20
votes
Apple TV+ coming to Amazon Prime Video as an add-on subscription
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- Title
- Apple TV+ is launching on Prime Video in the US
- Authors
- Amazon Staff
- Published
- Oct 10 2024
- Word count
- 945 words
I only wish they made the libraries completely separate. I hate seeing a movie, thinking "awesome!" only to realize that it's not available for me.
I hate that too. I'm sure it's intentional but it would be nice if we could get filters.
But if you could do that, Amazon wouldn’t be able to get their commission for selling you their content! And we wouldn’t want that, would we?
My Prime subscription finally expired last month, and I am so relieved. Amazon is a company I could stand to deal with less.
I mean that it could be a completely separate section within the same app ;)
Amazon Prime is becoming the new cable network.
Once you can add Amazon Prime to Apple TV, you could in theory nest one into the other and never run out of menus to scroll.
I will continue to pirate every show I want to watch because fuck Amazon for adding ads to their service which I already spend 150 bucks a year on.
150 is such a ridiculous price lol. I remember reading up news when they increased prices to 99 USD years ago. In India, the price is less than 15 USD (₹1499, given purchasing power it's on par though). Amazon is also offering a free delievery only option for 1/3 of the price.
We've taken prime mainly for free 1 day deliveries. Have never used Amazon Music and Prime videos has nothing of interest for me rn. Doctor Who is no longer available and I'm bored of watching Supernatural re-runs. Better to watch short clips in YouTube instead. Also they have 0 Chinese dramas meanwhile YouTube has an insane library of them, that too legally available.
It's tough to predict where all of this will end up. Streaming is an absolute mess right now, but that mess has been great for savvy consumers.
Currently, you have the option to easily rotate subscriptions and watch pretty much whatever you want with a few exceptions. Subscribe to Netflix, watch everything that looks interesting, unsubscribe and switch to Hulu for a month. Rinse and repeat.
I can't see it lasting forever though. These streaming services will probably just keep bundling and buying each other out until we have fewer options. They'll have to keep increasing prices and decreasing offerings to maintain continual growth, as Netflix began doing once it peaked and had sold a subscription to pretty much everyone who was ever going to buy one.
Piracy will rise, obviously. But what comes next? Decades of anti-consumer behavior at high costs? That's what happened with cable. Will most people be willing to go back to that? Probably. Their alternative will be not consuming media and that seems unlikely.
I can't imagine what could disrupt streaming though. The downsides of cable were obvious and streaming pretty much addressed every possible inconvenience. Video on demand with rewind and no ads. Hard to dream up something that could beat that. It's the perfect way to consume shows and movies.
Maybe people will just watch less TV, I feel like TV never had this amount of power over most people 20 years ago. My family would watch maybe an hour or two a night maybe if it was something good.
It really has gotten ridiculous how long and drawn out most things on streaming services are these days. Most of the shows I've watched recently could be trimmed down 30% and not lose anything of value.
I don't know about 2004, but in 2009-10, the average American household watched 9 hours of TV a day, which was the all-time peak.
It's also funny to me that you say shows are so drawn out now because most TV shows before GoT had 20+ episodes each season. It's hard to find high quality shows that go beyond 10 episodes now.
9 hours of TV a day??? Is that combined or something??
If it is then that's a misleading stat because the average American household size has been shrinking steadily over the last 20 years too.
If it's not combined... Wow, that's way too much TV haha
Also most shows before GoT were 22-40 minutes long (not including ads) which meant they had to be way less indulgent with their writing.
I think that figure is just a measure of how long the television is turned on rather than how much time anyone is actively watching a show. Apparently a lot of people just leave the set on in the background all the time.
I used to have a friend who lived alone who told me that he would turn the TV on when he got home just to have some activity around the apartment. I think a lot of people do that but without being as conscious of their motivation as my friend was.
Agreed! I'm a fan of limited series for this reason.
