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Amazon Splits Prime Video Service To Compete Directly With Netflix (techcrunch.com)
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."
Seriously, almost every Netflix subscriber will agree that the Netflix GUI has literally only gotten worse with every new iteration. From removing sort and filter options, to putting too much emphasis on movement and DVD box covers to the sheer amount of resources it takes up, it's been a non-stop cluster. It's as if they want to make it difficult for you to watch something you think you would like.
But still, it's 100 times better than Amazon Prime's interface.
What happened to the days of highly functional web interfaces?
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.
Kid-proof tablet..
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.
I've got amazon video on my ipad and a galaxy tab and my phone. It works pretty much anywhere.
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.
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?
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'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.
~Syberz
Of people with no math skills ... or ability to save. .... with one lump sum or pay significantly more by paying per month of a low rate of 10.99 .... :)
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