Customer Reviews

Jon Heder - October 8, 2005 (Edited Episode)

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

 

 

Overall product is a nice idea, badly executed.

PROS:
(1) no commercials to edit out
(2) massive library to pick from

MIXED:
(1) SOMEONE picks out the parts of the show to include, omitting the parts they think you won't want. But this episode was supposed to be the one with the brilliant Taco Town digital short / add spoof (one of my all-time favorite SNL moments, after following it from episode one). Yet there is no Taco Town on this. I bought this SOLELY for that skit. ... Still, SNL has a lot skits that are just dogs, so some pruning seems like a good idea. I just deeply question the choice made in this episode.
(2) The image resolution (size) is not even DVD. But it seems free of compression degradation (so, quite crisp for its size), and is massively better than the typical You-Tube clip you might find of the same content.
(3) You have to install Amazon Unbox (just another piece of software on your machine to worry about) to be able to download the purchased video. The player for Amazon unbox is not even beta-level coding: it's blurry and the image is half off (below) the screen, no matter what I do. Fortunately, the downloaded video plays fine and looks great (for its size) in Windows Media Player.

CONS:
(1) If you want to clip out just a portion of the show you want to keep, and trash the rest to save space on your PC, forget it. None of the video editting programs I own can do that. The less DRM-obsessed software can't open the .wmv file, and software that can open a .wmv file (like Windows Movie Maker) say's it WON'T because the file has DRM turned on.

OTHER THOUGHTS:
I would buy a BOAT-LOAD of videos if I could edit them to keep what I want, and toss the dross. Look at the iTunes business model. Once they ditched DRM (AND went to CD-quality audio), my purchases there soared. Used to spend maybe $5 a month there; now it's more like $50. I know the marketer's lament: "But what about all those college students who will share our non-DRM-protected content ad infinitum?" I'll skip the logical arguments, and just ask this: is iTunes making more money or less? Hmm?