Amazon Splits Prime Video Service To Compete Directly With Netflix (techcrunch.com) 105
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Starting today, non-Prime members can subscribe to Amazon Prime Video for $8.99 per month. You can cancel any time, you don't have to subscribe to a year upfront. With an Amazon Prime Video subscription, you only get access to Amazon's video library -- no expedited shipping, no music library. When it comes to Amazon Prime, it still costs $99 per year. And yes, it still includes Prime Video. You can also choose to subscribe to Prime for $10.99 per month. You get access to expedited shipping, Prime video, Prime Music, and the Kindle Lending Library. The move is to help the service compete directly against Netflix, Hulu, and other video streaming services. TechCrunch reinforces Amazon's latest move as being in-line with the subscription launchpad they have going with Amazon Prime: "The company can try out new services and see if they work. From day one, these new services will have millions of subscribers. And Amazon certainly spends a lot of time tracking what its users do with these new services."
What about geoblocking? (Score:1)
Are they going to pull the same shit?
Re:What about geoblocking? (Score:5, Informative)
It's really not up to the provided to decide. They don't own (most) of the content, so they are kinda beholden to the rights-holder and their agreements. But please, keep getting mad at the wrong people - the studios like that.
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You're right. I could just pay them and use bittorrent. No complaints.
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Hopefully They'll Get a New GUI Now (Score:5, Interesting)
But still, it's 100 times better than Amazon Prime's interface.
What happened to the days of highly functional web interfaces?
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I have resorted to typing 2 or 3 random letters into the search box then scrolling through the people list to scan the Netflix catalogue for something interesting.
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Since the lists of what they have is public there are several web sites that help you find things on Netflix. Some sites tell you what is vanishing that month and what new programs are arriving, and so forth. For example, flicksurfer.com, not great in my view but it has a lot of ways to search for offerings.
Re:Hopefully They'll Get a New GUI Now (Score:5, Insightful)
What happened to the days of highly functional web interfaces?
User Experience (UX) Engineering.
It doesn't have to function, but it has to have a damn nice drop shadow with rounded edges.
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It doesn't have to function, but it has to have a damn nice drop shadow with rounded edges.
Get with the times! It has to be rectangular, single background color, tons of padding and the thinnest sans serif font one can find. Add translucency for bonus points.
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You are describing the symptom, not the cause.
UIs used to be designed by programmers, who made them highly functional as the GP describes. Programmers pick things like sorted lists and filters because that's what they learned and that's how they like to handle data.
The UX people noticed that ordinary users don't really like that. How often do you see ordinary people even using the sort features in a file browser? Ordinary users are dumb and must be spoon fed the content, or they won't find it. That's why Ne
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But one of the biggest complaints about the current Facebook implementation is that the "latest post" sort order doesn't hang around enough. Of course, Facebook is more interested in "top stories" because it allows them to pretend that all of that promoted / sponsored content is "top". Regardless, that's a sort feature that people WANT to use (but can't). Lots of people hate their content being completely controlled by someone else --- give me recommendations (the 80%).....but also let me see everything
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What happened to the days of highly functional web interfaces?
Hipsters. More accurately their "I know what's good for you better than you do" mentality. Pioneered with great success by Apple Inc - just look at their stock price. Unfortunately you and I are the minority. It's a shame too, my lawn was so beautiful once.
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What happened to the days of highly functional web interfaces?
I once had a really nice reply to this but pressed backspace in the wrong context and lost it all.
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TiVo for the win - use the awesome TiVo interface and find whatever recorded, Netflix, or Amazon (and Hulu Plus if you can stomach ads still) shows you want to watch, all from the same great interface.
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For some, the Tivo is quite expensive for what they want. I agree however, the Tivo interface hooked to Amazon and Netflix is a great user experience, but I don't see many people spending $1k (Tivo Roamio with lifetime subscription) to watch Netflix. I do however love that I have my OnePasses setup for the shows I like, and can click on unrecorded episodes and get forwarded directly into Netflix or Amazon to watch the episode I missed.
