Amazon Previews Rival Streaming Service to Netflix
hollywoodreporter.com
hollywoodreporter.com
While it currently isn't economically viable for heavy consumers using it as a substitute for TV, as Netflix is, they definitely already have the technology in place. All they need to do is get the pricing/subscription model right.
Basically, I'd love to see Amazon's library grafted onto Netflix's pricing model.
Wouldn't it make sense if some company like Amazon decided to set up a "white label" streaming service?
Netflix carries all the expertise, negotiates all contracts with providers, aquires rights to the show, etc... Amazon carries marketing muscle and an installed user base of people who've stored their one-click credit card number in the system.
Netflix pays a commission on every streaming product sold and does all the rest of the work. It's drop-shipping a la Walmart-store-brand-version-potato-chips. It has the added benefit of looking like competition (like Best Buy vs. Future Shop in Canada, both owned by the same company ... or Cadillac vs. Chevrolet).
Makes sense to me.
If Netflix hasn't put DRM on their stream, someone monitoring the pipe could easily get the zeitgeist of what movies are being streamed.
Um, ever tried to stream Netflix video from anything that wasn't running the latest Silverlight? Or diverting/capturing the video from the stream, even on an authorized client?
That's why there's still no Netflix client for Android or Linux, and why Netflix probably doesn't have to worry too much about content sniffing.
In fact Amazon are going to be more careful about dealing honestly with Netflix. If they spy on / interfere with customers on their cloud service because they might be competitors they are going to attract government intervention and lose a lot of customers.
2 days? Is it different in the US then? We get next day shipping with Prime in the UK (usually I can order up to about 8pm at night and have it arrive next day by lunch).
On the topic of the article; seems like a very vague piece of speculation. But also seems a reasonable move for Amazon to make ("Kindle Video", anyone?) at some point. Being free to Prime customers seems unlikely to be honest, but if that is their model it sounds killer!
Predictions;
1. The streaming won't be best quality (at least at first)
2. Will be US only for aaaaaaaaaaages :(
As to your predictions, I agree with it being US-only (if it happens), but I would expect good quality. I mean, it's not like they're some random company with no understanding of the web, they do have AWS' infrastructure to use.
I also just recalled; recently Amazon bought the British company LoveFilm (who also do streaming).. interesting timing.
facepalm it should probably have occured to me :)
It's pretty rare that I opt for the 1-day, but when I do, it's awesome. The other day, I ordered something at 3pm and got it 9:30am the next day.
But, yeh, they were also pretty impressive for me outside of that.
Computer components is a niche that Amazon aren't quite king of yet (sorta).
Maybe someday.
I don't see this changing anytime soon, and this discussion has been thrashed to death, I think that there will be dwindling support for Linux with desktop apps. The best you can hope for is a browser solution and that Chrome keeps building on Linux.
Big win over Netflix if the selection of the upcoming service is just as good. There will be no need to boot up qemu-kvm on Linux to load Windows, just to stream a video.
Also, Amazon's MP3 downloader program has a Linux version. So they do have some record of catering to us.
That's if all this isn't made irrelevant by 25 gig/month caps...