HitBliss

I got an email ad from Hulu featuring DragonHeart as one of the featured movies.  [I remember watching part of this movie at Circuit City, but didn't know what movie it was.  But I remember a dragon and a red-haired woman.  I finally figured out it was Dina Meyer in the movie DragonHeart.]  Sadly, it wasn't available.  (That might tell you something about Hulu).

Anyway, I checked to see if was available for streaming elsewhere.  Only on Infinity at this time.

Then I checked a few more movies to see if they were available.  I noticed that the Matrix was available at HitBliss, a service I never heard of.  They show movies for free, but in exchange for watching ads.

Maybe I'll try it later, but I don't feel like watching ads at the moment.

In the meantime, here's a review.  And another.  And another.  The Verge.  Mashable.  BitWhich.

Sounds interesting.

***

Hmm.  Apparently you can earn credits on HitBliss then spend them at Amazon Instant Video!  (Then watch on your Roku or whatever.)  Hey maybe I can buy some Cesar 911 episodes.  I'm now tempted to try it.

***

OK, let's try.

Downloaded the app for my ipad, but evidently it requires you to create an account first.

OK, go to my laptop.  Create an account (which requires you name, email address, and password, oddly no double-typing of password for verification -- that's one strike).  After doing that, you're required to download a program. So can't do it strictly from the browser (strike two).

Downloaded and installing the program. Evidently there are two different programs.  One is the store app (HitBliss Store) and the other is the earnings app (HitBliss Earn).  There's an option (at the beginning) to download one or the other, but I see no reason to.

I see you can actually earn cash (as in real money sent to you), but with some stipulation.  Here's the wording in the agreement that most people don't read.

You may use your earnings to make purchases in the HitBliss Retail Store, using the separate Store App if you elect to install it and in accordance with the Store Terms of Use. Using your earnings at the HitBliss Retail Store does not require us to transmit them to any third party, as we own the HitBliss Store.

If you chose to have your earnings mailed to you, we will mail a check within 90 days of your completing the following steps:

1. You send an e-mail to mailmyearnings@hitbliss.com requesting that your earnings be paid to you by a check.

2. The subject line of the e-mail must state your HitBliss Earn account username.

3. The body of the e-mail must indicate: the e-mail address associated with your HitBliss Earn user account; your first and last name; and your address, including, city, state and zip code.

4. Attached to your e-mail should be a scanned copy of your driver’s license or other document verifying your residence.

5. We will then email you an IRS W-9 Form, which you must complete and return to us before we can finish processing your request and send you a check.

After we have processed your request, we will mail you a check for your earnings, less a service fee (currently 2.5% of the earnings amount) for processing your request, postage fees, and any service or transmittal fees charged for payment processing services (collectively, “Service Fees”). We are not liable for any checks lost in the mail or undeliverable for any reason, including due to errors in your contact information. We will mail only to addresses in the United States. You may also request that we apply your earnings, or part of them ($5 minimum), for the purchase of a charitable donation to Prize4Life or another charity of our choosing in the United States. You agree that we may deduct the applicable Service Fees from your HitBliss Earn account when purchasing a charitable donation.

We will regularly monitor your HitBliss Earn account activity. If your HitBliss Earn account has been inactive and you have accumulated unused earnings, we will remind you of your unused balance by e-mail or through the Earn App. If you do not use your balance within 30 days of our notification, we will notify you by e-mail or through the Earn App and offer to mail your unused earnings to you  (less the applicable Service Fees and subject to the steps described above for obtaining a check for the earnings).  If you do not request that your earnings be mailed to you by completing the steps listed above, within 365 days of our notice, we may, at our discretion: (i) suspend your HitBliss Earn account and access to the Earn Services; and (ii) apply your earnings balance for the purchase of a charitable donation to Prize4Life or another charity of our choosing in the United States (less the applicable Service Fees). In purchasing a donation to a charity, we are not acting as your agent or making the purchase on your behalf; we are instead being authorized by you to purchase such a donation. We do not guarantee that you will receive a tax receipt for such donation. Proof of the donation is available upon written request to us. Note that this donation will never exceed the Earn Cap.

HitBliss Earn includes a localized matching engine that, with your express permission, automatically builds your Private Profile for the purposes of personally attracting relevant marketing messages and improving your earning experience. You may also add information to your Private Profile and indicate whether you want to use such information to attract and have marketing messages served to you in your queue. You may modify your Private Profile at any time, through your Earn App.

