Blogs Dashboard

The wrapping’s barely off,  but the reviews are in for Amazon’s new digital movies download and rental service. They’re not good.

From movie pricing to restrictions on how and where customers can watch them, critics say Amazon’s service places more of its emphasis on protecting Hollywood than on making it easy for consumers.

“Maybe the (movie) studios do not want legal Internet downloading to be successful right now?” Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield asks in his analysis of the new service.

Critics have harped on a few baffling new features: While Amazon claims to offer DVD quality movies, files burned onto DVDs can be played on PCs, but not on standalone DVD players — you know, the kind connected to your home television.

“Thats a huge no-no right off the bat, but thats the same restriction Movielink faces, but CinemaNow managed to wrangle out the rights from some studios for select movies,” PaidContent’s Rafat Ali writes. “This issue will get resolved hopefully in the next 3-6 months.”

Greenfield also wondered why a product that faced as many restrictions cost the same or higher than plain old DVDs. “The goal today appears to be to protect incumbent physical DVD distributors such as Wal-Mart,” he wrote.

The ball is now in Apple’s court. The iPod maker is expected to announce its own service next week at an event called “It’s ShowTime”.

Reuters coverage here.

BusinessWeek.com’s story and critique here.

PaidContent.org also had a pretty early first-look review of the service available here.