Free "NBC Pilot"s

[timstack8969]

We can now download free(Amazon Unbox) "NBC Pilot" show. This is Great!!!

[DaveLessnau]

All I got was "Cannot Parse" after entering my password in Amazon Unbox. I've started a thread in the Help Center on it.

[mearlus]

Neat!

Here are the links to the episodes to download. (I believe these will work)

NBC's unbox link: http://www.amazon.com/b/?ie=UTF8&node=46053011

Bionic Women: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000VU6K0I/ref=cm_plog_item_link/104-4442219-2106351

Chuck: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000VU8DCQ/ref=cm_plog_item_link/104-4442219-2106351

Journeyman: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000VVEDWO/ref=cm_plog_item_link/104-4442219-2106351

Life: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000VU2STU

[Solver]

Be careful not to 1-Click a whole season :eek:
(unless you want to that is)

[TomJHansen]

I'm hoping this is a trend...get the season premier before it's on to see if it's worth watching. I saw a commercial for Chuck at an AMC Theater over the weekend and it looks like it could be good.

[Fofer]

Sweet! Just set up three downloads...

Bionic Woman
Chuck
Journeyman

I'll check 'em out when I get home. Thanks for the heads up!

[Amnesia]

Are they in HD? No? I guess I'll wait until the season premieres...

[uspatentideas]

thanks for the news.

[bilbo]

check out the body double of the gymnast in the first five minutes -- before the roof scenes -- just before and after he goes thru the tiny window.

[rambler]

commercial free?

[ZeoTiVo]

commercial free?
si :up:

[Thunderclap]

Well this is the first time I've used Unbox and was pleasantly surprised by the quality. It's obviously not HD but the quality was still fairly crisp, sound was good and the show (Chuck) was actually quite good. But going back to quality I'm not disappointed at all as it seems better than some of the stuff I watch in SD. Now if only they could get rid of the download lag and have immediate playback it'd be really good. (And HD, of course.)

[control-z]

Entering the Amacon.com login and Tivo password was a PITA (can't we use the WiiMote on the Tivo yet?), but overall a smooth experience. My Internet connection sucks, but I'll see how long it takes.

[Turtleboy]

Entering the Amacon.com login and Tivo password was a PITA (can't we use the WiiMote on the Tivo yet?), but overall a smooth experience. My Internet connection sucks, but I'll see how long it takes.

I did it from my computer, not my Tivo.

In fact, I did it when I wasn't even at home.

[chedzo]

Well this is the first time I've used Unbox and was pleasantly surprised by the quality.

+1 :up:

[mrjam2jab]

why do i need to setup digital payment for a free download>

[rudiger]

Well this is the first time I've used Unbox and was pleasantly surprised by the quality.

+2

rudiger

[wmcbrine]

For some reason, "Journeyman" doesn't show up under Free Downloads when I check it from the Tivo.

PQ on "Life" is very good, probably better than SD broadcast.

Edit: Journeyman is in the menu now. :up:

[DaveLessnau]

why do i need to setup digital payment for a free download>

Most probably because this is a "teaser" to get people using Unbox. It looks like everyone's a winner here: 1) NBC sticks it to Apple and gets people interested in their upcoming shows, 2) we get free shows early, 3) Amazon gets people to sign up for and try Unbox thereby breaking through the "first-time" barrier, and 4) TiVo (might) get new subscribers since this is a TiVo-only activity.

[Sandlapper]

Entering the Amacon.com login and Tivo password was a PITA (can't we use the WiiMote on the Tivo yet?), but overall a smooth experience. My Internet connection sucks, but I'll see how long it takes.

Once you set up Unbox on your Tivo the first time, all you have to enter is a 5 digit PIN when you want to buy something, and you do that from your remote. It couldn't be simpler.

[mrjam2jab]

Not sure how long the download time is....but it is apparently slow....i started Bionic Woman...over an hour later it was only 20 minutes into the show....

(i know it doesnt start DLing right away...i starting "the clock" from the time i noticed it was DLing...)

