Jaman: A Fine Independent Lens

Plenty of services and programs out there for sale and for download on the Web promise superior quality to that of rivals, but now, as we enter the largest phase of the video wars to come in years, we get to see who?s besting whom - real-time.

Amazon Unbox just announced its partnership with TiVO to deliver Unbox content to your living room, without the hassle of networking a computer to a set top box. The content, ranging from television shows to rentals to purchase-to-own movies, will be delivered straight to your TiVO. No halfway house needed. Kinks are bound to come out of the woodwork along the way, but this deal makes for some serious competition for Apple and its own proprietary set top box, due to ship this month, which itself won?t be always perfect fit in peoples? homes.

Then there?s the general assortment of online services that allege to deliver DVD-quality full-length movies to your computer screen. The problem with many of them is that the final picture presented isn?t really on par with DVD quality, and there are so many restrictions and exceptions to sift through that you wonder whether the ?deal? they?re offering is as good as they say. It is usually not.

Then, something great comes along, something that requires a compromise, but a compromise you?re eager to make. I recently learned about just that kind of something, and now I?m letting you know about it.

It?s called Jaman. I can?t tell you what the name means, but I can tell you some things about the item it?s attached to. It?s a program that has at its core Quicktime technology. Okay, if you need to, you can allow yourself to be put off immediately by that particular factoid, but here?s the kicker. The reason Jaman was developed to run Quicktime video is because the team behind the project decided that DVD quality wasn?t going to cut it; they wanted more. They?re happy with QT. They wouldn?t even think of less-than-DVD quality picture. That just wasn?t going to happen.

Jaman doesn?t deliver hi-def blockbusters to your monitor, and it?s not going to play nice with the big screen at home at the moment. Instead, it?s focused entirely on bringing independent features to your desktop or laptop through the company?s own software. Think of it as iTunes solely developed for video.

So, we?ve covered the fact that Jaman delivers feature-length independent film to your screen. Now, on top of that, it?s interactive. What?s interactive? It can mean a lot of things, really. It can mean you can play or pause video (duh); follow along with the story in some strange semi-virtual manner; and lots of other things too. But the interactivity featured on Jaman is both side-wide and film-wide.

First, Jaman runs a rating system on its website, where you?ll find others? favorites and the like.

Within Jaman, you?re able to sit back and watch your downloads in full-screen. They?re pretty that way. But if you choose to shrink the video down to where it fits the window of the program itself, a bar emerges to the right. In that bar, you?ll sometimes find messages pop up as the film progresses. Those messages are kind of like Post-It notes, and they?re put there by other users who?ve seen the film and wrote something they wanted to tag with a particular scene. Of course, how well Jaman executes the delivery of these messages to folks? screens as it?s usership grows will certainly tell whether the option is to be trashed for the next revision of the product, or if it?s there to stay. I?m hoping that they keep it on; it?s incredible cool.

You?ll also enjoy that pricing is very reasonable on Jaman. At the moment, it is in beta, and as far I as I can tell all films are available for rent free of charge ? but only for a limited time. You?ll eventually be charged $1.99 to rent a movie, as view often as you wish, keeping within the 7-day rental period, of course.

Also, if you?d like to purchase a film to own from Jaman, it?ll only cost you $4.99. For DVD-quality video, that?s cheap. For better-than-DVD-quality, that?s a bargain. What is absolutely wonderful about independent film is that you rarely ever hear about them, and cinematography is often one-of-a-kind. There are plenty of foreign language films available on Jaman, and for $1.99 ? the same price as a single television episode (which you?ll probably never watch again) on iTunes or just about any other similar service ? you really can?t go wrong with a rental.

As far as I can tell, the only downside to Jaman is the lack of any output options to one?s television screen, and that you?re only able to view a movie when the download has finished.

Rarely are we completely happy about a product. But with Jaman, I?ve emerged feeling enormously content. For a beta product, it simply has no parallel, and you?d do yourself a great big favor by trying it out.