So, I decided to give Amazon Prime a trial (first month is free). This gets you 2 day shipping on purchases (no minimum order) and access to their streaming video content. Anyone else use Prime? What do you think of it?
Oh also, if anyone is using this, have you figured out a way to stream to the iPad or other iDevice?
I have been using Prime for a few years. I make quite a few purchases from Amazon - using the Amazon credit card for bonuses - so it pays for itself very quickly. We charge almost everything - paying the balance off each month - and I literally get ~$1,000 US back each year. :)
However, I really haven't used the on demand video service much at all - so I cannot comment.
Quote from: Rico on October 16, 2011, 08:25:16 AM
Oh also, if anyone is using this, have you figured out a way to stream to the iPad or other iDevice?
Ive been looking into this, it seems to use a iDevice only via the web browser. You can roll your own flux app by navigating to the amazon streaming page on your idevice
and pressing the "box arrow" icon or + icon at the bottom of the screen , and pick add to home screen
I heart Amazon prime! i have been using it since they first introduced it and it pays for itself as i order allot from Amazon.... free two day shipping and sometimes next day for only a few bucks. With prime i have ordered everything from my Hi-def TV to batteries... well worth the $75 per year and you get free streaming on movies (same offering as on netflix)
Marko
I've been using the student version and it's great being able to get stuff 2 days after you order them, or even sooner in some cases. Recommend. :)
King
Love Amazon Prime! Nothing like getting something overnighted for $3.99!
Strong supporter of amazon prime here. And it's kind of frightening how much food amazon can ship to you...
How's the streaming selection compared to Netflix?
Quote from: Jobydrone4of20 on October 18, 2011, 04:46:41 AM
How's the streaming selection compared to Netflix?
Certainly not the amount of selection as Netflix for streaming, but they do have a fair amount - especially TV series. Plus a lot more stuff is coming. Nice little "perk" with having Prime.
Found this today at Amazon:
Dear Customers,
We have more good news for Amazon Prime members – Prime Instant Video is growing again. We've now licensed TV programs from PBS including day-after broadcast shows like Frontline and NOVA, more than 1,000 episodes of shows like Masterpiece, Antiques Roadshow, and popular Ken Burns documentaries The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz, and, for a limited time, the first episode of Prohibition. PBS joins recently announced FOX television shows 24, Arrested Development, The X-Files, Ally McBeal, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Wonder Years.
Coming soon, we'll be adding Malcolm in the Middle, King of the Hill, and episodes from Julia Child's classic cooking series, The French Chef. We continue to add new Prime Instant Video titles to our catalog at no additional cost. Prime membership remains $79 a year.
Dear Customers,
Our Prime Instant Video team is on a roll. Today, we're announcing an agreement with Disney-ABC that adds 800 popular titles from ABC Studios, The Disney Channel, ABC Family, and Marvel. These new titles will bring the total to almost 13,000 TV shows and movies — all available for unlimited instant streaming.
The popular series Lost and Grey's Anatomy will be ready for streaming tomorrow. Then, we'll add other favorites including Felicity, The Disney Channel's Phineas & Ferb, Marvel's X-Men Evolution, and ABC Family shows like Greek and episodes from the most current season of The Secret Life of the American Teenager.
Disney-ABC joins recently announced deals with FOX, CBS, NBC-Universal, and PBS — just to name a few. We've added shows like Arrested Development, Firefly, The X-Files, every series of Star Trek, and Prison Break. You can watch on over 300 different devices, including our new Kindle Fire. Instant video streaming is a new benefit of Amazon Prime and is brought to you at no additional cost — Prime membership remains $79 a year.
Dear Customers,
Today we're announcing a new benefit for Kindle owners with an Amazon Prime membership: the Kindle Owners' Lending Library.
Kindle owners can now choose from thousands of books to borrow for free, including over 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers — as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates. No other e-reader or ebook store offers such a service.
The Kindle Owners' Lending Library features a wide array of popular titles, including Water for Elephants, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, and Fast Food Nation – plus award-winning novels such as The Finkler Question, motivational books like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, biographies and memoirs including Kitchen Confidential, and Pulitzer Prize-winning books like Guns, Germs, and Steel.
