Amazon to launch video download store

Unlaunched webpages found and mined for information

21 August 2006 12:05 GMT / By Amber Maitland

Amazon is getting ready to launch a huge video downloading store, according to pages found by an ex-Amazon employee.

According to the screengrabs taken by the blogger, the site, called variously “Amazon Unbox Video”, and "Amazon Digital Video" will offer videos for rent and to buy, and offer support for portable media devices like the Creative Zen player and TV monitors.

The blogger, Alan Taylor, also installed a standalone video player that is compatible with Windows from the site.

Most of the pages that he found were taken down once reported, but when Pocket-lint took a look this morning, one of link from Alan Taylor’s site Kokogiak.com went to a page that shows an “Unbox Video” tab at the top between the usual tabs, “Your Store” and “See All 34 Product Categories”.

Underneath “Unbox Video” are options to go to "Top Downloads", "Your Videos", and "Download The Unbox Video Player".

The link no longer points directly to the Sci-Fi films category, as it did when Taylor visited it and took a screengrab.

However, the cached version of one of the pages that was found looks slightly different, with no mention of “Unbox Video”, but rather a tab simply titled “Digital Video” with options to visit “Amazon Digital Video”, “Television Central” and “How To Get Video To Your TV”.

Cnet.com grabbed some screenshots (before they were taken down) of pages that showed Amazon will be offering TV shows as well as “movies, life and learning videos, and international videos”.

Inquiries to Amazon.com have been met with the curt statement, “We don’t talk about what we might or might not do in the future”.

Links: Kokogiak and Cnet.com