Amazon Prime - Threat or Menace?

[dreamshark]

Okay, I think I have figured it out now, such as it is. Depending on your point of view, Amazon Prime Streaming Video is either a nasty little bait-and-switch marketing gimmick or a nice little perk for people who have other reasons to subscribe to Amazon Prime. There is absolutely no point in getting Amazon Prime specifically as a video streaming service, and here's why.

The streaming libraries on Amazon and Netflix are not identical but have a huge overlap. But with Netflix, you get access to the entire streaming library for the monthly fee. Amazon Prime only gives you free access to a tiny subset of the Amazon library (the rest is all pay per view, with no discounts for Amazon Prime members). And every time you click on something free, sidebars pop up offering to sell you "similar" streaming offerings, boxed sets, etc. etc. Once you learn to ignore all that crap, there are ways to search for just Amazon Prime offerings. However, all the offerings are presented as very large icons that you have to scroll through in a fixed but logically random order. And every season is presented as a different icon. So at best you might be able to display 25 icons at once, but 8 of them will be different seasons of Dora the Explorer or SpongeBob Squarepants. And that's the other problem - there is no reliable way to filter out the offerings for the preschool set, which seem to comprise approximately half of the material available. So... mostly useless (unless you are 5 years old).

However, I finally found a more useful tool buried in the interface somewhere that searches by genre subset. For example,  you could start with "period/historical" and drill down to "period/epic," "historical/sentimental," etc. I put a bunch of things on my Watchlist (equivalent of Instant Queue) and just compared my choices to what's available on Netflix. I did find a handful of interesting things that are not available on Netflix streaming, but are available on DVD. And I find exactly ONE thing on Amazon that is not available on Netflix at all: Cirque Berzerk. It appears to be a kinky "Goth" version of Cirque de Soleil. Okay, that's kind of cool.

But the one I think I really want to watch is Thomas & Sarah, a spinoff from the old "Upstairs, Downstairs." Netflix does have it, but only on DVD, and I much prefer to watch TV shows on streaming. So once the AC cools the attic down a little, I think I'll go give one of those a try. I just hope the sound works better than it did on the movie I watched.

Comments

[mle292.livejournal.com]

Today while I waited patiently for eight hours to never leave a room, I read all of "Below Stairs." Great book, thanks for the recommendation.

Very different from Downton Abbey, the author certainly doesn't tell of being exceedingly proud or grateful to work in service, it was a means to an end.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you remember the characters of Thomas and Sarah from "Upstairs, Downstairs," but those two were emphatically not on the "proud and grateful" end of the spectrum either. I think you'd probably enjoy their series. I've only watched the first episode so far, but I already like it better than the original series.

[romsfuulynn.livejournal.com]

I have Amazon Prime for shipping, and I have Netflix. But I've never had problems finding the free stuff (I use a Roku box).
But (for example) The Good Wife is not on Netflix.

But in the online access on the computer, check the "Prime" box on the left.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I found the PS3 interface particularly hard to use, so I've been using a desktop computer to find things to watch and adding them to my Watchlist. Then I go right to the Watchlist on the PS3, and there they are. There is still one more pitfall to negotiate at this point. Some of the TV series flagged as free turn out to be a mix of free and pay-per-view episodes once you open them up. Booooo.

The full Amazon site makes it very clear that the purpose of Amazon Prime's streaming service is to sell you stuff that costs money. However, it does have better search tools than the PS3 once you figure out how to avoid clicking on the wrong thing and going to the $$ section.

[laurel]

Just seeing your posts about Prime now. I've had Prime since not long after it launched, back in 2004 or 06 or something like that. The whole point of it originally was that you paid $79/year and didn't have to pay anything for shipping from Amazon ever-- two-day shipping on everything for no extra charge (with no minimum; I felt a little silly the times I ordered some tiny less than $5 thing, but that's what you were paying for). That was the only perk and point back then, really, and if you shopped a lot at Amazon it was worth it.

It's only in recent years they've added things like streaming video, which makes it a better deal for some of course. Has been interesting watching it evolve. Now people are buying it just for streaming video, but Netflix still works better for streaming video as they've been at it longer and have a larger library. Better software, I think. Though I think Amazon has worked some deals with certain studios or networks so that I know they had a lot more BBC or PBS stuff than Netflix for a while there, I'm not up on who has what these days.

One of the more confounding things about both of them is how some movies and shows will be free/included for a time and then later they're no longer part of their offerings. Movies will be available for a month or two, then not, then come available again. I used to follow a feed from Netflix which would tell you when things were due to expire from streaming, though I think they recently stopped making that info accessible. Though now that Netflix is moving away from DVDs to focus on streaming, they have the larger library. Used to drive me nuts how some episodes of some shows were only available on DVD while all the rest were available to stream, for instance.

The new interface on Roku boxes basically has a search function where you search for what show/movie you want and it lists it no matter the service so it's easy to see if Netflix and Amazon both have it or just one or nobody.

As others explained, Roku is a little box that you attach to your TV and it allows easy access to a variety of streaming services including Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, MLB.tv, and a bunch of others (some free, some paid). I've had a Roku since their first offering and we have multiple Rokus as whenever I upgrade I move the older box to another TV (or pass it along to family). Their software and interface is usually more intuitive than others. It's interesting how different the experience of something like Netflix or Amazon can be depending on how you access it-- via Roku or a DVD player or TV or computer or game system or . . . whatever.

For a while it amused me to see how many different gadgets I own on which I could watch Netflix streaming stuff. I think the last I checked, was doable on all the computers (obviously), as well as Roku, my Sony Blu-Ray player, Wii, iPad, iPodTouch, and it seems like at least one other thing (maybe a cell phone). Goofy.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I can't quite imagine needing enough things from Amazon so urgently that I would use get that much out of a Prime membership. But I must admit that I did just find a legitimate use for the 2-day shipping feature: ordered R some snorkel fins for our coming-up-soon vacation. Wanted them here ASAP in case they didn't fit. So the free month of Prime came in very handy there.

It took me several hours fighting through the online interface to find a good use for the streaming video, but I settled on "Thomas & Sarah," a great spinoff from "Upstairs, Downstairs." The sound seems okay, so I guess the volume problem with "Oz" was particular to that movie.

I was going to watch this odd little animated series called "Aeon Flux" but before I got around to it the episodes started losing their "Prime" designation and reverting to $1.99/episode! First it was episodes 1-8. The next time I looked at the listing, all the episodes had gone back to pay per view. Now THAT was annoying!! All the episodes were free when I added them to my watchlist just days before.