Bourne to Download

My son was really jazzed to see the The Bourne Ultimatum after my wife and I saw it last week and gushed about it. "But Brian, you haven't seen the first two Bourne films. You should really see those first."

"Make it happen Dad" was the challenge from my son.

So I had my TiVo look for the first two Bourne films. Nope. They are not playing.

So I checked pay-per-view. Nope, not there either.

So I checked VOD (Video On Demand). Nah, not there either.

In desperation I went to the local video store. Not a winner there either; both films checked out or lost.

Lets, see; what does that leave left?

Now really desperate I tried the Amazon Unbox for TiVo link that recently appeared on my TiVo. This was desperation because I had signed up for Amazon Unbox for TiVo when it first came out and though I ordered two films, I never got them. Maybe I should back up and explain just exactly what is Amazon Unbox for TiVo.

Amazon Unbox for TiVo allows you to go to Amazon.com and select videos to have downloaded to your TiVo. You can rent the video or buy it, either way it is downloaded directly to your TiVo where you can play it like any show your TiVo records.

If you rent the video, it is downloaded to your TiVo where it will stay indefinitely as long as you don't view it. It will automatically delete from your TiVo 24 hours after you first start watching it. So this works the same way as a 24-hour rental, except you can rent it today and not view it for a week or more.

If you buy the video, it is also downloaded to your TiVo, only you determine when it is deleted. But you don't have to keep it on your TiVo, eating up hard drive space. You can delete it and download it again and again from Amazon; they keep a permanent record of download videos you buy from them. Now it is not quite as easy as owning a DVD; it takes a few hours to download a full movie and you get the movie only (there are no DVD extras). On the other hand, you have to wait days for NetFlix to send you the movie you want to see while Unbox can do it in a few hours. Now that we have digressed to give you Unbox background, lets get back to our story!

So, like I was saying, I had signed up for Amazon Unbox for TiVo, and though the service said I had received two videos I had requested though Amazon.com, I had actually received neither. I had tried Amazon technical support, but they were of no real help; the issue was never resolved and I just gave up on Unbox as an unworkable technology.

Then, a month or two ago the TiVoCast link on my Find Programming menu changed into a "Download movies or TV" link and I noticed that Amazon Unbox for TiVo was now listed under that menu. I checked it out and found that I had access to a limited number of videos (though I can access more under the TiVo Swivel Search feature), two of which were The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy. Figuring I had nothing to lose I told TiVo to download them both (and what a deal at $.99 each!). I was pleasantly surprised when a few minutes later The Bourne Identity started to download.

When I checked the next morning, both films were on my TiVo and this weekend has been a Bourne Festival at Casa de Keller. The quality of the films was as good or better than the highest quality our TiVo normally records at. I am very pleased with how it all worked and have once again contacted Amazon tech support to see if we can get it working when initiated from the Amazon end, not just the TiVo end. I'm hoping this all works out because, so far, I really like what I can do with this service.