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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 - 10 Comments »
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Is Amazon Streaming Going Up Or Down Stream?

Well, the good news is that you can now stream The Incredible Mr. Limpet anytime you want (as long as you have an Amazon Prime account). You can’t do that on Netflix. And I am sure this will be the heart of the Amazon ad campaign.

After a bit of looking around, my quick impression of the new Amazon streaming system is that the design is good, the streaming is solid, and you need to by a Roku to see any of this on your TV set… and it’s not clear that Amazon will allow this for free with your Prime account. Plus, it’s hard to search just the films available for this streaming program and quality of the image does vary. Some seems HD or close to it… and some of it looks like an old VHS.

Comparing it to Netflix, the programming Amazon has seems more than 80% available on Netflix. The biggest single group of shows in the ctaegory Amazon calls “Amazon Instant Video › Prime Eligible” come from a company called Egami, whose stand-up specials and the like represent 375 of the 1669 Prime Eligible shows listed.

But there are library films from Sony, Warner Bros,and other majors and mini-majors that stream on Amazon and don’t on Netflix at this time, Like Mr Limpet or Stripes, Batman Returns, etc.

Both seem to offer the full IFC, Magnolia, Music Box spectrum.

Finding stuff is confusing, as “Amazon Instant Video” that is not ‘Prime Eligible” still costs 3 or 4 bucks to rent. And there really is no store, as such. Of course, this is also true on Netflix, where you have to go to the individual movie page to find out if something streams.

But, for instance, we want to see the third in the Millennium Trilogy… it stream on both services… we’ll watch it on Netflix because we can watch it on the big TV and not just on the computer… and we didn’t have to buy another machine to do it. I suspect this will be true of Amazon soon and that they too will do a download deal with Sony’s PS3 and other platforms. But not yet… still early…

Overall, this ois a big step behind Netflix and Hulu on TV access alone, much less program variety. But the same issues that apply to Netflix apply here. It’s all about the cost of content and control of content. But we’ll always have Mr. Limpet. At least, I hope we will.

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10 Comments »

10 Responses to “Is Amazon Streaming Going Up Or Down Stream?”

  1. Dentler says:
    February 22, 2011 at 8:16 pm

    Amazon Instant Video is already available on over 200 devices (TVs, blu-ray players, etc.).

  2. cadavra says:
    February 22, 2011 at 10:52 pm

    Well, some of us wisely purchased LIMPET on DVD…

  3. IOv3 says:
    February 22, 2011 at 11:03 pm

    Damn right Cad. I bought that sucker on a Black Friday from Borders 3 and 1/2 years ago!

  4. christian says:
    February 22, 2011 at 11:25 pm

    LIMPET was just on Netflix streaming for a loooong time, so do they alternate titles or what?

    And boy, that film is weird. A 1964 quasi-Disney film that looks like it was shot in 1954.

  5. IOv3 says:
    February 22, 2011 at 11:45 pm

    Let’s not forget that Limpet involves Mr. Limpet getting involved in some serious Naval Shenanigans. Seriously, he works for the Navy and that never ceases to blow my mind.

  6. MeekayD says:
    February 23, 2011 at 1:43 am

    I’m really uncertain how this fits into the broader streaming/rental wars. Amazon Prime is already an incredible deal for heavy Amazon users, and this sweetener is entirely irrelevant to them. Theoretically it could entice the people on the fence to join the service.

    I’m actually more worried that Amazon starting to add on extras besides the original free 2-day shipping is going to endanger the reason I got Prime in the first place.

  7. krazyeyes says:
    February 23, 2011 at 6:31 am

    Speaking of Magnolia, anyone know what happened to REC2? It played on PPV and then . . . poof . . . nothing. Did they lose the rights or was there some sort of legal trouble. Other later titles like CENTURION are already streaming.

  8. James says:
    February 23, 2011 at 8:12 am

    magnolia only had theatrical/VOD rights to REC2. Sony sublicensed those rights and those rights only

  9. storymark says:
    February 23, 2011 at 2:57 pm

    Meh, no interest in Amazon. If Netflix doesn’t have a movie I want to watch on streaming, it’s easy enough to click a button and have the DVD sent for no extra charge.

  10. krazyeyes says:
    February 24, 2011 at 8:04 am

    That sucks about [REC]2. I wish now that I had spent the $9.99 when it was on VOD and if I had known that VOD/theatrical was going to be it I definitely would have. Bad move on Magnolia’s part not making the limits of the deal more widely known.

    I’m amazed that companies use these delaying tactics still in this day and age when it’s so easily to find films online for free. I wanted to do the right thing but now I’ll probably just go and get myself a torrent.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

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And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

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