Last month, Amazon unveiled their Unlimited Instant Video streaming service to their Amazon Prime customers. For the price of $79 per year you can have access to 5,000 television and movie titles, along with all the other benefits that come along with being an Amazon Prime member. The day after this was unveiled, I took the service for a test-drive and you can read my initial thoughts here. Since that time, it has been just under a month later and my Amazon Prime trial membership has expired (I started the trial membership about a week before this service was unveiled) and I feel like I have had enough exposure to this service to provide a full review to those of you out there who are maybe still undecided on whether or not to include Amazon Instant Video as an option to get your streaming video.
Before I get into my thoughts on the service, here are a few things you may want to know. First, this entire experiment was done using a Roku as my streaming device of choice, this review in no way reflects the Amazon Instant Video app on the Roku, only the service itself. Also, I don’t have cable. My TV entertainment comes exclusively from streaming TV and movies on Hulu and Netflix on my Roku. Finally, I never tried Amazon Instant Video out on my laptop, but I don’t think that really factors in to what I think about it, which I think you’ll agree with after this review. So let’s get started.
My initial thoughts of the service were that it was very similar to Netflix, but these initial thoughts – which came after one day using it – would prove to be pretty wrong. The week following the unveiling of Amazon’s streaming video service I made it a point to browse the Amazon offerings before hitting up Netflix as I looked for my TV entertainment for the evening – and each day I grew more and more disappointed with the titles offered. Browsing through the “Most Popular” and “New Releases” sections I noticed that most of the titles were Popular and New on Netflix several months ago such as The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. It was essentially filled with Netflix offerings I had glossed over weeks ago and had no interest in watching. So I dove deeper into the title selections. More and more titles that I had, a) Never heard of. b) Had no interest in watching. Or c) had already seen on Netflix. Some of this stuff was so obscure it made Netflix’s B and C movie offerings look like recent blockbusters. As the nights in that first week went on, it was the same thing every time: Peruse the Amazon offerings only to find nothing worth watching, then switching over to Netflix and finding something to watch within five or ten minutes. Eventually, in the weeks moving forward I started only browsing the Amazon titles once or twice a week.
Honestly, the action of using Amazon Instant Video was flawless from the Roku, it was just the finding something to watch that was the hard part – which, for these types of services is the name of the game. Netflix has a much more robust and diverse movie library in my experience. Obviously, I didn’t compare the entire 5,000+ Amazon library with Netflix’s, but just with general title-surfing as an average user Amazon’s offerings are pretty dismal. I’m not exaclty sure how the licensing works with these types of services, but I do know it’s a factor as Netflix recently got exclusive rights to stream CBS shows on their service, meaning you won’t be seeing any of those titles on Amazon any time in the near future. I don’t know if Amazon has had trouble obtaining rights for better titles, but I imagine that may be at least part of the reason for their lackluster library of movie and television titles.
I realize there’s something to be said here about taste in movies and television shows to be taken into account, but as a long-time Netflix user I don’t think many would disagree that their library is far and away superior than what Amazon is currently offering. Amazon’s Instant Video service is still new and I imagine it will improve as time goes on, but they are fighting an uphill battle here and it doesn’t seem like they exactly came out of their corner swinging that hard at Netflix, who already has a huge committed customer base.
I personally have no plans of paying the annual fee for Amazon Prime for their Instant Video service; yes, it is about $20 less than Netflix’s service, but as the old saying goes, “You get what you pay for.” and that seems to be true when comparing these two services. For anyone out there mulling over whether or not to shell-out for an eighty-dollar Amazon Prime membership to take advantage of this service, my recommendation is to wait. Amazon’s title library may improve over the coming months making this service worth the cost, but I couldn’t ever really see it becoming so much better that it could replace Netflix, so you may have to ask yourself if it is worth having both?
For me, no.
Are you an Amazon Prime member who has tried out their Instant Video service? Leave your thoughts about it in the comments below!