“Unbox” Unusable
A while back I decided to try out Amazon.com’s “Unbox video” feature, which allows subscribers to view videos using either a streaming technology or by downloading them to their PC for later viewing. I installed the player on one of my spare laptops, bought a few videos (mostly “House” episodes, if anyone’s interested), and was generally happy with the service. Playing the videos on my HDTV rig was very easy and the quality was definitely acceptable.
However, yesterday I decided to move the downloaded videos to a different machine that I’m dedicating for use as a movie/TV server. Imagine my surprise when attempts to run the newly installed Unbox player application were greeted with DRM-related errors. The message basically says “there’s something wrong with the DRM on this machine, and you need to reset it.” The application even helpfully routes you to a Microsoft URL where a fix is allegedly available. However, the “install” box on this URL is grayed out, so either the site is broken or the fix is already installed on this machine.
As it turns out, the Unbox player uses Microsoft’s massively broken (and long since hacked) DRM model. I still haven’t worked out the details, and there’s no support to be had on Amazon’s Unbox site, but it appears the player was written for Media Player 9, and doesn’t work properly with version 10 or above. And since the Unbox videos are DRM-protected, you can’t just play them with any old media player application.
Welcome to the wonderful world of Draconian DRM, sponsored by media-company paranoia over lost licensing income. Basically, if you buy DRM-protected media and something happens to the provider, you’re out of luck. Unless I can get Unbox to work on this machine (or, hypothetically, hack the DRM-protected files to remove those nasty headers, which is patently illegal) I’ve lost the money spent on these videos. Too bad for the consumer. It’s like buying hundreds of Betamax tapes, then having all the players die due to a hardware glitch…the consumer is out of luck.
Entertainment companies just throw up their hands and claim they need to protect their rights. And I agree with that…to an extent. The system is fundamentally flawed when protecting these rights renders legally purchased media unplayable.