After installing the Earn App and authorizing use of our localized matching engine, the matching engine will operate continuously on the device to which it was installed. When you enter HitBliss Earn, marketing messages matching your profile will be served to you in your personal message queue.

[and a whole lot of more lawyer-speak]  OK, Agree and install.  Apparently the app (or the installer) is from Project Concord.  Ah, that was its previous name.

OK, I see an icon on the desktop and app started automatically after install.

Sign in.

Looks like a pretty slick interface.  There's three main sections/actions to do.

(1) Looking for something specific?  Search for it here?

(2)  Once you've picked what to watch, earn cash to buy it here.

(3)  Browse for your favorite movie or TV show.

Evidently it lets you browse through the Amazon catalog, at least partially, as I see some movies/shows sub-labelled with Amazon.com.  Actually almost all of them are.

Let's see if I can find Cesar 911.

Looking at Reality section, I see It's Me or the Dog.  But don't see Dog Whisperer or Cesar 911.  Let's do a search.

Dog Whisperer doesn't come up.  No Dogs in the City.  No Cesar 911.   Shucks.

Looking the movies, I see most of them are available for $2.99 for a 24-hour rental.

More search, no Monk.

Ah, here's one I might want. Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  It's $1.99 to purchase on Amazon.com.

I see Iron Man and Iron Man 2, but not Iron Man 3.  Thor and Thor: The Dark World are both on there.  Thor is a $2.99 rental, while Thor: The Dark World is $4.99.

No Man of Steel.

For the Amazon purchases, I see the message "Use your HitBliss earned-cash to buy an Amazon.com GiftCard to rent this title on Amazon Instant Video".  So I'm wondering if you can buy a gift card to rent or buy anything at Amazon?  I wonder how they check?

Well, let's earn some credits.

Three steps.

1.  Go here to earn cash (HitBliss Earn)
2.  Personalize and earn faster (Trust Level)
3.  Check your account balance here

You start at Trust Level 1.  10 points to next level.  Higher trust levels enable faster earning with fewer interruptions.  Increase your trust level by paying close attention to ads.

Click HitBliss Earn.  First the 60 second tour.

You can pick three personalization options.

Earn Slower
Earn Faster
Earn Fastest.

Let's go fastest!

Asks for your age, gender, income level, education, children's age.  Click finish.

And you have to pay attention.  (No leaving, switching tasks, etc.)

Let's start earning.

Visit our sponsors to keep HitBliss running!
Browse ads and watch them out of order.
Your earnings accumulate as you pay attention.

First an Aflac ad.  When I Alt-tabbed to write this, the ad stopped.  Pretty smart.

Watched about four ads and hand to click or press return a couple of times so they could make sure I was there.  Now at Trust Level 2!

A few more ads and return presses and I'm at Level 3!

Up to 20 keypresses and Level 4.

Let's see how much I have earned.  Hey up to $3.48.  Enough to buy something.

OK, let's try buying Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, the pilot episode.  It goes to a Link Account window and asks you to log in to Amazon.com.  A wheel spins while it tries to link the account.

Link apparently successful as a message comes up that Amazon might charge you a sales tax (though "to the best of our knowledge, you might come from a state that doesn't charge a sales tax on video rentals.  However it is possible that Amazon might start charging the tax in the future.).  I agree.

Confirm your purchase.  Cash balance $3.48.  Amazon.com Gift Card purchase.  Balance $1.49.  Confirm.  Wheel turns some more.

Congratulations!  You have purchased a $1.99 Amazon.com Gift Card to buy Marvel's Agents of SHIELD (Season 1) - Pilot on Amazon.c...  Access the title on Amazon.com   Watch Now or Close

Let's go to Firefox and Amazon.com to see what happened.  Checking my account, I see it in my Video Library.  In face I see several videos in there that I didn't know (or forgot that I had).  Lexx Season 1.  The Batman Season 1.  Learn Along with Sesame Street Season 1.  Argo: Declassified [HD].  Good Day to Die Hard, A: Extended Preview [HD], House Season 4.

Now I wonder if I can watch on on my iPad and/or Roku?

OK, I guess that answers the question.  I can't just buy anything.  Only titles accessible through HitBliss.

Let's earn more.  Darn, wasn't paying attention and didn't press enter in time.  My trust level dropped to 2.  Again.  Now back on 1.  But at least it doesn't erase the money earned.  Now up over $2!

OK, let's see if I can watch the video on my iPad.

Install Amazon Instant Video from the App Store.
Sign in.
Click on the Library icon at the bottom.
There it is!
And I can stream it to the Apple TV.  Pretty cool.
Even the subtitles work.

