The Amazon Unbox section’s search and category listing needs two things very, very badly.

1. Sort by release date. When I go to my local video store, they have a whole wall of New Releases. I don’t have to turn each box over and check the release date, I know that if it’s on that wall, it was made within at least like a year of today’s date. Amazon Unbox has absolutely no function to sort by this (that I could find in 30 minutes of trying, anyway, and I’m pretty web-savvy). When I click Movies, To Rent, and Action, and sort by New Arrivals, The Neverending Story (released in the 80’s) shouldn’t be number 15 on the list. The closest thing I could find to this kind of a listing was the flash applet on the main Unbox page, and it displays a maximum of like 12 movies; I know for a fact more than that have released so far this year. Please add in a Sort by Release Date, so you can compete with every video rental store ever (but with the added convenience of digital distribution).

2. Categorize by language. If I click on Movies, To Rent, and Comedy, then sort by Newest Arrivals, the first 15 movies are fully Spanish-language. I understand that they probably all got added at once, but this is still very, very frustrating to me; I have almost zero interest in renting a Spanish-language only movie I’ve never heard of, and I certainly don’t need that to be the only language I can choose from on the first page of listings. I understand that Amazon has to cater to a broad audience, and I absolutely applaud you for that; my local video store doesn’t even have a Spanish section. But please give us the option to filter out movies in languages other than our own, just for convenience’s sake.

Thanks very much! As you can tell, I’m quite frustrated by this; these two problems have rendered Amazon Unbox completely useless for me for tonight’s movie viewing, and rather than use up some of my remaining $15 credit, I’m going to have to go to my local video store tonight for a movie. If you fix this, though, I promise you I’d rather spend money with your service. J

-savedR