Engadget's Amazon Prime Instant Video Hands-On Test

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/22/amazon-prime-instant-videos-hands-on/' target='_blank'>http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/22/...ideos-hands-on/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Amazon has just turned on its Prime Instant Video service, letting paid Prime subscribers (sorry, students) in the US (sorry, foreigners) stream any of 5,000 movies and TV shows directly to their machines free of charge -- well, free beyond the $79 Primers already pay. Jeff Bezos has confirmed that there will be no extra charge going forward for this service and that Prime itself will not be getting more expensive to pay for all these bits and bytes. Right now the selection is limited, particularly if you already have a Netflix subscription, but we just had to try it out. Click on through for our impressions on a variety of devices."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1298433223.usr1.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>I'm used to applauding most moves that Amazon makes, but this one is a bit of a head scratcher. If Amazon were to survey 100 users of Amazon Prime and ask them "What would make this service even better?", I'd guess exactly zero of them would have said "Please add streaming video!". Sure, it's free if you're an Amazon Prime customer - which I'd <em>totally </em>be if they offered it in Canada - but can Amazon really compete with Netflix?</p>

[gdoerr56]

Depends on the titles Amazon offers.

I can cancelled my Netflix subscription in January after discovering that very few of the titles I cared to watch are available streamed.

As far the US only launch, it makes sense to do a limited market initially while you gauge acceptance and use. No reason to spend all that money on a global launch when you're not sure it will take off...

[marvi1]

It'll take time for Amazon to get the rights to their content for Canada, but it will happen. If they manage to pull together a decent library (a lot more that 5000), I think they could very easily give Netflix a run for their money.

[Chris Gohlke]

I think you've got it backwards. They already offered a pay per view streaming service. They probably want to offer a subscription service, but don't really have enough content to make it viable, yet. So, offering it as a freebie to those that already have Prime seems like a good way to roll out a program that doesn't have a ton of content yet but still give them a chance to get a critical mass of users and shake out the bugs.

[Jason Dunn]

It'll take time for Amazon to get the rights to their content for Canada, but it will happen. If they manage to pull together a decent library (a lot more that 5000), I think they could very easily give Netflix a run for their money.

Netflix is in DVD players, TV sets, computers, tablets, media streaming boxes...Amazon has a LONG way to go to catch up with them.

And personally I don't care about the streaming content in Canada, what I want is the flat-rate fast shipping. :)