The Tivo Suggestions usually contain a few gems as well, I have added s
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I have prime and have yet to watch a video. I cannot understand how anyone would pay money for anything as poorly organized and displayed as that.
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>"Seriously, almost every Netflix subscriber will agree that the Netflix GUI has literally only gotten worse with every new iteration."
How can I possibly agree more? And I am talking about the DVD site even.
Many features I want are missing or taken away or never existed. Want to see actual new releases? Nope. Want to see a trailer? Nope. Want to rate something with partial stars? Nope. Want to sort a search result? Nope. Want to see your own review of a movie page you have up? Nope. Want an a
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Had a relative that tried Amazon Prime for video only, and said it really sucked as the selection was not very large and the few things that he did want to watch there very often included an extra charge beyond the normal Prime subscription.
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The selection is almost unbelievably bad, especially considering they're selling it separately now. We got Prime for the shipping perks because it's an actual savings given how much we order stuff online. I definitely could not recommend prime video at this time.
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My biggest problem with prime video is that it shows me the free content alongside the paid content with little distinction.. and most of it is paid. I wish I could filter out to only see the free content..
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I don't know if there is a default option, but there should be a spot to check for 'included with prime'. At least on the browser version anyway.
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I'm pretty sure there's a section for "New to Prime" for both movies and TV. I scan it every so often and add things to my playlist.
Surely there's a "Prime Video" section for both too. I can confirm when I get home.
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Wouldn't help with the clusterfuck of a GUI, but definitely help with the TV search results, consolidate the fucking seasons into the base show,
Between having every season as its own result and the horrific GUI is why I cancelled after the free month.
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Here's a great example of Netflix's UI where bells and whistles interfere with basic functionality. When you move your mouse pointer over the search button, it expands into an edit box. If you remove your mouse from the widget then the edit box goes away. Thus you must keep your mouse over top of the button in order to type (totally nonstandard in every way). I have a machine with no keyboard that I play music and videos with in my office. I simply use an onscreen keyboard whenever I need to type (which is
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Interesting. (Score:5, Insightful)
So now, it might now make more sense to get a month of Prime for $10.99 instead of pay for 2-day shipping on a single order.
Which might be perfect for me. I've had Prime before but I don't order from Amazon enough to care about paying for it by the year. When I do order from them it tends to be many small orders all lumped within a week or two as I gather the parts for some project or other.
And if it comes with some streaming stuff, I guess I'm OK with that, although I've been paying for Netflix for so many years I don't even think about it anymore.
Christmas shopping - direct delivery (Score:2)
We use Amazon a lot for Christmas shopping. If we purchase from local brick and mortar stores we still have to pay shipping to send gifts to relatives, and pack other gifts in the car. Having them shipped direct to the recipient makes sense, so we use Amazon for that and each year we calculate whether $99 for "free" shipping makes sense. If we could pay about $10 for one month of free shipping, that would be a good deal to ship all of our Christmas presents.
Argghh, split content (Score:2)
I hate that the content is getting split between all these providers. I do see my solution as a couple on months on one then cancel and switch to the next one. Just need to subscribe to each one once a year to accesses the latest season of whatever.
Of course they can come up with solutions to mess over frequent switchers.
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I hate that the content is getting split between all these providers. I do see my solution as a couple on months on one then cancel and switch to the next one. Just need to subscribe to each one once a year to accesses the latest season of whatever.
Of course they can come up with solutions to mess over frequent switchers.
Don't worry. In 5 years time these fragmented providers will merge into one or two mega companies and start charging cable company prices again. Amazoncast and Netfinity anyone?
not worth it (Score:2)
I view amazon prime video as an added bonus to my prime membership, not a primary feature..
The amount of video's that are not included in prime video makes it extremely unreliable in a sense of "lets watch a family movie tonight!"
All of the Video Streaming services need to get better. If music subscription based services worked like video did, everyone would be back to pirating. With Music subscriptions you get 100% of the library, not a subset of their chosen flavor of the month.
