

Amazon launches Prime instant videos, unlimited streaming for Prime subscribers - BvS
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/22/amazon-launches-prime-instant-videos-unlimited-streaming-for-pr/

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mikecarlucci
That could be a powerful offering if Amazon can boost the library a bit. $89
per year for Amazon Prime with 2 day shipping and streaming is a few bucks
cheaper than a year of Netflix streaming only (7.99*12=95.88) and potentially
much more valuable.

For someone who shops at Amazon a lot, only uses streaming a little and
doesn't have a DVD add-on, this could be huge.

Although, when MP3s arrived at Amazon most people stuck with iTunes. Netflix
might have enough brand recognition to prevent more than a handful from
switching unless Amazon launches a serious campaign.

Edit: The other nifty part is Amazon offers video on demand for free with some
DVD/Blu-ray purchases. Sending those along speedily plus instant watch also
helps people choose Amazon over the local Target, Best Buy etc.

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poet
Agreed. I'm canceling my Netflix subscription the second Amazon increases
their selection.

EDIT: And holy shit. A video player that works beautifully and I don't have to
install anything. I get a nice big message about installing Silverlight when I
browse Netflix with Chrome. Although after further experimentation there are a
bunch of things that annoy me off the bat. First, pressing escape while in
full screen stops the movie, instead of just exiting fullscreen. Also, exiting
fullscreen appears to close GChat windows that I have popped out of my
browser. Obviously still some kinks to work out :P

~~~
burgerbrain
Note to other linux users, their video player works brilliantly in linux
despite being flash. _Waaay_ better than youtube's fullscreen even. After
fullscreening it, I can't even tell it's not mplayer. _Very_ obviously an
improvement from the shit netflix situation ;)

Of course your milage may vary, but you can test it out with a free clip
first.

~~~
2mur
That's good to know about flash. One of the reasons that I am moving to using
a mac is the crappy experience with flash in Ubuntu. I'm tired of it.

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jasonkester
Same story, different provider:

 _We have detected that you are not located within the US. Due to licensing
restrictions Amazon Instant Video customers must be located in the United
States when viewing videos online_

If they can get this to follow me around the world, I'm there. Until then
there are a lot of us still without a viable way to watch movies from the
internet. (no legal way, that is.)

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dotBen
Honestly, the best thing to do is own a US based VPS (esp a lowendbox - google
it) and proxy your connection when abroad.

It's worth proxying your connection securely via SSH/OpenVPN when you are on
open wifi anyway.

A cheap $5/month VPS is something every hacker should have in their toolkit.

~~~
dhess
Wow, lowendbox is a fantastic resource! I've been looking for a cheap UK VPN
endpoint for years, and lowendbox has plenty of options. Thanks for the link.

~~~
dotBen
Just be careful with anything that looks "too good to be true", unless you are
not going to be adversely effected if the provider disappears suddenly (eg you
are proxying rather than web serving). Don't pay for a year upfront unless
we're talking <$10

A lot of these 'companies' are literally run by 15 year olds - which is fine
(I used to run a web host way back in the day when I was 16), but don't expect
A1 business practices.

Frankly, you can't beat a $19/month Linode out of their London datacenter.

~~~
dhess
I'm already a happy Linode customer, but for my particular needs, $19/mo is
much too expensive for a UK VPN endpoint. I'm looking for something more like
prgmr.com prices (also a happy customer of theirs; they just don't happen to
have any colo in the UK).

Thanks to lowendbox, I found quickvps.co.uk, which, with a 60% discount offer,
offers a 256MB Xen VPS for £3/mo. They appear to be competent so far, even
though they did e-mail me my root and web UI passwords :\ Anyway, if it goes
poorly, I'm out less than a lunch.

Thanks again for the link!

~~~
dotBen
Yes the standard management systems most of these VPS providers run (SolusVM,
etc) keep the passwords in plaintext which is why I usually give a simple
throw-away password and then reset it to something secure when I gain access.

