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.
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
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for the clarification. So the video files are directly hosted by the CDNs? OK, in that case, Amazon can't get insight into Netflix by gathering network statistics.
Google is probably doing the same thing with AdWords.
Google has every bit of information about Groupon and LivingSocial AdWords spending (millions of dollars per month). When Google launches their competitor, Google Offers, they'll know exactly which ads get people to buy deals. Incidentally, Google Offers will work by running offers across Google ad networks.
No question they are thinking about it. I went to a meetup last week in which they explained how moving to the cloud was extremely important to them, and how they transitioned to SimpleDB and Cassandra.
I have both Netflix and Amazon Prime and would probably drop Netflix if Amazon had a better selection. If most users are like me, this means that Netflix has to increase their catalog, which has both technical and licensing implications. On the technical side it's caching and long-tail inefficiencies which will increase their infrastructure costs. If they are still using AWS (the Mercedes Benz of cloud hosting), I'm sure it's because their margins are high. Given their size they could get a much better deal with another provider.
Netflix is in a difficult position I think. Their infrastructure is becoming commoditized, much of their content is also being licensed to their competitors and their delivery mechanism is no longer unique. What's left for them to differentiate themselves from the competition? It seems like their only choice is to pay steeper and steeper prices to get content that nobody else has in order to justify their value to subscribers.
Their recommendation engine is a key strength. I LOVE it.
Second, at <$10/mo, the cost is not high enough to make bother with switching. I would rather pay $10/mo have the best streaming experience than pay $6/mo have a second-rate streaming experience.
I expect Netflix to come out on top in this battle. Obviously, I'm rooting for them (I dislike companies which squeeze competitors through loss leaders).
Why would they rethink it, I wonder? For fear of Amazon spying on them?
I think Amazon is too big to try something funny - because they are big, a dent in their reputation would probably also hit them big. Who would still want to host on AWS if they would let down Netflix?
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.
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?
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.
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.
Do you use Netflix? A while back I bought a Zotac Mag to have as my entertainment center. I set up Ubuntu on it, my usual dev tools and Boxee. I found out that there was no way to make Netflix work on Linux, other than through a Windows VM (which the Mag's cpu couldn't deal with).
Because I had to have Netflix (my wife uses it all the time) I took the Mag to the office and bought a used Mac Mini on Craiglist just for this.
Why didn't you just loaded Windows on the Mag? Windows 7 Media Center has one of the best Netflix clients I've seen. Also Boxee on Windows will do Netflix, although last time I tried it the Boxee version of the NetFlix client was really, really shitty.
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).
Whomever makes an iTunes for movies but especially shows that I can pay for and download as soon as they are available on cable and view on my computer is going to get my money.
Unfortunately iTunes in Denmark only has music, so thats a no go (and I don't care to be 2 seasons behind on my favorite shows anyway).
I am happy to put money where my mouth is, but nobody is willing to sell to me on these terms.
Unfortunately, no. Studios still need to sell rights to local distributors that can do all of the local marketing (TV, print, billboards). The distributors want exclusivity in their country to ensure that their marketing dollars (TV, print, billboard) are recouped. If customers can simply get a Netflix membership after hearing about it through their local advertising, the distributor will lose money on their investment.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
According to Jeff Bezos' note on Amazon's homepage, it is indeed compatible with Amazon Instant Video devices (over 200 and counting these days). Apparently TiVo is an exception currently, but that's the only note:
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.
"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
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.
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.
I get that too - my wife is the primary prime account holder, and I'm invited under her amazon account. I'm not surprised that I can't get streaming from my account, seeing as my membership is technically free.
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.
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.