[mearlus]

I don't know about the speed. It may have to do with how many people are downloading them from amazon at the same time or your internet speed. Maybe the transfer rate is throttled if you're recording or watching something at that time as well.

I selected all 4 to download yesterday around the same time I posted. When we got back from our friends around 9pm last night (4 hours later I think) all 4 were downloaded and ready to play. I was actually surprised.

What I'm going to check is to see if we had any other program recording at the same time. Historically when we'd be recording a new show and I would go to transfer a show with TivoToGo the new recording would sometimes get pixilated. I'm curious if this occurs during the unbox downloads. (it could also be due to the hard drive I had as well, which did die 2 weeks ago, but I did experience this over last holiday season and haven't tried since)

[ciTiVo]

Great idea, but only a good implementation.

They should have made it easy to set a TiVo season pass if you liked the pilot. In fact, there is no way to set up a season pass through the normal methods because the shows aren't listed in guide yet.

Still -- I say more pilots! Especially without commercials!!

[20TIL6]

Well this is the first time I've used Unbox and was pleasantly surprised by the quality. It's obviously not HD but the quality was still fairly crisp, sound was good and the show (Chuck) was actually quite good. But going back to quality I'm not disappointed at all as it seems better than some of the stuff I watch in SD. Now if only they could get rid of the download lag and have immediate playback it'd be really good. (And HD, of course.)

I recently bought season 1 of Heroes. It was just a show I did not watch last season, but after many comments from friends I decided to watch it. The picture quality of this NBC show is very, very good. Probably the best I have gotten from Unbox. I guess NBC is serious about this downloadable content stuff. Way to go NBC.

[ZeoTiVo]

Great idea, but only a good implementation.

They should have made it easy to set a TiVo season pass if you liked the pilot. In fact, there is no way to set up a season pass through the normal methods because the shows aren't listed in guide yet.

Still -- I say more pilots! Especially without commercials!!
to set up a season pass the TiVo needs guide data for the show. Hold onto the download until closer to the show premiere and with guide data for the show you can do more options on the download and setup a season pass

[kennedy]

I don't know about the speed. It may have to do with how many people are downloading them from amazon at the same time or your internet speed. Maybe the transfer rate is throttled if you're recording or watching something at that time as well.

I have downloaded many unbox rentals so far and it has usually taken about 45 minutes for a typical 1hr 30min movie - quite acceptable IMO. The NBC pilots were MUCH slower to download - several hours. So either they were giving paid downloads a higher priority and more bandwidth, or the demand for these free shows really taxed the Amazon download service. Anyways, I was really pleased to see this offering by TiVO and NBC.

[DaveLessnau]

Just watched the pilot of Chuck I downloaded. Excellent video quality and an excellent show, to boot (I can't remember the last time I watched a show that good).

[hopefulboydy]

Am I the only one that has problems when playing on a series 3 box? I downloaded the bionic woman and the other files to my series 3 and they play very badly (jerky and pixely). But when I downloaded again to my series 2, the first one I watched (bionic woman) plays perfectly.

Anyone else have problems with the series 3 (not the new tivo HD)?

[wmcbrine]

They get very jerky for a few seconds after I rewind them. (Other Unbox videos have the same behavior, though I'm not sure if they all do.) Otherwise not.

[spot1x]

Am I the only one that has problems when playing on a series 3 box? I downloaded the bionic woman and the other files to my series 3 and they play very badly (jerky and pixely). But when I downloaded again to my series 2, the first one I watched (bionic woman) plays perfectly.

Anyone else have problems with the series 3 (not the new tivo HD)?


I set them all to download while at work today and just checked two of them when I got home. Sorry but Bionic Woman is still downloading.... But I just watched about 5 mins of the chuck pilot on my S3 and didn't see any issues at all.

So its not an S3 issue...