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Just a quick example, but try finding the whole Taylor Swift library on the different services.
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Just a quick example, but try finding the whole Taylor Swift library on the different services.
Umm. He said 'music'!
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I'm with you on that, but some actually think it is.
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We don't incorporate "those" into our summaries.
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The issue is just as much with music services:
https://entertainment.slashdot... [slashdot.org]
For music it might not matter as much though unless you care about the latest single. Was "Sound of Silence" by Disturbed exclusive on a service? Would you care?
I use the Amazon Prime Music in the car, and was happy enough with it to cancel my Pandora subscription, but I wouldn't much care of someone's latest song wasn't on the service, as it would get there eventually, and I have so much I can listen to, it doesn't matter.
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All of the Video Streaming services need to get better. If music subscription based services worked like video did, everyone would be back to pirating. With Music subscriptions you get 100% of the library, not a subset of their chosen flavor of the month.
That's a problem with the movie studios, not the streaming providers. The movie and television studios are charging higher and higher prices for streaming providers to access their content, that the providers can't afford to pay for them all. That is why all of the providers (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu) are resorting to making their own movies and shows so that they don't have to pay any royalties.
How about (Score:2)
If Amazon offered Prime video service for Android TV systems?
And $107.88 for monthly vs $99 for a year of Amazon Prime? It's like buy 11, get the 12th month free.
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Buy 11 months and get the twelfth month AND two-day shipping for free. This isn't just a bit more expensive. It's a lot more expensive—more than 30% more expensive when you compare month-to-month (full) Prime versus annual. As a result, the people who can least afford Prime are the ones who end up paying more. For shame, Amazon.
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That's always been the way with annual vs monthly hasn't it? Pay a premium for the "convenience" of smaller multiple payments...
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Not that big a premium..... At that rate, people who can barely afford it would be considerably better off putting it on a credit card even if they have failed to pay their bills and are facing a borderline extortionate 30% credit card APR. The usual and customary cost difference for monthly billing is more on the order of 3-5%.
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If Amazon offered Prime video service for Android TV systems?
Uh, yeah. The past called, it wants you to know that they have literally always done that. What they used to not do was let you use the Prime video app on arbitrary Android systems, and to be fair, not every "Android TV" product was supported... just the popular USDM ones. But now, you can watch Prime video on pretty much any Android device with a proper video driver.
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I would consider the service if they added Google Cast (Chromecast) support. I'm not buying another device to plug into my TV for a single service.
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I've got amazon video on my ipad and a galaxy tab and my phone. It works pretty much anywhere.
Other discounts? (Score:1)
Now if only Amazon would sell me its 2 day delivery service without all the bundled streaming stuff.
Id happily pay.. $79 for it!
Doesn't Netflix use AWS? (Score:2)
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Amazon Web Services. We can help you do cool and important things. At least until Jeff Bezos becomes aware that you're doing cool and important things...
Had to check (conflict of interest and all),and sure enough if they aren't using AWS they are on Google https://www.robtex.net/?dns=ne... [robtex.net]
Yet the way I see it is Netflix is an edge server, they have different standards to follow; the Net neutrality act exempts edged servers from traffic shaping.
Yet a Bill pasted in 2015, pretty much addresses any feuding between the two. "Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act" does address edge servers. "would require the commission to issue regulations that "prohibit
What I want (Score:2)
So now can I have a (cheaper) Prime Shipping subscription without the video and music streaming?
r pay the same price as before and get free kindle unlimited instead of the video streaming
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It would be nice if there was anything worth watching on Prime. EVERY movie I have searched for is not available in Prime Video and I am not talking about the latest movies either. Then to top it off, free 2 day shipping does not mean 2 day shipping. It means they will ship it when they are good and ready to do it.
Also don't forget that most tv series on prime are: First season is free streaming, then you pay per episode for the rest of the seasons.
Fuck you prime.
