Amazon Gives Prime Members Free Access to Instant Videos
To no one’s surprise, Amazon.com has announced a series of improvements to it’s Prime Service (which till now gave you free 2-day shipping on anything in exchange for an annual fee of $79) that now is offering over 5,000 TV shows and movies streamed to Prime members for free.
The service will function out to Macs and PCs and the set-top boxes that have access to Amazon Instant streaming services already. Right now it’s limited to Roku and Google TV boxes (as if the few people who bought them haven’t already returned them), some Sony, Panasonic, Samsung equipment and Tivo players.
As expected, the selection isn’t super fantastic but there are over 2000 movies, only some are available in HD and unfortunately it’s a flash-based playback but it’s free to those of us that already pay for Prime.
Film Selections that caught my eye out of the first 300-400 were:
| Contact | Billy Jack |
| Exit through the gift shop | THX 1138 |
| Girl with the dragon tattoo (and both sequels) | Hudsucker Proxy |
| Food, Inc. | East of Eden |
| Best in Show | Oldboy |
| Clockwork Orange | Bronson |
| Stripes | Body Heat |
| Age of Innocence | Enter The Dragon |
| Bye Bye Birdie | Great Santini |
| Starman | Mother |
| Revolver | Time After Time |
| Red Cliff | District 13 1 & 2 |
| Caligula (if you can believe that but it’s only the R-rated version) | Brainstorm |
| Man on a wire | Wait Until Dark |
| Soylent Green | Doc Hollywood |
| Let the Right One In (subtitled! Not the bullshit dubbed version which they also have) | Mean Streets |
| Waiting For Guffman | Touching The Void |
| Being There | Southland Tales |
| Ong Bak 1 & 2 | Me and You and Everyone We Know |
| King of Corn | Girlfight |
| Last Emperor | Thin Blue Line |
| and a boat load of others |
Television selections were interesting as well with over 450 choices and a lot of stuff for genre fans:
| Downton Abby | Red Dwarf |
| Doctor Who Seasons 1 through 4 of the new series plus a lot of the classic series too | Blackadder |
| Torchwood | Gavin and Stacey |
| Doc Martin | Fat Albert |
| Primeval | Dick Van Dyke Show |
| MI-5 | Little Britan |
| Bit of Fry and Laurie | Hotel Babylon |
| Top Gear | Good Neighbors (Goode Life) |
| Skins | League of Gentlemen |
| Farscape | As Time Goes By |
| Robin Hood | Vicar of Dibley |
| Mister Rogers Neighborhood | Chef! (don’t watch series 3, it was horrible… horrible.. horrible…) |
| State Within | Various Terry Jones documentary series |
| NOVA | Coupling |
| Bleak House | Lonesome Dove |
| Tin Man | JEKYLL (If you haven’t seen this gem from Stephen Moffitt, you need to!) |
| Civil War | SURVIVORS (another must see show!) |
| The Office (the good one, not the american rip-off) | Yes, Minister |
| Highlander | |
| Bonanza |
With movies and television shows it’s makes more then 3000 things to watch and since you’re probably already paying for the service already it’s a great deal—- now if there was just a way to get it onto a television screen to watch them.
All in all, it’s a nice freebie for people who are already members and perhaps for Amazon a way to test the waters with the Prime members to see how they would like and use it and perhaps the first step towards a monthly subscription service to try and lure Netflix customers away.
Tags:age of innocenceamazon.comblu raybye bye birdiedoc hollywooddragon tattooeast of edenenter the dragonfilm selectionsgenre fansgooglegoogle tvgreat santiniinternetlast emperorme and you and everyone we knowon demandondemandpanasonicsouthland talessoylent greenstreaming servicestelevision selectionstivotouching the voidtv boxesvideo on demandwaiting for guffman
2 Comments