[peternelson]

I downloaded all four NBC pilots yesterday and got no sound when playing them back. The video was fine, but no sound. This is on a series 2 80-hour TiVo. I've downloaded movies and TV shows from Unbox in the past with no problems. All other shows on my TiVo (recorded by TiVo and TivoCast downloads) play with no problems.

Anybody else have problems with the NBC pilots? I've tried redownloading them today via the Amazon website, and I'll check tonight to see if they'll play OK.

[jtlytle]

No Closed Captioned :down:

[mrjam2jab]

I tried to transfer from 1 tivo to another...to see if they go at same speed...but they dont allow transferring....(but we already knew that, didnt we?)....

[mearlus]

I tried to transfer from 1 tivo to another...to see if they go at same speed...but they dont allow transferring....(but we already knew that, didnt we?)....

Yeah, I found that funny. Why turn on the copy protection bits to prevent sharing within the same network for shows that are free? I guess they're afraid they'll turn up on bittorrent sites... Oh wait, they will anyways never mind :P

[MichaelK]

Am I the only one that has problems when playing on a series 3 box? I downloaded the bionic woman and the other files to my series 3 and they play very badly (jerky and pixely). But when I downloaded again to my series 2, the first one I watched (bionic woman) plays perfectly.

Anyone else have problems with the series 3 (not the new tivo HD)?

I just watched chuck last night and it had like probably 10 instances of pixelation on my S3. I've never had that before with an unbox download to either of my s3's.

Not sure what to think....

[chazas]

I watched Bionic Woman a couple of night ago and was very impressed with the quality of the download.

[oViTynoT]

I have Verizon FiOS... I downloaded Bionic Woman, Life, and Chuck, in total, in about 40 minutes. :cool:

Count me in the happy crowd! Hopefully this type of offering sticks and other networks get on board. :up:

[MichaelK]

in general I think the quality of amazon is very good for something getting downloaded.

I'd love an HD option too but I'm very happy with their SD stuff so far (except this last Chuck download that was problematic...)

[peternelson]

I downloaded all four NBC pilots yesterday and got no sound when playing them back. The video was fine, but no sound. This is on a series 2 80-hour TiVo. I've downloaded movies and TV shows from Unbox in the past with no problems. All other shows on my TiVo (recorded by TiVo and TivoCast downloads) play with no problems.

Anybody else have problems with the NBC pilots? I've tried redownloading them today via the Amazon website, and I'll check tonight to see if they'll play OK.

I downloaded the pilots again and had a similar problem - but restarting my TiVo seems to have cured the "no sound" problem.

[Bierboy]

Not sure how long the download time is....but it is apparently slow....i started Bionic Woman...over an hour later it was only 20 minutes into the show....

(i know it doesnt start DLing right away...i starting "the clock" from the time i noticed it was DLing...)That's odd because my downloads of the 44 minute episodes took about half that time (25 minutes).

[atmuscarella]

I have downloaded and watch all 4 - very good picture quality and no problems at all.

:up: :up: :up: to NBC, Amazon, and TiVo.

Regarding the shows:


Bionic Woman: 3 :up:
Life: 2 :up:
Chuck: 2 :up:
Journeyman: 1 :up:


Thanks,

[MichaelK]

Just checking back in- I downloaded chuck to my other S3 and it plays fine.

I would guess there’s error correction to keep a bad download from occurring but maybe they are sort of streamed and not transferred?

[Bierboy]

I have downloaded and watch all 4 - very good picture quality and no problems at all.

:up: :up: :up: to NBC, Amazon, and TiVo.

Regarding the shows:


Bionic Woman: 3 :up:
Life: 2 :up:
Chuck: 2 :up:
Journeyman: 1 :up:


Thanks,
That's interesting....I would reverse BW and Journeyman personally.

[Atomike]

Correct - Bionic Woman was probably the most "hack" of all the shows. Writing was low quality, acting was terrible. Plot was very amateur. As a former TV Producer, I can safely say that Bionic Woman is very, very, very, very low-rent in story-telling quality.
Journeyman, on the other hand, was fine. Chuck was also quite enjoyable.
Not even interested in Life.