Chromecast support (Score:4, Interesting)
This might be cool if Amazon would bother to put in Chromecast support, no one is stopping them. Hulu, Netflix, CBS, HBO, and many other streaming vendors have managed to do it. Without that they are nowhere near worth paying for.
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I don't really care about Chromecast Support. I bought the Fire TV and liked it so much I bought 2 more and canceled my cable subscription*. The voice search works great. Lots of good content. An it even has a VLC app that has network support so you can use the Fire TV to stream your local audio and video files!**
*Obviously, there's a lot of content on cable that you won't get with the Fire TV, but it's enough for me. .mkv files with the VLC app. I think there may be an upper
**I've had trouble watching some
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You'll just find the craptastic Fire, and a selection of off-brand Chinese stuff...
Pretty shady move, Amazon.
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Why craptastic? It's very snappy, voice search actually works great, it has 4k output... I've been very happy with it.
The only thing that it lacks (for me) is a youtube app, for watching google play stuff.
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They really want to sell their own exclusive service though, with their own streaming device. Basically all the streaming devices are nearly identical anyway, Apple and Amazon only compete based upon offering exclusive support for their own services (Apple was first, but it sort of languished early on letting others catch up and pass it by). Chromecast competes by being dirt cheap and letting your phone do most of the work. Roku competes as the do everything in one place device.
I'm hoping in the future t
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It would be nice if they bothered to add smart TV support to more models. Netflix is on just about every smart TV ever made, next to YouTube and in the UK iPlayer. But Amazon isn't available on my 2012 Panasonic or on Kodi. I suppose I could shell out for an Amazon dongle, but why bother?
Maybe they are banking on Clarkson to get people to buy the hardware and subscribe.
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Rather than getting a smart TV, and having to replace the entire TV to protect myself from security vulnerabilities in the future, or have to worry about whether it has a webcam watching and listening to me and sending data home, I bought an Amazon Fire stick. It is by far the cheapest way to get the functionality (including a remote) and supports both Netflix and Amazon, among others, not to mention that you can sideload whatever you like, including Kodi — which I have installed. That's why. Of cours
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I looked at the Fire Stick but decided not to bother. The TV is a plasma, the smart features are just a nice extra but it has to be said that I watch quite a lot of Netflix and YouTube with them. There are no security issues with this model and Panasonic seem to have a good track record (the OS is based on NetBSD and they use proper HTTPS connections for everything, I checked).
I also have a Raspberry Pi running Kodi.
When I bought this TV you couldn't buy a good plasma without smart features, and nowadays it
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It's not necessarily possible for that to be an intelligent decision - most TVs now have some smart features, so you'll often have them whether you want them or not. My TV has apps. It also does 3D. I don't want 3D, but the cheaper ones didn't have other features I wanted or a good enough picture. It's Panasonic, though, which doesn't have a great range of apps
When it came time to replace my ancient DVD player I bought a cheapish smart Samsung Blu-ray player. There's an Amazon Prime app for it, as well as a
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It's not necessarily possible for that to be an intelligent decision - most TVs now have some smart features, so you'll often have them whether you want them or not. My TV has apps.
What a drag. That's really terrible. I admit it was a while ago when I bought my TV, but it's moderately fancy (a 52" AQUOS... sadly, from just before they went to LED backlighting) and while smart TVs were not exactly scarce at the time, they were easy enough to avoid.
I don't want logic bombs hiding in my TV
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I got the Fire Stick too, and I think it compares well to my Roku. I will admit that I'm not too picky about my TV though, I just bought a cheap one with decent reviews and no smart features. If the Fire Stick gets annoying, I can always hook something else up. I just watch some Netflix, Plex, and some of the Amazon stuff like the New Yorker.
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This might be cool if Amazon would bother to put in Chromecast support, no one is stopping them. Hulu, Netflix, CBS, HBO, and many other streaming vendors have managed to do it. Without that they are nowhere near worth paying for.
