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Amazon To Cease Sale of Apple TV and Chromecast

Posted by samzenpus on from the get-it-out-of-here dept.

Mark Wilson writes: As of 29 October, shoppers will no longer be able to buy Apple TV or Chromecast devices from Amazon. Citing compatibility issues with Prime Video, Amazon emailed marketplace sellers to inform them it is not accepting new listings for the two media devices, and any existing listings will be removed at the end of October. The move indicates not only the importance Amazon places on its streaming Prime Video service, but also that it views Apple and Google as serious rivals. The two companies have yet to respond to the news, but it is unlikely to be well-received.

1 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. The problem is actually Amazon's DRM system. by tlambert · · Score: 5, Informative

    The problem is actually Amazon's DRM system.

    Amazon Prime uses Adobe FlashAccess for it's DRM to prevent copying of rented and purchased content (forget that I could just hook up an LVDS emulator as my "LCD Display" and copy it all anyway).

    ChromeCast and Apple TV don't support FlashAccess because they don't support Flash.

    On the other hand, I have a friend who just bought a Samsung TV on clearance, and it's Amazon Prime video quit running because it started demanding that the Flash version be updated in the TV, which would be great, but it's an embedded system with no way to do that without updating the browser, and Samsung is somewhat notorious for not updating hardware once it's been sold.

    Mostly because it would cost them their ability to write firmware for a new television set, were they to take their television team, and put them on updating an older product that they're not even manufacturing any more, and that won't get them into the consumer's wallets anyway, unless they started charing about half the cost of a new TV for the firmware updates.

    Amazon needs to drop their proprietary system, or insist that Adobe (1) quit changing their DRM implementation, or (2) provide the updates as plugins that *can* be downloaded to any TV, based on the fact that they are running ARM processors. #2 is problematic, since a port of Chrome is the browser used on most of these (the source code costs Samsung nothing), and Chrome quit supporting non-sandboxed third party plugins not purchased through the Chrome App store and/or Google Play.

    So Amazon is pretty screwed here.