Also just be careful what you put on the drive as the provider has full access
to the drive and I don't trust these cheap providers as much as I would
Linode.

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jbellis
One very interesting aspect that I haven't seen mentioned yet is that Netflix
does a LOT on AWS. I wonder if seeing their infrastructure provider start
competing more directly with them, makes them rethink that.

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acangiano
This was mentioned the last time a similar thread came up as well. Reputable,
large corporations don't tend to work that way. A department will often end up
doing their best to provide a service to a competitor of a different
department.

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anonymous246
I'm pretty sure getting data about # of bytes transferred on a hourly basis
from Netflix's instances would be valuable to estimate # of movies viewed.
Further subdividing the flow by (src, dst) IP will give a good idea about # of
minutes watched per day etc.

The point is that innocent statistics about Netflix's machines gathered for
routine "security" and other housekeeping efforts can _lawfully_ give Amazon a
lot of information about Netflix.

IMHO, Netflix has needlessly put themselves in a vulnerable position by moving
to Amazon.

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kgp7
Netflix doesnt stream off of Amazon and even if they do use cloudfront (which
i highly doubt), they have other CDN's (Akamai,Limelight) off which they would
stream traffic too. I do not see how it would be possible for Amazon to
monitor that network activity and get information about Netflix.

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gnubardt
Clients still need to authenticate when they start a stream, amazon could use
that information to approximate traffic.

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vault_
As a college student using a free prime subscription, it's kind of lame that
it's paid only (I understand their reasoning though).

