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Amazon To Cease Sale of Apple TV and Chromecast
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.
Their terms of service and privacy policy make Google look downright disinterested in collecting its users data by comparison.
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How couldn't this be a base for a an anti-trust lawsuit against amazon ?
Check out amazon family library aka The Amazon Household Program.
"Family Library lets you share Kindle books, apps and games, audiobooks, Kindle Owners' Lending Library benefits, and Prime Instant Video streaming across your Amazon devices and Kindle reading apps after linking your Amazon account to that of another adult in your household. Each adult chooses what they want to share: they can share all of their Kindle books, apps, and audiobooks, or they can choose to only share individual titles."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/...
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important part of Prime. It's important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion.
I really wish companies would drop the BS when announcing things like this. Customers aren't going to be confused. Amazon doesn't want to sell products that compete with their own, fine. I just wish they didn't pretend like they were doing this to make customers happier.
I have 70Mbps high speed cable it but has a 350Gb cap
I found your problem...
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.
So Amazon is jeopardising their own reputation as the one-stop online shop where you can buy any popular goods and items in existence -- just because they want to sell more of their own video streaming gadget? They must be terrified of their competitors.
A critical difference however: neither Fox nor CBS sell the means of access.
Amazon is showing textbook Conflict of Interest.
It's getting worse, and Amazon is hardly the only culprit. Netflix original series are a problem, despite many of them being awesome shows.
How much longer until "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
This signature is false.
I watch Amazon Instant Video, using Chrome, pushed across a ChromeCast to my TV.
When Chrome brought out the new ChromeCast, I bought one immediately just to get the 5GHz version, if nothing else (my 5GHz channels are dead, but the 2.4Ghz are jam-packed).
Fuck that up for me, Amazon, and I will just cancel the Prime subscription and not trust any software or online service from you again. I won't stop buying physical products, but you can forget all the add-on shit. No way I'm having my video library (which is 50% Amazon, 50% Google Play at the moment) tied into a format that I am denied playing how I like even though there is NO TECHNICAL BARRIER as far as I'm concerned. It works today, it should work tomorrow. If it doesn't, I'll reconsider how I use your service.
P.S. Why you'd buy a ChromeCast from Amazon anyway, I can't fathom. Bought from the Google website yesterday, have a delivery waiting for me at the post office today - not bad given that everyone was buying them. Same experience when I bought a Nexus for my daughter. Amazon is great, but you don't buy everything from Amazon just because it's convenient. It still has to be a good deal that you can't get elsewhere.
I don't see it as a COI. Amazon sells stuff, including streaming services, that is their Primary Interest. If a hardware vendor chooses not to support the streaming service Amazon sells, why should Amazon sell the hardware? My corner grocer stopped selling a cream cheese made from yogurt and that space is now filled by it's own brand of similar (but lesser value) yogurt cheese... that's OK because they own the store, not me. I wish they would sell what I want, but they don't so if really I want it I can shop elsewhere. Not every store has to sell every product. Other stores sell the products, and if the products are good they may soon be selling more of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
This has nothing at all to do with selling stuff and nothing to do with appliances or applications. This is all about who gets to be the global publishers of content, who gets the lions share of content profits, who takes 30% for doing fuck all (realistically managing a marketing engine is pretty much doing fuck all except adding massive cost to the end user).
So they are all in it, the ISPs, the internet backbone companies (may ex incumbent telcos), the online sales companies and existing publishers. The people excluded being the people producing the content, thou shalt not direct publish else thou wilst be destroyed by the DMCA and court costs. They are all fighting for monopoly domination of that 30% for doing fuck all and seeking to extend it out to 50% and even 100% ie huffington post you should be thankful for the exposure and ha ha fuck you.
Nothing to do with end users or content producers and everything to do with locking in publishing monopolies.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
The amazon video app is only in the amazon app store, not the google play store. But as far as I know, this is amazon's choice. They want to encourage android users to install the amazon app store so they can sell apps to the users; their video app is a carrot.
I recently tried to get the amazon video app. After 30 minutes of apps pointing at web pages pointing back at the same apps, I deleted the amazon app store and decided that I didn't need to watch amazon prime videos after all.
This is a dick move by amazon, but it's well within their rights. If they want to try to prop up their video service by not selling competing products, no problem; both apple and google have online stores.