Amazon Prime Welcomes Me (but proves almost impossible to use - help?)

[dreamshark]

Netflix was down on Friday evening, so I decided to try that one-month free trial offer to Amazon Prime that has been dangling in front of my nose. I found it extremely difficult to figure out what was available for free. In fact, not paying close enough attention, the first movie I downloaded turned out to cost $5. I had strayed out of the "Prime" browsing section without realizing it. And I was actually trying to watch the trailer, but having trouble with the controller, and ended up starting the movie. So what the hey, I watched "Oz the Great and Powerful." The movie was pretty good, although more of a kids' movie than I had been expecting for some reason. But technically I was not impressed with the Amazon streaming experience. Although supposedly in HD, the visuals were kind of fuzzy (possibly the effect of watching a 3D movie in 2D?). And the sound was majorly misbalanced - at the max volume level for my sound system the sub-woofer shook the floor whenever something exploded, but the dialogue was barely audible. I'm not sure if it was just that movie, or if Amazon Streaming just doesn't work right with my PS3.

But I've got a free month, so I need to find something I can actually watch for free and see how that works. What's the easiest way to browse through the Prime offerings? (without getting them mixed up with the ones I have to pay for). The Playstation interface is incredibly awkward, so I thought I'd look through the catalog online. But I can't figure out how to do that either. Help?

Comments

[carbonel]

I probably should have been clearer. The one being sold at Ben's Outlet is the 2XD one. Unless you're a gamer, I don't see the new Roku 3 model as adding a lot of functionality.

I tried using the Plex server/client combination, but never goit it quite right. I was able to watch a few episodes of Haven in .avi format that way, but the video quality was decidedly pixelated, and I couldn't figure out how to persuade it there were new videos in the folder -- I kept adding new folders. Eventually, when I made the final switch over to the new computer, I didn't bother to install the Plex server on it. It's probably my fault for not figuring out how to work things properly, but all the documentation I found seemed to assume you already knew what you were doing, and I didn't.