netflix, which includes all-you-can-stream content in a monthly subscription, it looks like Amazon will be a pay-per-stream model. And no, there is no word on if this will come to TiVo to compliment the current Unbox downloads. The system is certainly technically capable of supporting it, though it’d probably be restricted to the Series3 and TiVo HD since streaming MPEG-2 (for the S2) would be a non-starter. I’d expect Amazon to use H.264 or WMV/VC-1 for streaming.

However, on a more positive note, they’re offering a number of free downloads.

This year, “TiVo HD has become our main stock-keeping unit in retail,” said Mr. Denney, who declined to disclose specific sales or a percentage of units sold.

Perhaps more interesting is an indication that HD content is finally coming to Amazon Unbox on TiVo:

Unbox, the content-downloading service TiVo started with Internet retail leader Amazon.com last year, can’t process HD content, though the companies will announce HD capabilities “in the not too distant future,” Mr. Denney said.

This has been eagerly anticipated since the release of the TiVo Series3. Over a year ago the lead engineer on Amazon Unbox indicated that they were working on 16:9 aspect ratios and HD content, but little has been said since then. So it is nice to see something from an official representative that indicates it is still in the works, even though everyone figured it must be just to keep pace with the market. Personally I suspect it will be tied up with the YouTube update which will enable MPEG-4/H.264 decoding. Using H.264 for HD content would greatly reduce the download sizes compared to trying to use MPEG-2.