Video-on-demand will help reduce piracy?

Amazon seems to really be pushing it's new product, Unbox, a video-on-demand/download service that it launched at the beginning of this year. Another mail went around to us affiliates today, reminding us of the service.

The service ties in with the TiVo system (Series2 or Series3 TiVo) and allows you to effectively buy or rent videos by downloading them to your TiVo DVR device for a fee. In the case of rentals you then typically have 30 days to watch the video, but only 24 hours to complete the viewing once you have pressed Play.

This seems like a case of the industry finally trying to catch up with rampant piracy. I believe one of the reasons piracy may be so prevalent, apart from people just plain not wanting to pay for stuff, is simply the convenience of downloading frankly easily-accessible pirated material.

Perhaps the advent of quick and easy services like Unbox will finally help the industry recover lost sales by offering customers a simple and relatively cheap way to buy videos.

Give it a go and let me know how you get on. I would be interested to hear what people think of Unbox, whether it will affect the buying habits of movie-viewers, and whether I need to go out and buy one of those TiVo doo-dabs.