I loves me some 99 cent rentals

[pdhenry]

As noted in another thread, there are two movies that can be purchased for free.
El Callejon de los Milagros (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TFJCDC)
Inspiracion (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TGZV7W)
These are two Mexican movies, in Spanish with English subttles.

El Callejon de los Milagros is "the most awarded film in Mexican History" with 49 international awards.

Inspiracion is "The story about a teen that falls in love and discovers his life is about to change. a film about wanting something and fighting to make it happen."

Makesure you buy the movies, as renting them is still $2.99.

[davezatz]

This week's cheap rentals are[list]
The Bourne Supremacy


I'd be interested to hear if the fast action survives the transcoding unscathed.

Will have to check out those free movies - thanks pdhenry.

[moxie1617]

I'd be interested to hear if the fast action survives the transcoding unscathed.

Will have to check out those free movies - thanks pdhenry.

What's confusing to me is the fast action in Jet Li's Fearless was okay, the slow panning is what was bad. Most of the motion artifacts I've seen have been with panning, not with action scenes. Go figure. :confused:

[JustAllie]

What's confusing to me is the fast action in Jet Li's Fearless was okay, the slow panning is what was bad. Most of the motion artifacts I've seen have been with panning, not with action scenes. Go figure. :confused:
+1, that's when the problem occurred when I was watching "The Holiday."

[dswallow]

What's confusing to me is the fast action in Jet Li's Fearless was okay, the slow panning is what was bad. Most of the motion artifacts I've seen have been with panning, not with action scenes. Go figure. :confused:
MPEG compression works well when isolated portions of what appears onscreen are moving. When the entire image is moved or replaced, it requires much more bandwidth to accommodate storing all the necessary info. The encoding process places limits on how much bandwidth will be used -- a maximum bitrate. And if the bitrate needed is higher than that maximum, areas of the screen end up being skipped over because they can't be fully encoded within the bandwidth limitations. So it may take several frames to catch up with all the changes that occurred onscreen, and you'll see various artifacts during that time. Fast action in small areas of the screen is easily compressed since much of the screen remains unchanged frame to frame. But if you were to zoom in on the action and pan with it, you'd face encoding limitations again, and display artifacts.

[moxie1617]

Thanks, that makes sense. No longer confused.

[pdhenry]

This weekend:

99 cent rental:

The Bourne Supremacy (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000Q79HS8/)
The Bourne Identity (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000Q76K1A/)
Breach (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000RVP7YQ/)
Ghost Rider (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UDJS2S/)
Dead Silence (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UDNXPQ/)
Norbit (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000U5XVJC/)
Free to own:
Un Rey en la Habana (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TVNP2U/ref=dv_m_unreyhabana/103-1694837-8952639)
Hormigas en la Boca (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TK94YE/ref=dv_m_Hormigas/103-1694837-895263)

[MickeS]

Thanks again for the reminder!

I rented "Dead Silence" on DVD last week... highly recommended for horror fans, REALLY scary IMO. :)

I'm getting "Ghost Rider" now. :)

[ZeoTiVo]

As noted in another thread, there are two movies that can be purchased for free.
El Callejon de los Milagros (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TFJCDC)
Inspiracion (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TGZV7W)
These are two Mexican movies, in Spanish with English subttles.

El Callejon de los Milagros is "the most awarded film in Mexican History" with 49 international awards.

Inspiracion is "The story about a teen that falls in love and discovers his life is about to change. a film about wanting something and fighting to make it happen."

Make sure you buy the movies, as renting them is still $2.99.
the first was too much at free I am afraid :) every cliche about a foreign film and why it is boring was there. :down: :down:
Inspiracion was a fun love story with a very mature theme on how true love was to be. That one would be worth a 99cent rental. :up:

this has been an unauthorized review, should you disagree then you have no one to blame but yourself :)

[20TIL6]

This weekend:

99 cent rental:

The Bourne Supremacy (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000Q79HS8/)
The Bourne Identity (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000Q76K1A/)
Breach (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000RVP7YQ/)
Ghost Rider (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UDJS2S/)
Dead Silence (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UDNXPQ/)
Norbit (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000U5XVJC/)
Free to own:
Un Rey en la Habana (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TVNP2U/ref=dv_m_unreyhabana/103-1694837-8952639)
Hormigas en la Boca (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TK94YE/ref=dv_m_Hormigas/103-1694837-895263)

It's great that they would put the Bourne movies on special just as the latest installment hits the theaters. For $2, I'll be able to catch the earlier ones before going to see the Ultimatum.

