I guess this means Prime Video won't be coming to Chromecast any time soon. Oh well they charge by the episode for most of the good stuff anyway.
Amazon hopes fire stick will light up its video service
Amazon hopes a new dongle will revive its flagging video ambitions. The Fire TV stick is essentially the same as Google’s Chromecast concept: a low cost HDMI dongle bundled with a taster of Amazon’s own entertainment service – and a miniature version of the Fire TV box 'n’ remote that it revealed in April. Both old box and …
COMMENTS
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Tuesday 28th October 2014 16:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Amazon Prime doing fine
I've been a subscriber to Amazon Prime for the 1 day delivery and Kindle book a month for ages. I had a rethink when the Prime subscription increased, particularly as we already had Netflix, but have kept it on, and to be honest we are more likely to be watching something through Amazon Prime than Netflix these days - the Prime catalogue seems to updated more often, and is on par with Netflix's (pisspoor in the UK) movie content, and far better than Netflix for TV series.
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Wednesday 29th October 2014 15:00 GMT Bassey
Re: Amazon Prime doing fine
That's strange. I'm in the same position (due for renewal next week but probably won't) but came to the opposite conclusion. We spend far more time watching series on Netflix but I prefer the films of Amazon Prime. Vikings and Transparent aside I've found Prime disappointing on the TV side. Extant was woeful - even allowing for the eye candy that is Halle Berry.
At £40 between 4 households I thought prime was a bargain. At £80 and only allowed to share the postage part I think it is very questionable. The other households would have to have a lovefilm instant subscription to get the video and the books only work with kindle devices. I can't access the free books through the kindle app on my phone, tablet or PC.
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Tuesday 28th October 2014 16:05 GMT JDX
"After this it seems to have disappeared completely"
"After this it seems to have disappeared completely. You’ll have a hard time finding it on the Amazon home page amidst the offers for Kindles, while even Prime members don’t get the hard sell."
1)Go to amazon.co.uk
2)Hover over or click "your prime"
Or:
1)Start typing the name of a film/TV-show in the main search box
And oh look.
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Wednesday 29th October 2014 15:04 GMT Alan Edwards
Re: box vs stick
> anyone know what the box gives you that the stick doesn't?
It's quite a bit more powerful. The box has a quad-core Snapdragon CPU and 2Gb RAM, the stick has 1Gb and a dual-core Broadcom Capri.
The game controller works with the stick, but it might struggle with some of the higher-power games.
The box comes with the voice search remote, the stick doesn't it's a $30 extra.
The OS is the same AFAIK.
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Tuesday 28th October 2014 16:05 GMT Ben Norris
When Amazon took over the service from Lovefilm it went rapidly downhill. They have filled it with TV boxset, mostly old and their homemade very US centric series trying to stumble on another game of thrones.
They clearly don't love film anymore because very few new films are added on a regular basis and all the brand new stuff requires payment above the subscription.
It is not surprising that people don't want a service that they have ruined.
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Tuesday 28th October 2014 16:07 GMT I ain't Spartacus
I was rather impressed with Google Chromecast. I needed a quick and dirty solution to watch American Football, as my brother was coming over. I could have lugged the computer over to the sitting room, but I also want to watch iPlayer on it. I used to have Sky, but cancelled. Now I have a Chromcast button on the BBC iPlayer app on my iPad. Access to Netflix, should I choose to sign up plus YouTube and other things, should I care.
The NFL Gamepass app doesn't yet support Chromecast, so it was a quick walk to the office, bung on the PC, launch the video player, tell Chrome to turn it back into a normal browser window by right-clicking, and there was the chromcast button. I admit that's not the best, and some proper old-schook standing up from your chair, instead of a remote control. But I could have set up the tablet for RDP, if I hadn't been hitting the margaritas with my mexican (yum).
One of the faults, back when I read the first reviews of Chromecast, was how limited it was. I'm sure that's still the case, but when the NFL turned out to have not got round to supporting it, like they'd promised, it was a matter of a few minutes to get the PC to do the job instead. I'm impressed. Especially for a £30 gadget.
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Tuesday 28th October 2014 16:08 GMT Efros
Seems to be on fire as it were
I ordered one yesterday, $19 is not a bad price even if this thing sucks. Anyway after perusing a few forums the likelihood of a hack was being bounced around and so I thought I would go and order myself a second one to play with. Can't do it, amazon has cut the maximum order to one device per account.
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Saturday 6th December 2014 21:26 GMT Selden
For me, Amazon Instant Video + free shipping is still a pretty good deal, even at $99.95 a year. I have used a Chromecast for over a year, but (surprise, surprise) Amazon Instant Video isn't cast-enabled. I still prefer the Chromecast for everything but watching Amazon Instant Video. Since I have never subscribed to "premium" CATV, there is a lot content that is of interest to me. After I got the Chromecast, I tried 1-month trials of Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix, and of the three, Amazon's content most closely matched my interests. The Fire TV Stick is great watching Amazon Instant Video content; for everything else, I prefer the Chromecast. The two devices complement, rather than compete with, each other. A year from now, I may have watched all of Amazon's "free" content, and will cancel Prime, but for now, it's working for me.
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Tuesday 28th October 2014 21:14 GMT Zot
I loaded the PS3 Amazon player the other day.
I wanted to see the new Constantine TV series. Unfortunately I have to be on Prime to see it.
I would have gladly payed a couple of quid, but I'm not paying £79 just to see if it's any good.
Hey AMAZON! You're actually stopping me from giving you money to watch something, please step back and see how stupid that strategy is.