Amazon Unbox - An Easy Way to Download and Watch Movies on Your Computer

I love watching movies from the 80s, especially bad ones that never made it to DVD. Since my husband is currently deployed to Iraq, I have plenty of time to explore new entertainment options. The other night, I was cruising the Net and suddenly got a hankering to watch American Anthem, a positively wretched movie from 1986 that is out of print and until very recently, was very hard to find. I was curious to see if anyone was selling a used video copy of the movie, so I went to Amazon.com. I was surprised to see that I could actually download American Anthem directly to my computer courtesy of Amazon Unbox.

Amazon Unbox was launched on September 7, 2006. It offers television shows and movies from six major TV and movie studios. Prices for downloads start at $1.99 and allow users to keep copies of their downloads on two different computers or portable devices. The service is currently designed to work with Windows XP or Windows Vista. At this point, downloads cannot be burned to a DVD for television viewing, nor is it yet compatible with Mac. So far, the service is only available to U.S. residents in 48 contiguous states, Alaska, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia.

I had heard of Amazon Unbox before I actually checked it out. Before my husband went off to Iraq, I bought him a 60G Creative Zen MP3 player to use during his limited downtime. As he was loading songs and videos to his new toy, he mentioned the Amazon Unbox as a place to download movies and TV shows. I hadn't considered using the service myself because I subscribe to Netflix and have cable, plus plenty of time to watch everything. It never occurred to me that I might one day use this service to download old, out of print movies.

My First Unbox Experience