Amazon has repositioned its Prime Video service as a standalone $8.99 monthly subscription deal with the option to cancel at any time.
Prior to Sunday night, Amazon's video streaming service was only available to U.S. customers as part of the annual $99 Amazon Prime bundle, which qualified subscribers for free shipping from the company's online retail store, unlimited music streaming, and access to its library of original TV shows and movies.
The differentiation of Prime Video appears to be a renewed bid to take on Netflix, which has increased the price of its streaming service to new users from $8.99 to $9.99. Longtime subscribers to Netflix's standard plan who were paying $7.99 a month were also recently informed that they would start paying $9.99 a month from May. The company is due to report its first quarter earnings this afternoon.
In addition to Prime Video, Amazon has also introduced a $10.99 per month option for its full Amazon Prime service.
The $99 Amazon Prime annual subscription still works out $32 cheaper than the $10.99 monthly subscription over 12 months, while the Prime Video per month fee comes to $107.88 per annum, nevertheless customers are likely to be attracted to the offer after becoming accustomed to the monthly payment model established by the likes of Netflix and Hulu.
A tvOS app for Prime Video remains unavailable, despite November rumors that Amazon was actively working on an Apple TV app for release before the end of 2015. In October of last year, Amazon removed all Apple TV product listings from its website because the devices do not offer its Prime Video streaming service, which the online retailer said may cause confusion for customers.
Amazon Video for iOS is free on the App Store and accessible by Amazon Prime members. The service is also available on Android, Fire OS, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii, Wii U, the web and select TV and Blu-ray players from LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and Vizio.
Top Rated Comments
Main reason? The lack of any place to play it. None of my TVs or my new Apple TVs support it. Sure, I could pull out my iPad... but why bother... plenty of other places to watch stuff that are supported right on my ATV.
Plus their video quality used to be pure crap when I did try it once... I've heard it's improved a lot lately though.
If they ever release a tvOS app then I may take a peak...
[doublepost=1460982504][/doublepost]The thing is... I don't WANT another decice to deal with at all. Getting my wife to press the ATV button on our remote is hard enough... no way is she going to want to mess with yet another device. There is just too much friction involved with dealing with multiple devices.
Like the article says, at $8.99 amazon prime is cheaper....I'm confused
Well on the main page. So some one must have edited the article but not the main page part or the republished part.
PVR started changing the opinion of viewers, they could record what they want and watch when they want to, on-demand just takes that a step further. No longer do you have to arrange things around a TV show schedule or make an effort to record it, you can get on with life and watch to your own schedule.
Just as you can with other media types, you can chose when and which books to read, films to watch at the cinema, etc...