Customer Reviews

Fun Run - Part 1 & 2

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

First off, let me say I am completely in love with The Office, and it is one of my favorite TV shows in recent history. The plot is engaging, the story entertaining and the characters very memorable. Even people who have not seen the first few seasons would not miss much if they start with the fourth season.

However, my review is more of the Unbox Amazon player and service than the TV show itself.

I write episode recaps and review of the office for a small fan website and even though I watch the show on TV when it first airs, I like to have a copy of it to rewatch again while I am writing. Last season I used the iTunes season pass to accomplish this, but since the Office is not available on iTunes this year, I decided to download the video from Amazon instead.

My first impressions were very good! It was very easy to plug in my current account information into their one-click shopping and buy the episode. However, I then had to download their proprietary software to play the video. Well, Amazon neglected to mention that the player would not work on a Macintosh computer, making my purchase completely worthless. Furthermore, they do not have any refund process in place, and even though I have not downloaded the video, and am incapable of downloading it, I have yet to receive a refund.

Luckily, my girlfriend also enjoys this show and does have a Windows computer and had downloaded it, so I went over to her place to watch it, and the video quality is terrible. It looks like it was recorded on a cheap VCR. Much much worse video quality than the episodes I downloaded last season off of iTunes. Despite that, the files are twice as large as the ones off of iTunes, to the tune of 1 GB per hour of video.

All in all i rate the video as a 10/10, but the service as 1/10.

I recently bought season 4 for $9.99 which is a pretty good deal. But tonight I caught "Launch Party" on WTBS and saw that there was more content on the broadcast than was included here on Amazon. Specifically, after Michael locks the pizza delivery kid in the conference room, there is a scene where Kevin and Oscar are researching the penalties for kidnapping on the internet. On the TBS broadcast, kevin had a few lines about kidnapping being the physical "asportation" of a person. These lines were not included on the Amazon version. Obviously this makes me wonder what else is missing on these episodes.
Overall, I love The Office; Season 4 is hilarious, Amazon's on demand video and Unbox work very well on my computer running Windows Vista with a DSL connection; and I was happy with the price I paid. But I can't give 5 stars if I'm not getting all the content.

This is one of my favorite episodes. There are a few surprise moments in here that just make me laugh out loud.

I don't want to spoil any laughs if you haven't seen it yet. But this is just a really good way to launch into a season and get everyone interested. Definitely worth the down-load price.

I have been a fan of the office since before it's pilot episode. It is the only TV show that I've regularly dedicated time to watch.

For the last three seasons I've downloaded all episodes through iTunes so that while traveling I could watch them on my ipod. This was a great relationship for me making things very convenient.

Now that Amazon Unbox has rights to the office and itunes does not have access to season 4 I've had to learn how to make things convenient again.... but to no avail.

Downloads are first much larger with the .wmv format then the .w4v provided by iTunes. For the sake of comparison an hour with .w4v is approximately 500 megs while the .wmv format is approximately 900 megs. Second the quality appears far worse in .wmv than it is in the .w4v format. Third, iTunes will only put .w4v videos onto my ipod which means I have to go through the added step of converting my Amazon Unbox videos from .wmv to .w4v before watching them on my ipod.

My suggestion to increase the Amazon Unbox fan base is to make this download system slightly more compatible with iTunes. The more convenient you make this the more likely it is that I will use Unbox. If nothing changes then I will just buy the season on DVD.

It took all day to download a 40 min TV spot. i have it downloaded and now it has an error dose not play no. So i don't know about the show but the download stinks.

No Mac support equals poor customer service. iTunes has been successful because of the seamless transaction and viewing process. Until this functionality is fixed for Unbox Video Downloads, business will suffer. I look forward to Amazon raising this service to the service levels and standards of other Amazon product and services.

Kennedy

I never thought Amazon would let me down like this. I am a huge Amazon customer. My purchases go all the way back to the beginning of Amazon. I have spent thousands of dollars on Amazon. I am also a huge Mac fan and user. Amazon is preventing me from using my iTunes, my computer, my Apple TV and my iPod for playback of The Office Season 4. Unbox is so antiquated compared to the elegant method I was allowed to use for the other three seasons. Please reconsider and get together with NBC, will you?