9.2 and Unbox...has anyone tested it?

I don't see the connection.

It works for TivoCasts. I assume it works for Unbox. Not a big deal to me.

Yes, you can watch unbox stuff while downloading. Essential feature, imo, but I'm still waiting higher quality video.

In previous versions (at least 8.3) you have to wait for Unbox video to finish downloading before you can start watching. Can any of you confirm in which version you were able to watch as it's downloading?

yunlin12 said:

In previous versions (at least 8.3) you have to wait for Unbox video to finish downloading before you can start watching. Can any of you confirm in which version you were able to watch as it's downloading?

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This is the one of the new features of 9.2.

Yeah, not sure what the issue is here. If TivoPony and the new update message say that this feature was added, then I'm thinking it's a pretty solid lock that it works.

Also, doubtful that this will precipitate HD downloads. The Unbox PC player has had this functionality since launch.

yunlin12 said:

In previous versions (at least 8.3) you have to wait for Unbox video to finish downloading before you can start watching. Can any of you confirm in which version you were able to watch as it's downloading?

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I suppose I wasn't clear enough. I tried it and it works. In 9.2 like the subject and OP stated.

Revolutionary said:

Yeah, not sure what the issue is here. If TivoPony and the new update message say that this feature was added, then I'm thinking it's a pretty solid lock that it works.

Also, doubtful that this will precipitate HD downloads. The Unbox PC player has had this functionality since launch.

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Its not a question of Amazon being able to do it, its a question of Tivo being able to do it (progressive play). If I were Amazon, I would want Tivo to have this feature running before I thought about rolling out HD content.

kmill14 said:

If I were Amazon, I would want Tivo to have this feature running before I thought about rolling out HD content.

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I still don't see why. Anyway, this is less likely to work well for HD content, since it will need a higher bitrate. To watch while downloading, you need to either have it coming in faster than real time, or start watching very late in the download (which kinda defeats the purpose).

I agree that viewing while downloading is a separate thing as HD downloading. Vudu allows viewing while downloading, I think Unbox/Tivo is trying to compete. As far as HD, as far as I know Vudu doesn't do it, XBox Live Marketplace doesn't do it, I don't think anyone's demonstrated how to deal with the bandwidth crunch.

As far as whether the viewing while downloading is limited by Tivo or Unbox, I really suspect this is related to the container format of Unbox's MPEG files. Tivo's MRV can start playing while it's downloading, so Tivo already has built-in code to handle this. I was going to suggest to also try Unbox download on a PC to see if this is possible, then I realized the PC version and Tivo version of Unbox are actually different files, so the file format may be different and won't tell us anything.

I just downloaded an Unbox video, and the viewing while downloading works great! So happy they finally did this.

I hit "Play" as soon as I saw the video in the Now Playing list, and it told me it couldn't start yet, since it hadn't downloaded enough content yet (or something like that). I waited another 2 minutes or so, and hit play again, a message came up similar to the "go back" messages about download speed being a factor for viewing while downloading, and then I started the video.

My download is a little over 2x real time speed for the video playing, so this is great! I will probably end up renting a lot more now.