Amazon Unbox is bad

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conman0321

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Amazon Unbox is bad

#1

Post by conman0321 » Mon Sep 15, 2014 11:04 am

Installed Amazon Unbox so I could watch purchased season of Breaking Bad.
Immediately thereafter, extenders became unwatchable on anything but low-speed SDTV due to AU slowing everything down.

After much gnashing of teeth :x , uninstalling AU and restarting everything restored WMC to its previous state of health.

Apparently, I'm not the only only one who had big problems with AU:
http://www.techory.com/blog/leave-amazo ... n-the-box/
http://arstechnica.com/information-tech ... 6/09/7704/

LuckyDay

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#2

Post by LuckyDay » Thu Nov 20, 2014 10:12 pm

Unbox is great IMO, but you have to set it up in a certain way to be worth it.

The nice thing about Amazon movie/TV purchase is that using Unbox allows them to be downloaded as MP4 files locally. So they can be played across WMC and stored in your media folders.

You don't need Unbox to be open or running to play the videos, so just install it, and then turn off everything that makes it run in the background. Just open it manually whenever you want to download new shows or movies you have purchased, then close the program.

richard1980

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#3

Post by richard1980 » Sat Nov 22, 2014 12:19 am

I think the OP's problem is he tried to download a bunch of stuff from Amazon and saturated his local network. Then when he tried to stream content over the local network to his extenders, there wasn't enough bandwidth available because of all the AU downloads. So naturally that makes AU bad...

LuckyDay

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#4

Post by LuckyDay » Sat Nov 22, 2014 2:33 am

richard1980 wrote:I think the OP's problem is he tried to download a bunch of stuff from Amazon and saturated his local network. Then when he tried to stream content over the local network to his extenders, there wasn't enough bandwidth available because of all the AU downloads. So naturally that makes AU bad...
Yeah, that could be. Not a fault of the program though.

tzr916

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#5

Post by tzr916 » Sat Nov 22, 2014 2:45 pm

LuckyDay wrote:Unboxed is great IMO, but you have to set it up in a certain way to be worth it.

The nice thing about Amazon movie/TV purchase is that using unboxed allows them to be downloaded as MP4 files locally. So they can be played across WMC and stored in your media folders.

You don't need Unboxed to be open or running to play the videos, so just install it, and then turn off everything that makes it run in the background. Just open it manually whenever you want to download new shows or movies you have purchased, then close the program.
I want to try it, where can I get it?

adam1991

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#6

Post by adam1991 » Sat Nov 22, 2014 3:24 pm

Amazon. It's what they call their mechanism for viewing the movies you buy or rent from them.

When you buy a movie, you have to download it via their app.

richard1980

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#7

Post by richard1980 » Sat Nov 22, 2014 4:10 pm

And just for clarification, it's called Amazon Unbox, not Amazon Unboxed.

Personally I don't like Amazon Unbox because Amazon encodes the content with Windows Media and the resulting files do not support DD/DTS. Additionally, last time I checked, movies were only available in SD, while some TV shows were available in HD. I'm not interested in paying for low quality content, so I use alternative sources for downloading movies.

adam1991

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#8

Post by adam1991 » Sat Nov 22, 2014 4:35 pm

It must have been a LONG time since you've looked at Amazon movies.

HD is readily available.

Things DO change, you know.

tzr916

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#9

Post by tzr916 » Sun Nov 23, 2014 1:13 am

adam1991 wrote:Amazon. It's what they call their mechanism for viewing the movies you buy or rent from them.

When you buy a movie, you have to download it via their app.
Well, I have Amazon Prime. Use my PC to browse titles and add to my watch list then use my Bluray player to watch.

I have the android app and ipad app but I don't see any "app" for the PC. When I go to a title using my PC, it does not give me any option to download, only play in a browser.

Does anyone have an actual link to this app for the PC that allows downloading titles?

richard1980

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#10

Post by richard1980 » Sun Nov 23, 2014 1:47 am

adam1991 wrote:It must have been a LONG time since you've looked at Amazon movies.
Yeah, it's been a couple of years. So you can download HD movies to your PC via Unbox? Do they use DD/DTS audio or is it still WMA Pro?
tzr916 wrote:Does anyone have an actual link to this app for the PC that allows downloading titles?
They took it down in August. I looked to see if I had a local copy, but I don't.

adam1991

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#11

Post by adam1991 » Sun Nov 23, 2014 2:23 am

I don't pay any attention to the audio.

I have Unbox installed, but haven't used it in awhile.

duder_me

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#12

Post by duder_me » Sun Nov 23, 2014 4:40 am

Here is a link to the installer. I think they took it down because there were some bugs in it.
http://www.amazon.com/cs/unbox/download/104

I got the link from this discussion on Amazon on why it was taken down.
http://www.amazon.com/forum/amazon%20vi ... RNHWFUTYRG

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Scallica

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#13

Post by Scallica » Mon Nov 24, 2014 5:21 pm

richard1980 wrote:And just for clarification, it's called Amazon Unbox, not Amazon Unboxed.
Indeed - thread title updated.
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