If you subscribe to other channels via Amazon Prime (e.g., Paramount+ through the Prime app), they already serve you 70-90s unskippable ads. Often ads for the very show you are about to watch. It's infuriating.
If I were paying for it myself it would be totally unacceptable. Since I'm just using someone else's account, it still makes me mad but I'll tolerate it.
Naw, I was too. Haven't been for a year or two, but I've only ever subscribed to them for the shipping. Barely used their streaming when I did cause, also, yarr 🏴☠️
Imagine for a second you were a paid member of a gym, but decided to do most of your exercise outside the gym you just paid for.
That's most streaming platforms for a large amount of people. They're so inconvenient that people will pay for them, and still not use the service they paid for.
A damning indictment of modern day streaming platforms tbh.
God forgive me, I'm going defend Prime. I always thought that because Prime was also required for faster shipping, they were willing to explore artistic shows that something like Netflix wouldn't touch these days. People likely aren't subscribing or cancelling because of the video offer, so they have more freedom to greenlight interesting concepts.
Prime shows like Solos and Tales from the Loop probably aren't great for getting new subscribers, but they're absolutely wonderful, especially compared to season 47 of [generic low-budget comedy baking reality show]. Shows like The Expanse, Mr Robot, Homecoming are all solid and Prime seems far less likely to cancel shows before they end properly.
I loved what the grand tour was able to accomplish on prime that they simply couldn’t on BBC with top gear. The early seasons are wonky with weird formatting, but when they started focusing more on specials in the later seasons (seamen, eurocrash, the Mongolian special, a massive hunt) have been some of the best top gear content since like top gear season 7
I’m almost impressed by how bad their UI is. It’s like they didn’t even try to create something useful, but simply shoehorned it into the regular Amazon codebase.
The only service with worse UI is Sky, and if Sky is your benchmark, than you’re done.
I so much agree. I would never go to Amazon service to buy new movies (for streaming). It is not easy to see what is in your library and sort/search it.
I think we had Prime before streaming even started, so that was like a bonus.
But lately we hardly use it. The site is so janky and bloated with trash, I’d rather pay shipping and buy directly from a brand website or a normal retailer. Most have free shipping nowadays anyway.
I just bought an Apple USB wall adapter from Amazon because Best Buy was out of them. I spent like 20 minutes inspecting it and the package and watching videos about how to make sure it isn’t counterfeit. Buying a $20 thing shouldn’t be a stressful ordeal.
Even though I have prime, I think I've used their video service like 2 or 4 times. The interface is shit and the included media was sub par the vast majority of the time unless I wanted to pay to watch something that wasn't included.
They recently updated the app interface across the board, it is much more like Netflix or others streaming apps than it was. They’ve gotten a lot of good original content and taken over some things that were cancelled elsewhere (like The Expanse).
I don’t like this change although it seems they’re all doing it, but their platform and content are pretty good these days. They are also one of the cheaper services these days if you just do a video sub, and they don’t charge a premium for 4k.
You can still do that without prime as long as your purchase totals to $25 (and is shipped by Amazon). I just wait till I hit $25 before buying everything at the same time. Anything important or critical I buy direct and not through amazon anyway.
There is something that I really don’t get. Aren’t we close to critical advertisement mass by now? With all the silly advertising at this point, Amazon, for example, must be advertising on Disney+, while Disney+ is advertising on Netflix.
We were already leaning towards replacing it with WalMart+ before this announcement. It used to be worth it when it was cheaper and got you next day delivery, but those are gone. We have little use for it’s various features, so we figure give W+ a try for a year, it’s cheaper, and seems to cover our needs, though there’s a good chance that’ll be a one and done thing, since I don’t think we’ll find it worth it, but I don’t see us going back to Prime.
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