***

go back to watching ads.  back to level 4!

You've watched all available ads.  We'll now show you ads that you may have skipped in the past.  Resume.

You've reached the end of the ad queue.  Reload ads.

A few more watches.  You've earned the maximum balance!  You can earn more after you spend some of your earnings.  OK

I now have a balance of $6.00.  Cool.

Let's buy something.  I'll buy episode 7, season 10 of South Park. That's the one with Cesar Millan.

Exit app on iPad.  Then go back in.  There it is.  Shucks, no captions.  I'll live.

***

Trying out the HitBliss app on the iPad.  Works about the same as on the PC as far as earnings.  But it appears you can't buy movies or TV shows from the app, you have to do it from the computer.

***

Went home and ran Amazon Instant Video on my Roku.  Yep, it's there in my Library.  Looks good.  And the captions look better than on Hulu Plus.  Looks like they're using the Roku captions.

***

Install HitBliss on my home computer.  Purchased MAOS, episode 1.

What else is there?  Hey, NCIS.  Which isn't on Netflix or Hulu.  I see the Season 10 recap is free.  So I can buy that from the website.  OK, let's go for season 1, episode 1.  Got this message

With this purchase, you will reach your weekly limit of 4 Amazon movies or TV episodes.  After this purchase, you'll be able to buy again on April 15 at 1:00 AM.  OK, so there is a limit.  And I guess you'd better buy your 4 before the week is up..

Let's earn back that $1.99.  Watched one ad.  Balance up to $4.27.  So it's like 26 cents per ad.  Let's round it off to 25 cents.  So you need 4 ads for $1.00.  The max $6.00 would be 24 ads.  At 30 seconds per ad, that comes out to 12 minutes.

Yep, three more commercials, up to $5.01.  And am now on trust level 5.

***

I notice the HitBliss Profile Builder runs on startup as I can see the icon in the system tray.  I don't see an option to prevent it from starting.  If you're uncomfortable with it running, you can go to msconfig or use ccleaner to prevent it from starting up.

But even if it doesn't run on startup, it'll run when then application is started and will stay in the background even when the application is exited.  So you have to exit both separately.  (Right-click on the "b" icon in the system tray and choose exit.

***

When I went to rent a movie, it asked me for credit card information.  It asks this even though you have a HitBliss balance enough to pay for the rental.  This is because some vendors want the item to use a credit card (for nonsensical reason).  So your credit card won't get charged.  But HitBliss offers you the choice of using their own credit card if you don't want to use yours.

*** [4/14/14 palindrome week]

Now I see that the weekly limit of 4 movies and/or TV shows applies to Amazon.com shows.  You can buy more than that for HitBliss shows.  They don't have that many TV shows, but there's quite a number of movies available.  Currently there are 414 HitBliss movies and 53 HitBliss TV shows.  Of course, each TV show has another of episodes, so there's probably more HitBliss TV episodes than HitBliss movies.

***

Browsing.  I see there's all the Harry Potter movies.  The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  The Matrix Trilogy.  The four Indiana Jones movies.  The three Jurassic Park movies.  Only the first Back to the Future movie.  No Star Wars.  Only the Star Trek movie from 2009.

*** [4/15/14]

The latest version of HitBliss automatically downloaded upon running it this afternoon.  There's some new TV shows that I hadn't seen in there before.  There are now 549 TV series and 2492 movies.  Wow, imagine if you had to buy all the DVDs!

*** [5/9/14]

In the past few months, we at HitBliss have been working behind the scenes to collaborate with large entertainment services to make our service bigger and better. We have now reached the point where we need to put our beta on hold in order to complete the work on joining forces with these partners. We anticipate that this hiatus will take a few months.

In the meantime, you can request that your earned-cash balance be disbursed as an Amazon.com Gift Card. The instructions will be sent to the e-mail address associated with your account.

That’s about all we can say publicly for now. But when all our work is done, we think you’ll be very happy with the result. We really appreciate your patience and look forward to coming back to you soon – bigger and better!

[we'll see how long it takes to get my Amazon gift card, if ever.  Can't complain.  Got 8 episodes of Marvel's Agents of Shield, 3 episodes of Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle, 2 episodes of NCIS, 2 episodes of The Mentalist, and 1 episode of South Park (though I can now get it now on Hulu Plus anyway).  So that's 16 episodes for "free")]

[our long facebook thread on hitbliss and other items]

*** [3/31/15 - via searching for HitBliss on twitter]  Everything We Know About The Future of HitBliss