Amazon Slashes Prices on 4K Content in Response To Apple TV 4K's Launch (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: One of the many announcements at Apple's keynote a couple weeks ago was that 4K movies would be added to iTunes at the same price as HD content. Previously purchased HD movies would also be upgraded to 4K for free, though for streaming only. In response, Amazon Video has drastically slashed the prices of its own 4K content to match iTunes. As Pocket Lint notes, Amazon Video's 4K selection is not only limited in comparison to Apple's, but was incredibly expensive with purchases running over $30. (This price was comparable to services like Vudu and Google, but Apple's worked out deals to offer 4K HDR movies at $19.99.) Over the weekend, it appears prices for 4K titles on Amazon Video are now starting at around $5, with newer releases in the range of $7 to $19.

Comments

Agency Model?

[Luthair]

One wonders whether its Amazon making the change, or whether the studios were setting the prices and are obligated to offer through Amazon the same pricing as the best elsewhere.

that was a plot twist

[kwoff]

I would've expected it to be the other way around: Amazon lowering prices to defeat Apple's expensive launch, heh.

Buy The Disc

[nick_davison]

Amazon and Vudu have both been selling $30 4K copies.

Alternatively virtually every disc now comes with an Ultraviolet (Vudu/bunch of other branded services) code.

Buy a 4K movie on disc for the same price as the Vudu digital copy and you get the 4K Vudu version plus discs that never degrade quality due to bandwidth and, best of all, still play when your digital merchant of choice decides to retire their service.

Plus Vuduâ(TM)s disc to digital generally lets you stick Blu-ray copies in your drive and convert to Vudu for $1 each as soon as youâ(TM)re doing ten or more ($2 each for less than ten).

Getting the discs as well as the digital copies, for the same price as the digital copies... it amazes me anyoneâ(TM)s been buying digital only for just as high a price.

Oh... and a lot of discs come with both Vudu and iTunes codes. So you commonly get discs and two digital services for the cost of a single digital service buy.

Re:Buy The Disc

[madbrain]

I don't collect movies, but I do care about having the best quality in my home theater. All 4K streaming services, including Amazon and Vudu, both have much lower bit rates for streaming than what's available on a 4K UHD Blu-ray disc

This is true for HD streaming vs Blu-ray discs, too.

I don't care one bit about the "right now" argument. Most streaming movies sound like crap in my 11.4 speaker setup in my home theater.
About the same as DVDs. HD streaming picture is quite noticeably worse on the 106" projection screen, too.
We are talking about typical bit rates of 5 Mbps for HD vs 20 Mbps for Blu-ray. Even with better compression algorithms for streaming, it doesn't come close to Blu-ray.

I haven't watched any 4K content yet as 4K projectors have been too expensive until now. That may finally change this season, though, after 9 years of waiting for an affordable 4K projector.