Yesterday Amazon announced that subscribers of its Amazon Prime service will get free access to some of the movies in its Amazon. Amazon clearly doesn’t want to be the Tower Records or Blockbuster Video, and see the writing on the wall with being able to deliver digital goods to the home instantly.
For those who are not familiar with Amazon Prime – it’s a service that gets you free 2 day shipping for a price of $79 a year. I tried it for a free month during the holidays a couple of years ago. I have to say that I loved it. It came it really handy during the holiday rush. However, I didn’t continue with the service because I didn’t think I’d spend enough with Amazon to make it worth the money. It’s not that $6.58 a month is too much, but who needs another subscription that they rarely use?
The free movie streaming may change that. I’m a bit fan of movie streaming. It’s one of the reasons why I bought a media center. A couple of months ago Amazon ran a promotion where you can get $5 of Amazon Video credit for tweeting about the service. I used it to watch a couple of new releases like Machete and Grown Ups. I thought I’d give a look at movies that you can get with Amazon Prime. Here are a few that caught my eye: Best In Show, Eyes Wide Shut, Hairspray, and Soylent Green. That’s a pretty good variety of movies in my opinion. What you’ll won’t find are the new releases like Machete and Grown Ups that I enjoyed. However, don’t take my word for it, why not just scan the Most Popular Amazon Prime Movies.
I think the free streaming movies changes the equation a bit. Instead of paying $6.58 a month for faster shipping that we rarely use, we’ll get some movie watching out of it too. As part of the decision making process, I should mention that we subscribe to Netflix and stream movies from time to time as part of our $10 plan for one DVD at a time. Do free Amazon Prime movies give us that much more than what we already have between Netflix, Comcast OnDemand, and the nearby Redbox kiosk? I’m leaning towards no, for now.
What do you think? Will the free streaming movies get you to pay for Amazon Prime?
We have a one year free Amazon Prime membership which my wife got when she signed up for Amazon Mom. That is a program where you buy baby products through Amazon and the Amazon Prime membership is free for one year, score! We also have Netflix for $10/month which we stream and get one DVD out at a time and have FiOS on demand. If Amazon has the same shows that Netflix has we will cancel Netflix and go with Amazon for streaming. One of the main reasons is we use Amazon, a lot. Check out their Subscribe & Save section. They have a ton of household items that are typically cheaper than say Costco and you get 2 day free shipping, can’t beat it! For example, I ordered a six pack of Degree deodorant and paid less than $2 per stick. With subscribe & save you tell them how often you want it delivered and can cancel at any time.
MOVE OVER NETFLIX…who else thinks the netflix bubble is about to burst?
Commenter #1 needs to keep one thing in mind. If you have free Prime thanks to Amazon Mom or Student, you don’t get the free streaming. It’s for paid Prime members only.
We have Prime thru Amazon Student (the SO is going to college part time, and meets the requirements for free Prime), so no streaming for us. But when it runs out…streaming makes it tempting to pay for another year.
Bring it up in Canada and we’ll see.
Speaking of which, the Canadian Netflix is awful, it’s pretty much all b-grade movies. Unfortunately BitTorrent is still the easiest method of getting online movies!
This blog post has a nice comparison of Amazon Prime and other streaming movie services:
http://www.clicker.com/blog/amazon-prime-instant-a-closer-look-9651.html
I was in the same boat as Lazy Man. Free two-day shipping is nice, but was on the fence with the $79/year price. These Instant Videos definitely pulled me in. So far, I’ve been enjoying the old British TV shows and my son likes watching Mr. Rogers. This was perfect for our family as we’re not big movie watchers anyway.
However, if you’re really interested in the more current stuff, Netflix and Hulu Plus beats out Amazon Prime hands down. Commenter #1, I’d say stay with the free Amazon Mom for the free shipping and keep the Netflix. If you try to switch to the paid Amazon Prime just for the Instant Videos, you’ll have to give up the free months you already got buying all those baby products.