Amazon Launches Streaming Video Service for Prime Members

Today Amazon.com launched their ‘Instant Video’ service for Prime members. Over 5,000 movies and television series are available to be streamed in unlimited and commercial-free fashion. Amazon Prime carries a yearly cost of $79 and offers free two-day shipping and discounted overnight shipping on items purchased from the website. Considering that Netflix’s streaming-only service costs $96 a year on the surface Amazon’s package is more appealing.

As a member of Amazon Prime that has found the service to already be of good value due to the shipping speed and savings bringing in another benefit such as this is a big bonus. For those who aren’t Prime members it will make it easier to justify the costs with the increased value of the service. Having gone through some of the offerings currently available however there didn’t seem to be much of interest and certainly it pails in comparison to the library that has been built up by Netflix over the last couple years. I wouldn’t recommend anyone choose Amazon over Netflix for the streaming ability alone due to the difference in quality content that is currently available.