
How Amazon Outflanked Netflix - ziszis
https://medium.com/@iamziad/how-amazon-outflanked-netflix-whether-to-respond-to-competition-9ab0157fd55b
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YogeeKnows
I have always hated Amazon Video. I don't think Amazon even comes close to
Netflix from user perspective.

There is always the confusion of which video is free and belongs to Amazon
prime (free) and which ones need to be purchased. Compare that to netflix -
You see it, its yours to watch.

Amazon originals are a torture chamber, I cant even name one. Compare that to
Netflix - I renewed my membership just to watch House of Cards.

Amazon, Google, Facebook they all fall into this same problem of having a
consistent UI across all their offerings. This constraint of consistency leads
to a UI design which might not be the best for that particular product.
Netflix because it offers just one thing, video streaming, can design UI best
for discovery and personalization and wins compared to Amazon video any given
day.

~~~
michael_h
> Amazon originals are a torture chamber

Man In The High Castle is an amazing[1] series. Transparent was pretty good.
Shaun the Sheep. Orphan Black.

[1] Amazing.

~~~
DanBC
Shaun the Sheep isn't an Amazon original.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_the_Sheep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_the_Sheep)

~~~
michael_h
It looks like I was thrown off by the "Amazon Original _Special_ " for The
Farmer's Llamas.

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9point6
The lack of support for Chromecast/Android TV is the big killer for Amazon
Prime video in my book.

Also the shady practice of removing alternatives to the Fire TV Stick from the
Amazon store leaves a pretty bad taste as well.

~~~
e40
_Also the shady practice of removing alternatives to the Fire TV Stick from
the Amazon store leaves a pretty bad taste as well._

Just searched last night and easily found the Roku stick (whatever it's
called).

~~~
bsharitt
They removed the Chromecast and Apple TV from their store because they "don't
support" Amazon Video. Ignoring that it's up to them whether or not to support
the devices.

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bbatha
I'll wait until the numbers start to roll in for the outflanking. I'm not
convinced that offline is the same killer feature for videos that it is for
music. I'd argue that most people streaming movies do it on large format
devices which are more likely to be connected to wifi. Amazon's original
content compared to Netflix is largely a joke. Most of the shows have
extremely low budgets and you can tell. This situation seems to be improving,
but Netflix hasn't stagnated either. The UI for amazon devices is also
significantly worse than netflix. I have amazon prime for shipping but would
rather pay extra to use netflix's ui.

~~~
jon-wood
Offline support is a _huge_ feature for me, since I have a long train commute
twice a week. I do the vast majority of my TV watching during train journeys,
my only annoyance on that front is the licenses that Amazon have mean some
shows are only downloadable if you've "bought" them.

As for UI, I'll concede that the web UI is awful, however the Fire TV is
fantastic when you're primarily watching content from Amazon and the same is
true with the Kindle Fire tablets. Having said that, the only reason I have a
Kindle Fire is because it was super cheap a year or so back, its a great piece
of hardware hogtied by Amazon's insistence on using their own fork of Android.

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farnsworth
Relevant but not Amazon Prime - I looked everywhere for somewhere I could
legally download Star Wars in HD to watch on a plane. But since my Surface
Book apparently doesn't support HDCP, I couldn't. The best I could do was SD
from the iTunes store. Eventually, I just paid the $20 somewhere, then
torrented it in HD. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that should be
completely impossible in 2016.

I see that Amazon Prime offline is only supported for Android and iOS, and I
bet spotty HDCP support on laptops is part of that.

~~~
djrogers
Are you seriously unable to view HD iTunes/Vudu/etc videos natively on your
surface book? That seems crazy to me

~~~
farnsworth
I can stream the videos, but not download to watch offline- I should have been
more clear.

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georgefrick
This article seems to have missed that Amazon sucks and Netflix doesn't. How
much of Amazon's content do I really get without paying an additional rental
cost or fee? It's become quite annoying to even try to look through Amazon's
library. We really enjoy Netflix, but from Prime; I mostly just want free
shipping. * I don't usually post such vagrant "Opinion", but this article is
making assumptions about consumer opinion that purports to represent fact.

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supercanuck
Has this guy ever looked at what is _actually_ available for Download on
Amazon Video? Everything that is available on Amazon Video is NOT available
for download.

During our Holiday road trip, I was excited to use this feature but all that
was available was utter trash.

It may be a nice "feature" but if all that is available is outdated 80's
movies, its not going to do a lick of good.

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vegabook
This article wants to frame the bunfight in terms of tech. "Streaming vs
offline". Actually it's more about incumbent vs challenger. Challenger spends
more money doing something different (offline access) but the actual tech
difference is incidental. The key issue is that Amazon is having to work
harder. If it wasn't the tech differentiator, it would be spending more on
content which arguably, it is (also) currently doing.

This really is a story of number 2 needs to spend more money to provide a
better service, to catch up and take over number one. It's not really a story
about streaming vs offline. It's just business 101 - significantly better
service (however achieved) to offset inherent leader advantage.

That said, this whole thing is beautiful for the consumer. Leading player
cannot get lazy, deep-pocketed challenger innovates to improve customer
experience. Long may it last!

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MattBearman
Offline viewing is definitely a cool feature, but for me, and I imagine many
English people, it was the fact that Amazon signed the guys from Top Gear

~~~
frik
The Top Gear thing was a very stupid move that will cost BBC millions.

Top Gear was a very popular TV show and BBC sold licenses around the world.

