Amazon to launch a streaming video shop

By Tim Conneally | Published May 28, 2008, 4:17 PM

An Amazon spokesperson has confirmed to BetaNews that it will be premiering a streaming video service in the upcoming weeks.

At the D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, California, sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos mentioned that his company has been working on an a la carte, pay-per-view streaming service.

Unfortunately, Amazon is not ready to disclose whether the service will be an addition to, or simply similar to, its pay-per-download Unbox service. However, Bezos' comment that was recorded in Tech Trader Daily today noted that the service "will start instantly." This could point to the lack of a need for a dedicated player, such as the one required by Unbox, meaning the streams would start instantly with no additional software. At this point, it is a matter of semantics as a few words are all we currently have to work with.

The emerging popularity of the network media streaming device is no doubt an impetus for Amazon to provide the market with access to its wealth of content.