We're adding the Kindle Owners' Lending Library to Prime membership at no extra cost — Amazon Prime remains just $79 a year, which gives you free two-day shipping on millions of products, plus unlimited instant streaming of almost 13,000 movies and TV shows.
If you're a Kindle owner with Prime, you can start borrowing books today. If you don't yet have a Kindle, our all-new Kindle family is available from just $79.
Quote from: Bromptonboy on November 03, 2011, 10:52:17 AM
Dear Customers,
Today we're announcing a new benefit for Kindle owners with an Amazon Prime membership: the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.
Kindle owners can now choose from thousands of books to borrow for free, including over 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers — as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates. No other e-reader or ebook store offers such a service.
The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library features a wide array of popular titles, including Water for Elephants, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, and Fast Food Nation – plus award-winning novels such as The Finkler Question, motivational books like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, biographies and memoirs including Kitchen Confidential, and Pulitzer Prize-winning books like Guns, Germs, and Steel.
We’re adding the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library to Prime membership at no extra cost — Amazon Prime remains just $79 a year, which gives you free two-day shipping on millions of products, plus unlimited instant streaming of almost 13,000 movies and TV shows.
If you’re a Kindle owner with Prime, you can start borrowing books today. If you don’t yet have a Kindle, our all-new Kindle family is available from just $79.
Pretty nice!
They act like one book a month is a huge deal. Wow! I'm so impressed. The Nook has offered borrowing from day one and there is no limit to the number only the duration, which is two weeks. That's the same whether borrowing from a friend or a library.
Kevin
Quote from: Ktrek on November 03, 2011, 02:57:29 PM
They act like one book a month is a huge deal. Wow! I'm so impressed. The Nook has offered borrowing from day one and there is no limit to the number only the duration, which is two weeks. That's the same whether borrowing from a friend or a library.
Kevin
I'm confused by this. How can there be no limit? Why would anyone buy books then?
Quote from: Rico on November 03, 2011, 05:44:32 PM
Quote from: Ktrek on November 03, 2011, 02:57:29 PM
They act like one book a month is a huge deal. Wow! I'm so impressed. The Nook has offered borrowing from day one and there is no limit to the number only the duration, which is two weeks. That's the same whether borrowing from a friend or a library.
Kevin
I'm confused by this. How can there be no limit? Why would anyone buy books then?
Only certain books are in the "library". There are hundreds of thousands that aren't in the free libraries.
Quote from: Rico on November 03, 2011, 05:44:32 PM
I'm confused by this. How can there be no limit? Why would anyone buy books then?
If a book is on B&N's "lend me" list it can be borrowed from a friend. The only limit is that any book I can lend out can be lent out once but those restrictions do not apply at all to borrowed library books. I can also borrow as many books from friends as I want as long as the book is available for lending. I can also go to my local B&N store and read any book available in ebook, while in the store, for up to an hour a day. If I wanted I could read through entire novels for free just by visiting their store. Libraries, like the Philadelphia Free Library, have sometimes thousands of titles available to loan. You can't borrow from libraries on the Kindle.
Anyway, at least you get some benefits to being an Amazon Prime member. I still think my Nook Color is a more diverse tablet than the Fire will be.
Kevin
Quote from: Ktrek on November 03, 2011, 09:08:04 PM
Libraries, like the Philadelphia Free Library, have sometimes thousands of titles available to loan. You can't borrow from libraries on the Kindle.
Anyway, at least you get some benefits to being an Amazon Prime member. I still think my Nook Color is a more diverse tablet than the Fire will be.
Kevin
Kevin, the last part isn't true. You can and I have borrowed from the public library on my kindle. Not only that, some libraries here loan out Kindles to borrow books on. Infact, any library part of the Overdrive network, which is a lot, can get books on their Kindles.
http://overdrive.com/Solutions/Libraries/ (http://overdrive.com/Solutions/Libraries/)
http://overdrive.bpl.org/414D6042-2F87-47F3-95CC-6D57C0A4DCC8/10/380/en/SearchResults.htm?SearchID=56585506&SortBy=CollDate (http://overdrive.bpl.org/414D6042-2F87-47F3-95CC-6D57C0A4DCC8/10/380/en/SearchResults.htm?SearchID=56585506&SortBy=CollDate)
EDIT: You can also borrow certain books from friends with no problems.