[alansh]

This weekend: Babel (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000P6PVLC)
Breach (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000RVP7YQ)
Ghost Rider (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UDJS2S)
Pride (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000U9YP48)
Shooter (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000V1Z8KK)
TMNT (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UUF69A)Remember the initial credit for signing up your TiVo expires 9/1.

[Havana Brown]

I'm dowloading movies I wasn't interested in before just cause they're cheap. :o

[smark]

Lots of good stuff this weekend.

300
TMNT
Shooter
ATHF

[Havana Brown]

Lots of good stuff this weekend.

300


Done! :up:

[mrmike]

Mujeres Infieles (2004) (http://www.amazon.com/Mujeres-Infieles/dp/B000TMIOXY/) is also 0.99 if you're into that sort of thing.

Anyone know why sort by price doesn't put the 0.99 ones in the right place?
That's annoying.

ATHF (http://www.amazon.com/Hunger-Force-Colon-Movie-Theaters/dp/B000V3BHWQ) link for the lazy

[dswallow]

Anyone know why sort by price doesn't put the 0.99 ones in the right place?
That's annoying.
I'm trying to find that out myself. My guess is that there's really just a sale price field in their database with start/end times and the sorting doesn't take that into account, and/or the data is stored on multiple servers and isn't being updated properly on some.

Last week was weird... sometimes I'd only get all 6 $0.99 rentals showing in sort by price if I didn't exclude purchase-only downloads. If I tried to show rentals only, I only would get 2 of the specially priced videos shown.

Last night, shortly after midnight ET, prices on a few videos were shown as $0.99 on the main page but none were showing up correctly in sort by price.

[MickeS]

Anyone know why sort by price doesn't put the 0.99 ones in the right place?
That's annoying.
Because the entire Unbox site sucks? :)

I don't know who did that part of the Amazon site, but it's really bad.

[smak]

A little warning, i bought the whole season of "Dexter" which I found under the Unbox/Tivo/TV section, and it won't download to my Tivo, and Amazon says it can't download to Tivo at this time, and they'll get back to me in 5-7 days.

I wanted to use up the rest of my credit, and I basically got the whole thing free, but now I might have to watch them all on my PC.

-smak-

[Havana Brown]

Mujeres Infieles (2004) (http://www.amazon.com/Mujeres-Infieles/dp/B000TMIOXY/) is also 0.99 if you're into that sort of thing.

Anyone know why sort by price doesn't put the 0.99 ones in the right place?
That's annoying.

ATHF (http://www.amazon.com/Hunger-Force-Colon-Movie-Theaters/dp/B000V3BHWQ) link for the lazy


So I'm NOT crazy. I thought I just didn't know how to navigate the thing. :o

[Havana Brown]

Are this weekend's .99 rentals repeats of some before? :confused:

[moxie1617]

Zodiac and Hot Fuzz are new.

[pdhenry]

I definitely haven't been going to the well as often as when all of the offerings were first-timers.

[spikedavis]

You can't beat Zodiac and Hot Fuzz for 99 cents each. That's an incredible deal.

Too bad they aren't High Def versions....

[MickeS]

Hot Fuzz is awesome.

[dylanemcgregor]

I definitely haven't been going to the well as often as when all of the offerings were first-timers.

Not just that, but there seems to be less new releases (at least ones that I'm interested in) coming to Unbox at all. I'll pay 0.99 for something that I've got a bit of interest in that I haven't seen, and I'll do $3.99 on some rentals if I'm really interested (it would help if they got rid of the 30 day and 24 hour watching period), but they need to have new, interesting content each week.

[jlb]

This weeks $.99 rentals are as follows:


The Contract
Shooter
I Think I Love My Wife
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Blade Runner
Hot Fuzz

I am not sure which version of Blade Runner it will be, but for .99 and though it would be cropped, I'll grab it for my TiVo for some night that my wife goes to bed early.......