~~~
9point6
On the other hand, Clarkson assaulted a member of the production crew because
the hotel he was at didn't have hot food. It's plainly obvious that he should
(and was) have been fired for that - had they not it kickback would give the
BBC much bigger problems.

The Top Gear brand is still owned by the BBC and they're rebooting it with a
new set of presenters, so Top Gear is far from over yet.

~~~
MBCook
I'm actually pissed that Amazon agreed to 'buy' 'Top Gear' and that Netflix
was interested.

Clarkson should not be rewarded with more freedom and money after punching a
staff member over some little thing.

~~~
Practicality
He's not being rewarded for punching a person, he is being rewarded for being
highly entertaining.

He got punished for punching a person (he was fired). Perhaps you think he
should have received more punishment and that is valid, but he received no
reward for attacking a person. He could have made the same move without
getting fired first, and it would have probably been much easier.

~~~
MBCook
It's not a direct reward, you're right.

But in many ways his life doesn't seem worse off than it was before he punched
the guy. In some ways it might be better. And I see those enabling this and
paying him more as somewhat complicit and scuzzy.

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jedberg
There is a lot wrong with this article, but here's the main one that I think
the author missed:

The quote there from Netflix's Chief Product Officer is the most important
part -- by offering offline downloads, Amazon is severely limiting themselves
as to what devices they can offer their service on.

You can't offer offline downloads on a Nintendo DS, because it doesn't have
the storage (but you can stream Netflix on it). You can't have offline
download on a cable box (but there are a whole bunch you can stream Netflix
on).

And what happens when I want to download something offline for my iPad but
it's full? I can still stream Netflix (or Amazon Video) but I can't save it
for later. Or they could offer streaming but not offline mode on those
devices. What a terrible user experience.

I don't think this will end up being that big a deal anyway -- most use cases
I've heard for offline Netflix are I want to watch on a plane or cruise ship
or hotel. Open Connect[0] boxes can be put on planes and cruise ships, and
most hotels have wifi already and some are already testing [1] the ability to
let you log into your Netflix account from the hotel room.

[0] [https://openconnect.itp.netflix.com](https://openconnect.itp.netflix.com)

[1]
[http://www.macnn.com/articles/15/01/20/test.allows.marriott....](http://www.macnn.com/articles/15/01/20/test.allows.marriott.guests.to.use.own.netflix.accounts.during.stay/)

~~~
ctvo
Am I missing something? What's forcing Amazon to offer this on all devices
that can stream Amazon Video? On your phone, on your computer, on a device
with built-in storage it'll be available, anywhere else it's the same
streaming you've always had.

~~~
jedberg
Nothing forces them to do it, but it offers a fractured and confusing user
experience. There are other comments in this thread about how it's annoying
that some content is free and some paid. Now add offline yes/no, and you've
doubled the possibilities for every piece of content. And better yet, offline
yes/no _on this device_ and you double the possibilities for every device you
personally own.

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mikemajzoub
Does anyone know whether Netflix should be concerned with the data Amazon
acquires from streaming Netflix videos on its machines, potentially allowing
Amazon to use this information for competitive business intelligence? Or are
there safeguards in place to prevent this from happening?

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jsolson
First, the actual video content itself does not, as far as I know, stream from
AWS. If you watch in the web player you can see the many requests going out to
Netflix's CDN. Given that the website is served up over HTTPS, Amazon doesn't
actually have data as to which videos Netflix users are streaming (I believe
Netflix's CDN and ISP/edge relationships are independent of AWS).

Second, even if they could, it would be an appalling breech of customer trust
for Amazon to take advantage of that ability. I do not believe that sort of
behavior to be within Amazon's company character (I worked there prior to
joining Google).

~~~
mikemajzoub
Thanks - you've given me a good jumping off point to learn more about this!

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itslennysfault
As long as Amazon doesn't allow support for 3rd party devices they aren't
"outflanking" anyone. I can watch Netflix on Apple TV, Chromecast, etc, etc. I
can watch amazon videos on... amazon devices.

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tw04
Etc. etc.? You named the only two devices I can think of that it doesn't work
with. And all indicators point to it being Apple and Google refusing to play
ball.

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krisdol
I'm surprised there's enough of a market for this to make the engineering
investment worthwhile, to be honest. I can't remember the last time in the
last 10 years that I was in a situation where I wanted to watch a video and
didn't have connectivity. Of course, people torrent media and sometimes even
purchase it offline, but not usually because they have limited connectivity --
rather, because they either cannot find a suitable streaming option or they
prefer viewing 1080p video without all the layers of lossy compression.

~~~
tw04
So you never fly on a plane then...? Because I do that every month, and
streaming a movie just isn't an option.

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kemiller
The offline viewing problem is one that will solve itself soon enough as
bandwidth gets more plentiful and ubiquitous, and as the infrastructure
improves. It's a nice feature for now, though.

The killer app for Amazon, for some people anyway, is the huge library of free
quality kids programming. Offline viewing is a very nice plus for that use
case and likely would be even in a highly-networked world.

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cpeterso
I think very few users care about "downloading" or "owning" video content.
They like to convenience of streaming's instant availability from any device
have. And how often do you re-watch the same movie or show? I do think people
would appreciate caching to allow "offline streaming" to watch movies on, say,
an airplane without paying for Wi-Fi.

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davidw
I don't watch much TV, and already have an Amazon account, so for me that's
one less thing to keep track of.

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dman
If anyone from Amazon is reading this - add support for chromecast.

