Video streaming is broken. 4K is a lie, UI and UX is clumsy and uninviting at best. There's predatory sign-ups for supplemental packages that customers have no idea about until they've been charged (sometimes for more than a year). Customer Service then tries to only refund for 1-6 months, unless the customer hires a lawyer. TV and Movie Titles that were available for free one week suddenly disappear (without warning) or require payment for continued availability (e.g., TV series), even though you pay for Prime and it was free for Prime last week.
When you start looking at all these patterns, across all these services (e.g., Prime, Alexa, Music, Video), it's clear that one type of team must be dictating all of this (e.g., Music and Video). It's all predatory, in the same style; homogenous. Talk about placing a bet on the wrong horse.
Maybe it's not the same in all regions (I'm in France), plus sample size of one and whatnot, but I actually enjoy Prime Video. I don't watch many movies / series, so its being cheap matters a lot to me. It has enough shows to keep me busy.
There's a visible toggle to only show content that's "free for me", so I don't end up accidentally clicking on something that's not included. Plus, everything that's not free for prime members has a big icon attached to it, and it'll actually ask clearly if I want to pay to view it.
The UI is OK, I can easily find my way around it. I haven't used Netflix much, but it was much more of a pain to navigate, even for shows that I was already watching and wanted to get back to.
For shows disappearing, I've always seen a text saying they'd be leaving prime in X days.
I haven't tried Amazon Music, but I did buy a Fire TV stick, and I love that, too. I have a dumb PC monitor with terrible sound and the stick is the only player I've had that managed to only output the sound in stereo, so I can hook it up digitally to my stereo amplifier (through an HDMI toslink extractor I've got off Amazon for cheap). It's also able to tweak the remote signals so that it controls my amp volume instead of its integrated volume control.
I've seen shows that pretend to be in 4K (my monitor is 4k). They look pretty good, but I don't know how to be certain they're actually 4k.
Of all the FAANG companies, Amazon is by far the one with the most differences between countries. Internationalization makes discussions around Amazon’s practices near impossible.
Perhaps I'm part of some A/B test. Most of these affordances have in the past few days disappeared from Prime Video, so I can no longer filter by "Free to me" (a filter which it frequently would forget, anyway!) or see a little "Prime" label on the corners of included stuff. Instead, I now far more "free with ads" items (as entire rows, or mixed in with other stuff).
4K worked for me for a few weeks when they had a special "Ultra HD" category. After that, items that would claim that label streamed in at most 1080p. Other providers continue to provide the expected service: sharp image when fullscreened on my 5k display.
> Customer Service then tries to only refund for 1-6 months, unless the customer hires a lawyer.
Capital One had (when I was employed there) a process where if someone calls and disputes a Prime charge, they just call a specific number at Amazon and it gets removed instantly. No questions asked and bypasses the normal dispute process.
I enjoy my prime video. Not really sure what the complications are for you. Even the non-techies in the house can easily click into it from the app on our TV.
Personally, I have a fairly long list of issues with Prime Video, from cosmetic to deep-seeded internals. Same with Amazon Music. It could be so much better, sooo much better.
It's possible to subscribe just to Prime Video. I highly recommend doing that if you only use Prime for video. It's cheaper than full Prime and you pay month by month, so you can cancel it for a few months then come back.
The only issue: I seem to remember the process of switching from full Prime to Prime Video only was rather confusing and hidden.
That must be a regional difference again. Maybe because fast shipping across North America is more expensive than inside a densely populated country like Germany? (There is monthly Prime here, including video and shipping, and it's slightly more expensive than the yearly package.)
Weird. Around here, Prime does give access to video.
I know folks around here who have prime just for that. I doublechecked just to be sure; it still is like that (according to a quick google search).