I totally agree. Lack of Chromecast support is very annoying. I ended up buying a Firestick when it was on sale, and have both my Chromecast and Firestick plugged into my HDMI switcher. That way I can control both with my phone. One more step but it makes the best of a bad situation.
5% Discount on all purchases is why you buy Prime! (Score:2)
Many people miss this in the cluttered Amazon web site, however if you're a Prime member and you sign up for an Amazon Store Credit Card, you get 5% back on almost everything you buy.
Spend $2,000 in a year and Prime becomes free then...
It really isn't hard to spend $2,000 a year on Amazon. Between Amazon PrimePantry, Subscribe and Save, computer stuff, games, etc. it adds up really fast.
We also have an Amazon Echo, and Alexa plays free streaming music, almost anything you can imagine asking for is there.
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You will have to send back off brand USB cables and chargers that fry your phone--2 day shipping, please.
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Pretty much every year, Chase Freedom has 5% cash back on amazon (for up to $1500 spending)
That is a good deal, people should of course do that if Chase likes them. :)
This year Discover also had the 5% back on $1500, except that new cardholders get double cash back for a year.
My wife has one of those, we use it for sure. The thing is, all those spending limits are annoying. If you buy a lot of stuff, like we do, the 5% unlimited is rather nice.
Also, even without jumping through the hoops I do, nobody should be getting 0% cash back from their credit card. 1% cash back cards are a-dime-a-dozen, and everybody should have access to one of those. Even 2 percent isn't hard...citi double cash, fidelity amex, now fidelity visa. And that 2% is good everywhere...so everyone should get one of those cards. So really your premium for the amazon 5% card is just 3%. So you really need to spend $3333 at amazon for the prime to break even.
That is all true...
Of course, the $3,333 to "break even" assumes that you place no value on Prime itself. Between the movies and music, the free shipping, etc. we paid for it before the 5%. :)
We seriously buy EVERYTHING from them, including the kitchen sink:
Moen
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I looked at that credit card. However, if you read the reviews, people are saying that if you don't carry a balance, then, at some point, they are going to drop your credit limit to just above your balance for that month. This results in you having a maxed-out credit card and tanks your credit score. No thanks.
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I looked at that credit card. However, if you read the reviews, people are saying that if you don't carry a balance, then, at some point, they are going to drop your credit limit to just above your balance for that month. This results in you having a maxed-out credit card and tanks your credit score. No thanks.
I imagine that many people are poor at paying on time, so over time their credit limit gets lowered rather than raised.
Then they complain because it must be someone else's fault. The irony of course is that their complaints make no sense. If they don't carry a balance, then the limit would go to zero. Instead they complain that the limit is lowered to the balance. That they claim they don't carry.
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I got my Store Card a year ago, when they launched the 5% back (March 15, 2015). I started off with a $2
Waiting for the bandwidth delivery drone. (Score:2)
Did Amazon improve their Prime video selection? (Score:1)
You still have to pay for much of Amazon's content (Score:2)
What riles me about Amazon's Prime Video service is that not only do you have to pay a subscription, but quite often there's a charge for content too, which Netflix doesn't do. A random example - the 15-year-old season 1 of "Six Feet Under" costs 14.99 pounds ($22 or so) from Amazon Prime Video in the UK...and it's only in SD too!
I tried the video service as part of a 30-day free Prime trial and I was deeply, deeply unimpressed with it - not enough free content as I said and a limited content range overall
All they need now is contents (Score:3)
I've browsed Prime Video since I got it for free with my Prime subscription and frankly, it's lackluster.
They have a few cool original shows but there's way too much contents that you have to purchase, sorry... rent, on top of your subscription to actually watch. They have a pretty huge library but I need to pay extra for most of it and I'm not only talking about current seasons, a lot of old stuff needs to be paid for as well.
If I'd be paying 8.99$/month I would expect access to the whole catalog, not 1/3 of it.
Starting today Amazon takes advantage ... (Score:2)
You can get amazon prime, free shipping, discounts AND streaming for $8.25/month
But 10.99 is less then 99.00 so it is such a great deal