Amazon's Video on Demand: Dissatisfying and Disappointing

For New Year's Eve we decided to give Amazon's Video on Demand a try. We ordered two films for rental and selected the download option (with Amazon's Unbox player) -- so we wouldn't have to worry about any potential network problems for streaming. As expected, the downloaded videos came with DRM (digital rights management).

The DRM turned out to be a huge hassle, however. We were able to watch the first film, but for the first few times we clicked on "Play" we got a message indicating that the content license could not be obtained. There was a link in the dialog box to upgrade something from Microsoft, having to do with the license. So we tried that, and a few minutes later, the film started playing. So far so good.

But when we tried to play the second film, no matter what we did it just would not play, again due to license issues. For about 15 minutes I did everything -- upgrading the Microsoft thingee again, deleted the first video, etc. -- but nothing worked. So we wrote to Amazon to get a refund. Amazon was nice enough to issue the refund, but they also stated:

Amazon Video on Demand content generally isn't returnable, but because of the circumstances, I've refunded this order as an exception. The video license for this order has been revoked.

OK, fair enough. But count me as a dissatisfied customer due to the bad experience with their DRM scheme. It's just not worth the trouble. Come to think of it, why bother with DRM at all? I understand the need to protect copyrighted material, and some consumers these days are not particularly honorable. Yet since even the interface to the amplifier is now digital (HDMI), I am sure there exists some sort of HDMI-capture device that no DRM can defeat, and the determined copyright violator can capture the whole thing without any loss of information, unlike the old analog days. Amazon's DRM scheme, because of an apparent bug, accomplished only one thing -- annoying and eventually losing an honest customer. Even if it was I who could not figure out how to navigate the waters of DRM, that means only that the DRM and the user interface were poorly designed. The "on demand" advertisement turns out to be "out of service" in any case.

A quick search on the Internet showed that there are some privacy-intrusive provisions in the license agreement, which of course I did not read. So I am not at all unhappy that I uninstalled the Unbox player and will have nothing to do with it again.