Not to mention all the other benefits of Prime membership with a Fire-Kindle - covered 2nd day shipping on most items, free movies & TV shows, etc. Overall a nice package. I have had Prime for years, but I am now thinking about getting the new tablet. Just got about $100 in Amazon gift certs - that would take the sting off of the Fire.... :)
It's cool that Overdrive have got Kindle support cracked (in the US only at the moment). I use it with the local library and my iDevice at the moment but if they release the Kindle implementation over here, that could be enough to tip me over to buying one.
On the main topic of this thread, I have no interest at all in Amazon Prime. All we get over here is accelerated shipping and I don't order enough from them to make that worth the price of admission.
Kevin - like Chris said above, you are wrong about being able to borrow from libraries on the Kindle - you can do that. For me, I'm still in the trial of Amazon Prime, but I like that they keep adding extra benefits to it. It started out as mainly free 2 day shipping, now you get streaming video (including all Trek), free book rentals and more. In my view, Amazon is making all the right moves lately.
Really been loving the free month of Prime. Super fast shipping, free books, video to watch (including all of Trek). So, I'm signed up for a year now! :)
Quote from: Rico on November 04, 2011, 08:33:54 AM
Kevin - like Chris said above, you are wrong about being able to borrow from libraries on the Kindle - you can do that. For me, I'm still in the trial of Amazon Prime, but I like that they keep adding extra benefits to it. It started out as mainly free 2 day shipping, now you get streaming video (including all Trek), free book rentals and more. In my view, Amazon is making all the right moves lately.
They have, BUT, they can't loose focus of their core business. They can't be the best online retailer as well as a media and content company. That's a very big concern a lot of analysts have about the company right now. A lot of spending at Amazon on ventures that might not pan out.
Been using prime since they stated it .... love it!!!!!
Just started my free month of prime this morning (ordered the Wonder Pets Beanie Baby collection for the kids). Looking forward to checking out all the features.
I signed up for Prime last week and immediately ordered a new Weber gas grill and got free shipping which paid for more then half the cost of Prime. Amazon looses $11/ cutomer for each Prime member right now and $15/Kinndle. Like I said, it's a lose leader and they better hope they can grow customer base fast enough to make up for it in volume. There earning report yesterday wasn't too hot.
Yeah, I wasn't wowed enough to pay for a membership. I didn't like the interface for streaming movies or shows on my iPad, and I don't order enough from them to make it worthwhile for the shipping benefit. I saved a few bucks with some holiday purchases but a few things I ordered didnt even offer the benefit because it was not sold by Amazon directly. Oh well, I'll have to muddle through with Netflix and Xfinity. boo hoo.
The streaming service is a bell and whistle. This chatter online that Amazon will compete with Netflix is just silly.
Quote from: Bryancd on February 01, 2012, 06:19:11 AM
I signed up for Prime last week and immediately ordered a new Weber gas grill and got free shipping which paid for more then half the cost of Prime. Amazon looses $11/ cutomer for each Prime member right now and $15/Kinndle. Like I said, it's a lose leader and they better hope they can grow customer base fast enough to make up for it in volume. There earning report yesterday wasn't too hot.
I got it too last week because I'm buying my mother a Fire and I need to have everything in place for her to use it.
Amazon Prime video streaming will be on the PS3 soon too.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/amazon-prime-streaming-video-now-available-on-playstation-3/2012/04/04/gIQAUi16uS_story.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/amazon-prime-streaming-video-now-available-on-playstation-3/2012/04/04/gIQAUi16uS_story.html)
Hows the content? I can't really view it with my free student account.
King
Looks like you can get Amazon Prime now for $7.99 per month. That ends up being more costly than $79 in one payment, but it gives you the convenience of a payment plan thing too. Well worth it for the shipping and the video content is getting bigger and better all the time too.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/11/07/the-truth-about-amazons-8-monthly-plan/ (http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/11/07/the-truth-about-amazons-8-monthly-plan/)
Sure wish they'd do that in the UK and rebrand LoveFilm to Amazon VOD...
I have been a member for years, and love it. We try to buy most of our stuff here, and use the Amazon credit card. We have gotten back almost $900 this year without paying a nickel of interest. :)
Quote from: Dangelus on November 07, 2012, 09:49:59 AM
Sure wish they'd do that in the UK and rebrand LoveFilm to Amazon VOD...
That would almost make it worthwhile.