My only other concern is how they're delivering the videos. Is it just flash?
Or is it some crazy Silverlight+DRM thing like netflix? If it's the former
they could attract some Linux users who can't use netflix.

~~~
jim_h
The one benefit of Silverlight is that it's not as cpu intensive as Flash.
It's nice because you can play it on an older pc/laptop.

DRM isn't a big concern since you're not buying the movies. It is different
from buying and downloading songs. You weren't expecting them to let you keep
the movies, right?

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baddox
DRM is still a big concern if your HTPC runs Linux and they don't provide a
client that works with Linux.

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jim_h
There's moonlight, which is a Silverlight alternative for linux. I just
installed it for Ubuntu. Painless to install.

edit: You guys are right. Netflix doesn't work under linux. I just tried it
under Ubuntu. No go. It's too bad since Silverlight does use less power and
Netflix has impressed me so far.

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drivebyacct2
Microsoft doesn't license their PlayReady DRM components unless it is hardware
secured. The only Netflix platforms that Linux works on have PlayReady chips
in them basically - Roku, and Boxee literally JUST got Netflix support.

Moonlight absolutely doesn't work in Ubuntu. And Silverlight runs like a dog
in a VM, even with 2d/3d accel (and turned off since they're not 100% stable)
and that's giving my VM 3 cores and 3 GB of my memory, AND it's on a separate
hard drive than my host OS.

Netflix is completely worthless to Linux users. I welcome competition from
Amazon.

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jrockway
_Microsoft doesn't license their PlayReady DRM components unless it is
hardware secured_

So you mean to say that the average Windows XP box is "hardware secured"?

I think you mean, "Microsoft doesn't license their PlayReady DRM components to
anyone that isn't big enough to hurt its adoption".

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Tichy
Of course, US only.

I get that the whole system of rights to movies (an music) is a mess.

Could we not reset the system at least for NEW movies, and give them somehow
unified world wide distribution rights?

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pavel_lishin
But that would only profit the consumers!

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Tichy
There is always BitTorrent, so it seemes it would benefit the film owners as
well to make them available everywhere as soon as possible. Convenience and
even morals can beat BitTorrent, but only if it is reasonable.

In fact, some video streaming services now seem to be available in Germany.
But guess what: they require some dedicated software to be able to play the
movies. I am not yet sure I really want that. Also, I am not sure my TV can
deal with that (whereas it can probably play torrent movies out of the box).

(I think iTunes might have some movies in Germany, too, but last time I
checked the selection was not great and highly overpriced).

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ryandvm
So... are they anticipated to follow this up with the other half of the
Netflix-style service? You know, renting movies that people actually want to
watch.

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mkinsella
I assume they'll be pushing for more client apps first: Xbox 360, PS3, etc.

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growt
can someone please write a little app that compares which movies are available
on netflix, amazon prime or both?

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orky56
So is Amazon hoping to topple Netflix with this? I'm curious to find out if
devices that support Amazon Instant Video will also have this service
automatically. That would be a game changer for sure.

Amazon clearly has the user and advertising base for this sort of option.
However, would I really put customers that want quick shipping and want
streaming video in the same bucket? I guess the only similarity is wanting a
premium service at a subscription.

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scottkduncan
I think this is just a toe-dip into streaming video service rather than a
full-on attempt to topple Netflix at this point. Prime subscribers give Amazon
a ready-made, loyal group of beta-testers and I imagine they'll be paying
close attention to the data that comes out of this offering.

I see similarities between this and the way they incrementally roll out new
AWS features - they don't always feel the need to make a massive splash and
they leave space to incorporate user feedback before betting the farm on a new
service.

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jonknee
Amazon has been doing streaming for a while (September 2006), this isn't
dipping their toe in the space. They actually beat Netflix to it (January
2007).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Video_on_Demand>

[http://netflix.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=201](http://netflix.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=201)

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jmathai
There have been lots of players in the pay-per-play streaming business for
some time. Netflix was the first one to emerge with a good subscription
service.

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adestefan
This is only for paid prime accounts. With my free Amazon Mom prime account I
just get a button to upgrade to the paid account. I have about a years worth
of free prime built up from buying diapers.

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jim_h
It seems like it's also for NEW trial accounts.

"Start your one month free trial of Amazon Prime now and begin enjoying the
benefits of free two-day shipping and unlimited instant streaming of movies
and TV shows today." - amazon.com

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jim_h
I wonder if Amazon Prime instant videos will also work for shared accounts.
Prime allows for sharing the account with 4 family members. Will instant
videos work for family members too?

Netflix allows 7(?) devices that can be linked to an account. Some people also
share accounts and it seems to work for them.

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CrazedGeek
Sadly, I share a Prime account with my parents, and it's giving me the
"upgrade to full Prime" message. Odd.

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jim_h
That is odd. Is the account trial or paid?

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CrazedGeek
Paid. It's linked to my dad's account, which is the main Prime account.

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MichaelApproved
A lot of people are saying they'd cancel Netflix the moment amazon increases
their selection but in order to do that amazon will have to raise prices. That
means it'll probably cost more than Netflix and you'll probably not make the
move since most wont need fast shipping AND streaming movies.

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carson
It is interesting that they say there are 5000 titles but the "Prime Eligible"
search only returns 1,669 Results. Hopefully the selection will grow.

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pitdesi
My search returned 2,153 results. They must be working on it.

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berberich
Looks like it's 2,153 movies (1,669) + TV shows (484).

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CrazedGeek
Maybe they're counting each episode of each TV show individually?

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c2
One of the things I was really mad about Netflix was the fact they stopped
publishing their list of most viewed instant play movies as far as I can tell
because customer's were using it too much.

Same with the "New Release" DVD page, which is now hidden but still
accessible. Again, customers were using it too much. That one I could somewhat
understand as it caused contention for physical DVDs, but the solution seems
to be buy more DVDs, don't hide a useful feature.

If Amazon's selection improves, I will be the first to cancel the Netflix
subscription and I truly believe Netflix will be in trouble. They just aren't
anywhere near as customer focused as Amazon.

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kentbuckle
instantwatcher.com does a good job of indexing new and popular streaming
titles on Netflix, if you haven't already heard of it or something similar.

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ctdonath
Countdown 'til it's on AppleTV?

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pitdesi
Link to Amazon site: [http://www.amazon.com/Video-On-
Demand/b?ie=UTF8&node=162...](http://www.amazon.com/Video-On-
Demand/b?ie=UTF8&node=16261631)