[richsadams]

Also noted that they've added another NBC pilot created by the makers of "West Wing" called "Journeyman" for free. :up:

[MickeS]

This weeks $.99 rentals are as follows:


The Contract
Shooter
I Think I Love My Wife
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Blade Runner
Hot Fuzz

I am not sure which version of Blade Runner it will be, but for .99 and though it would be cropped, I'll grab it for my TiVo for some night that my wife goes to bed early.......

I still don't understand why I can't get the specials email notifications... weird...

Why would BR be cropped? The ones I've rented have been letterboxed, not "pan and scan".

"Hot Fuzz" is hilarious.

Since I've seen "Shooter" (very good quality on the Unbox download!), BR and "Hot Fuzz" already, no rentals for me this time... the others don't appeal to me.

[richsadams]

Some earlier posts on this thread noted problems downloading Unbox material...either failed or slow results. (There's a current thread in the TiVo Help Center (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=362661) started by someone that's having issues.) I just finished an S3/S2, wired/wireless experiment and posted the results (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5504779&&#post5504779).

I thought it might be helpful to anyone visiting this thread that's experiencing problems. Hopefully they'll post some feedback there and any opinions from the experts on this thread would obviously be welcome as well.

[Havana Brown]

I downloaded 4 free NBC shows and it's taken two days to download three of them!

[davezatz]

Shooter must have been 99 cents last week too. I think we watched it on Sunday. It was OK, mostly forgettable but distracting. I watched the Bionic Woman freebie last night - ugh.

[d_anders]

I downloaded 4 free NBC shows and it's taken two days to download three of them!

Wow, I've downloaded 4 of the pilots as well, it took about 8-10 hours for all of them. I did download them before TiVo started featuring them on the TiVo units themselves, so perhaps Amazon now is getting hit now with heavier traffic and have to upgrade...

I have yet to have a download speed issue myself, but it could also be helped by my download speeds. Do you have a fast internet connection? Cable or DSL? What's your speed.

I've got a premium comcast internet connection that provided 5-10Mbps of true sustained download speed, with about 784-1Mbps upload.

[richsadams]

I downloaded 4 free NBC shows and it's taken two days to download three of them!Ouch! :eek: I just downloaded the free NBC pilot of "Journeyman" this a.m. to two TiVo's, one on Ethernet and one on wireless and both took about 20 minutes each. The program is a little more than 1/2 hour long, a 1GB file.

Just tested our Comcast broadband connection to Seattle (home of Amazon...assuming their servers are there too) using Speakeasy (http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/) and the download speed was 8982kbps (of course your results may vary ;) ).

[MickeS]

Mine took about 20 minutes each to download as well. Over wireless 11b.

[ZeoTiVo]

Shooter must have been 99 cents last week too. I think we watched it on Sunday. It was OK, mostly forgettable but distracting. I watched the Bionic Woman freebie last night - ugh.
heh, I liked both of those for the action drama they are. Some people's tastes ;)

PS - all 4 pilots loaded down in 10 minutes a piece or so

[mtchamp]

I'll say it again. As exciting as rentals are at only 99 cents, give me a 3 day watch rental Hollywood and I'll rent your movies. I hit a brick wall with the 24 hour watch limit. All my other TiVo content is easier to consume. Why should I pay for something less convenient. When I have 2 free hours, I go to the theater. Hollywood wins anyway, I guess. Dumb rule, no more rentals from me, never.

[mattack]

Ouch! :eek: I just downloaded the free NBC pilot of "Journeyman" this a.m. to two TiVo's, one on Ethernet and one on wireless and both took about 20 minutes each. The program is a little more than 1/2 hour long, a 1GB file.


Is it a full episode? If so, it should be closer to ~43 minutes long, at least. (I consider that significantly more than "a little more than 1/2 hour").

I'm honestly asking, not nitpicking.

[MickeS]

Yes it's a full episode. And 43 minutes is the length on them.

Whether it's a little or a lot more than half an hour is up to you. :)

[Havana Brown]

Hot Fuzz wasn't bad for being .99

This time it didn't take so long to download. I think the free NBC ones where when everyone else was doing it too.

[lawilson2]

Dude.... Superman vs. Doomsday for .99 cent. Oh wow!

[JPA2825]

I'll say it again. As exciting as rentals are at only 99 cents, give me a 3 day watch rental Hollywood and I'll rent your movies. I hit a brick wall with the 24 hour watch limit. All my other TiVo content is easier to consume. Why should I pay for something less convenient. When I have 2 free hours, I go to the theater. Hollywood wins anyway, I guess. Dumb rule, no more rentals from me, never.

