
Amazon Previews Rival Streaming Service to Netflix - gibsonf1
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/amazon-previews-rival-streaming-service-95069
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lukev
Amazon video-on-demand is actually a great service, technically speaking, and
they already have a streaming library at least as large as Netflix. I am
actually very surprised that Amazon has it so tucked away in their site and
don't promote it much.

While it currently isn't economically viable for heavy consumers using it as a
substitute for TV, as Netflix is, they definitely already have the technology
in place. All they need to do is get the pricing/subscription model right.

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bpyne
We bought Roku a few months ago. I find we use Netflix and Amazon in a
complimentary fashion. However, we lean towards Netflix because of the pricing
model - a flat monthly rate - rather than Amazon's brick-and-mortar video
store model. Also, Amazon's library is mostly, from admittedly my own small
sampling, purchase only. Even though the purchase price is often not very
much, I still don't want to own videos.

Basically, I'd love to see Amazon's library grafted onto Netflix's pricing
model.

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btucker
If Amazon & Netflix start becoming full-on competitors, it would seem to make
Netflix's use of AWS a little awkward. I wonder if Netflix will regret the
decision to move more and more of their infrastructure into Amazon's hands.

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pedanticfreak
No more awkward than Apple using Samsung to fab its chips.

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lsb
And in both situations, each company is giving its competitor coarse-grained
data about its customer base (Netflix in real time, Apple with a few months'
lead).

If Netflix hasn't put DRM on their stream, someone monitoring the pipe could
easily get the zeitgeist of what movies are being streamed.

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rcoder
"If Netflix hasn't put DRM on their stream..."

Um, ever tried to stream Netflix video from anything that wasn't running the
latest Silverlight? Or diverting/capturing the video from the stream, even on
an authorized client?

That's why there's still no Netflix client for Android or Linux, and why
Netflix probably doesn't have to worry too much about content sniffing.

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ErrantX
_which for an annual subscription fee of $79 a year gives users unlimited free
two-day shipping, for a while_

2 days? Is it different in the US then? We get next day shipping with Prime in
the UK (usually I can order up to about 8pm at night and have it arrive next
day by lunch).

On the topic of the article; seems like a very vague piece of speculation. But
also seems a reasonable move for Amazon to make ("Kindle Video", anyone?) at
some point. Being free to Prime customers seems unlikely to be honest, but if
that is their model it sounds killer!

Predictions;

1\. The streaming won't be best quality (at least at first)

2\. Will be US only for aaaaaaaaaaages :(

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wccrawford
Yes, we get free 2-day shipping with Prime, or $4/item for 1-day shipping.

It's pretty rare that I opt for the 1-day, but when I do, it's awesome. The
other day, I ordered something at 3pm and got it 9:30am the next day.

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ErrantX
My best record was the first time I ever signed up to Prime; ordered something
10pm at night.. and it came 9:30am the next day!

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citricsquid
You have to try ebuyer (<http://ebuyer.com>) shipping. It blows my mind when I
order from them how fast they can ship, I've ordered at ~10:45PM (11PM cut
off) and had it ~7AM the next day, I still can't comprehend how well oiled
their shipping process must be to get that done.

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ErrantX
They are based not far from Leeds, and a friend of a friend worked there. So
while at Uni I used to be able to ring up about 4pm and get it "delivered" at
about 6 :)

But, yeh, they were also pretty impressive for me outside of that.

Computer components is a niche that Amazon aren't quite king of yet (sorta).

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cryptoz
Fingers crossed for Canada. Fingers crossed for Linux.

Maybe someday.

~~~
cory_and_trevor
They don't even have a kindle reader for linux, and the kindle RUNS linux. Yet
they have Windows, OS X, iOS, and android...

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sfphotoarts
why would they? The market for Windows, OSX, iOS etc dwarfs the linux-on-the-
desktop market. It's business. Linux is for servers, OSX is for clients (and
pesky Windows for the office because IT says so)

I don't see this changing anytime soon, and this discussion has been thrashed
to death, I think that there will be dwindling support for Linux with desktop
apps. The best you can hope for is a browser solution and that Chrome keeps
building on Linux.

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cory_and_trevor
That's silly. There are far more linux desktops than there are servers, and
this is growing, not dwindling. Just because you don't like it as a desktop,
doesn't mean reality isn't real.

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mds
No offense intended, but "citation needed". My intuition is that server side
Linux is a lot less visible, but outweighs desktop use by a good margin. Eg. I
run desktop Linux on 2-3 computers at home, and 200+ servers at work.

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twodayslate
Amazon's current video service is not that great. The downloader does not
work. Streaming works fine, but when you buy a movie... you should be able to
download it to your computer.

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MikeCapone
More competition can only be good for the consumer, but unfortunately it'll
probably take ages before it comes to Canada and the selection will probably
be much smaller than in the US.

That's if all this isn't made irrelevant by 25 gig/month caps...

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blocke
Amazon current streaming works great on Roku but I've been surprised with how
few platforms they are on. Netflix totally owns them as far as availability on
devices goes and it's something Amazon will have to fix if they are serious.