I've definitely seen shows that needed more time to cook than what they actually got. But far more often I see shows that are 2-3 seasons longer than they needed to be with a lot of filler.
I think the likely outcome will be split between some just paying the extra price and others seeking other forms of cheaper entertainment. Streaming services are not only competing with each other, but also YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. And now we also have a market for free ad based streaming like Pluto and Tubi which are on the rise.
I don't expect piracy to ever be a significant threat. I'm maintaining a Plex server for my household and it's cool but it's a lot of work as well. In no small part because finding good, synced subtitles in both Portuguese and English is either difficult or impossible in many cases. I am fortunate to have found Subsync. In any case, maintaining a full piracy setup must be laborious. It's not like the old days when I downloaded a show or two to watch on my 14" laptop. Now we're used to way more content and convenience.
It's only labor intensive if you're doing it "right." What you described - managing a home server and managing subtitles in two languages - that's the hard way to pirate. In return for your labor, you get a more polished experience, and you get to keep the media.
Most people don't pirate that way because they don't have the energy or technical ability. Most people pirate in one or more of the following ways:
-Googling or hearing about the latest illegal streaming website. Usually full of pop ups and malware, but it will allow them to screen share it to their TV or watch it in bed on their phone.
-Getting lucky with YouTube. It's shocking how many full length shows, movies, and audiobooks are on there.
-Getting lucky on the Internet Archive. Again, shocking what's on there sometimes. Huge proponent though, it's an invaluable resource.
-Buying DVDs or USBs from that guy at Dad's work. This guy is pirating and selling to technologically challenged coworkers for $5 a movie.
-Illegal IPTV services. To give you an idea of how widespread these are and who's buying them, every small town computer repair guy in America is selling these services to grandmas and uncles who come in with a slow laptop. My aunt and grandmother were both sold these services on opposite sides of the country and don't even know it's illegal. They have had them for almost a decade and they love it. Both have told me things like, "No, it's legitimate. I pay for it every month."
-Firesticks. Same deal. PC repair shops sell them like crazy. Seems to have slowed a bit lately perhaps? Not sure. But the repair guys were selling fire sticks with side loaded piracy for about $20 more than the fire stick itself cost new.
All of these things have huge downsides. They're fairly unreliable and can quickly disappear out of nowhere. The quality is often a mixed bag, with many movies being 480p, poor audio, hard-coded subtitles in Chinese. Some are also fairly risky. The tech illiterate consumers don't know to use a VPN and are far more likely to download viruses by clicking a link disguised as a play button.
Moreover, piracy is only hard right now because streaming is easy and cheap. If streaming becomes expensive or inconvenient, expect pirates to capitalize on the opportunity. There will be much more motivation to create more streamlined methods of piracy.
My guess? A side-loaded app or even a physical device that provides a convenient and high-quality streaming service full of stolen content. Built in VPN and subtitle services. People upload the best content possible with the hopes of making money (think quick 3 second ads at the start of each upload or requests for direct donations) or for street cred.
I wish the reverse (Prime Video as an Apple TV channel) were possible. In fact, if it could be done, I’d subscribe to everything via Apple TV channels.
Most streaming services have apps that are somewhere between awful and passable and have weird quirks (to which Prime Video is no exception), and Apple TV channels do well at standardizing away these issues — browsing is the same regardless of service, and it uses the OS native video player instead of the junky contracted out custom players most apps use.
I could see why someone might want to use Prime Video as the host service, though.
Yeah, Prime Video seems to be near the bottom of the pile in terms of UX among the major players. It’s far from the biggest part of the conversation, but it’s definitely an irritation that they have the business (and presumably technical) heft to be where other players are centralising.
Apple TV+ has the much smaller library though right?. Maybe Amazon doesnt want to spend the dollars anymore,.,.,.
What does you mean? This is not the first smaller streaming service you can get as a channel on amazon, they've been doing this for a while. It doesn't reflect a change in Amazon's original content strategy.