I wish you could run the TiVo through a DVD recorder (like the LiteOn model, for example) while you're playing it in case you get called away or fall asleep and your 24 hour window slams shut. :rolleyes:

[lawilson2]

I'm not getting how people can't watch a movie in 24 hours. I mean, you have 30 days to make time to sit down and watch it. I dunno, when I sit down to watch something, I watch it until it's done. The 360 has the same deal, only their windows is 14 days for movies I believe.

I guess I would be more upset if you had 24 hours to watch it period, regardless of whether you started it or not. I think it just calls for a bit of planning of your time in those 30 long days to put 2 hours aside for a movie...

[anom]

I'm not getting how people can't watch a movie in 24 hours. I mean, you have 30 days to make time to sit down and watch it. I dunno, when I sit down to watch something, I watch it until it's done. The 360 has the same deal, only their windows is 14 days for movies I believe.

I guess I would be more upset if you had 24 hours to watch it period, regardless of whether you started it or not. I think it just calls for a bit of planning of your time in those 30 long days to put 2 hours aside for a movie...

I take it you don't have any small children in the house.

[lawilson2]

I take it you don't have any small children in the house.

No, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. :p

[rambler]

I wish you could run the TiVo through a DVD recorder (like the LiteOn model, for example) while you're playing it in case you get called away or fall asleep and your 24 hour window slams shut. :rolleyes:If you have 2 tivo's in close proximity to each other you can do this.

[richsadams]

As an FYI, dylanemcgregor, was having terrible network problems with Unbox, but with the help of TiVo CSR's he was able to get everything working. Hopefully this will help some folks here.

Click here (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5610840&&#post5610840) to view his post and other related info.

[nexus99]

I saw this and got all excited. Then I reconsidered. I am doing the HD TV thing and use netflix to rent high definition DVDs. (This means I have around 800 bucks tied up in 2 HD DVD players... yeah. I love the toys.) If UnBox offered HD content for 99cent per I think they would have a monster hit on their hands. Although the download times might be horrible. In the standard definition world Unbox is definately on the right track though! If you watch 5 or 6 movies a month... thats only 6 bucks. And you just click to get them. that is COOL :-) I can't wait till there is something like this for HD! Netflix and Blockbustrer will be hurting then! Sorry to ramble :-)

[richsadams]

I saw this and got all excited. Then I reconsidered. I am doing the HD TV thing and use netflix to rent high definition DVDs. (This means I have around 800 bucks tied up in 2 HD DVD players... yeah. I love the toys.) If UnBox offered HD content for 99cent per I think they would have a monster hit on their hands. Although the download times might be horrible. In the standard definition world Unbox is definately on the right track though! If you watch 5 or 6 movies a month... thats only 6 bucks. And you just click to get them. that is COOL :-) I can't wait till there is something like this for HD! Netflix and Blockbustrer will be hurting then! Sorry to ramble :-)I'll second that! We get an Unbox movie or TV show now and then but still watch DVD's when the PQ and sound are important.

If Unbox offered HD we'd be use them exclusively. It takes a regular movie about 40 minutes to download for us (Comcast regular broadband connection). Even if the data were quadrupled I'd be more than happy. Now that they're allowing programs to begin playing soon after the download starts, that might be a headache, but heck, I'd wait for an HD movie with that kind of convenience! :up:

[dswallow]

If Unbox uses MPEG-4 for HD material then downloads would take less time than the current SD MPEG-2 download. The Series3 and TiVoHD units support MPEG-4, so I'm sure that's what'll happen when HD downloads eventually begin.

[richsadams]

If Unbox uses MPEG-4 for HD material then downloads would take less time than the current SD MPEG-2 download. The Series3 and TiVoHD units support MPEG-4, so I'm sure that's what'll happen when HD downloads eventually begin.Cool. :up: We can only hope.

[pdhenry]

If Unbox uses MPEG-4 for HD material then downloads would take less time than the current SD MPEG-2 download. The Series3 and TiVoHD units support MPEG-4, so I'm sure that's what'll happen when HD downloads eventually begin.The compression may be better but I think it's a reach to say an HD MPEG4 would be a smaller file than an SD MPEG2.