Traded as NASDAQ: AMZN Industry Internet | Headquarters United States Parent Amazon.com | |
Type of site Video on demand
Digital distribution Area served Worldwide (excluding Mainland China, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Crimea) | ||
Amazon Video is an Internet video on demand service that is developed, owned and operated by Amazon.com. It offers television shows and films for rental or purchase and as part of Amazon's Prime subscription, selected titles can be viewed exclusively to full Prime or Prime Video members, in which video membership allows viewing without full Prime. Like competitors, Amazon has pursued a number of exclusive content deals to differentiate its service, including a multi-year licensing deal with HBO in the United States.
Contents
Launched on 7 September 2006 as Amazon Unbox in the United States, the service grew with its expanding library, and added the Prime Video membership with the development of Prime. It was then renamed as Amazon Instant Video on Demand. After acquiring the local streaming and DVD-by-mail service LoveFilm in 2011, Prime Video was added to Prime in the United Kingdom, Germany and Austria in 2014, a move that angered some Prime UK members as the bundling was nonnegotiable with a 61% increase in subscription fee.
In the UK, Germany and Austria, Prime Video has been available on a monthly subscription of £5.99 or €7.99 per month, continuing the plan of LoveFilm Instant. The service was previously available in Norway, Denmark and Sweden in 2012, but was discontinued in 2013. In 18 April 2016, Amazon split Prime Video from Amazon Prime in the US for $8.99/m The service also hosts Amazon Original content alongside titles on Video as well.
On 14 December 2016, Amazon Video launched worldwide (except for Mainland China, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Crimea) expanding its reach beyond US, UK, Germany, Austria and Japan. Among the new territories, the service was included with Prime in Belgium, Canada, France, India, Italy and Spain while for all other countries it was made available for a monthly promotional price of $/€2.99 per month for the first six months and $/€5.99 per month thereafter.
History
The service debuted on September 7, 2006 as Amazon Unbox in the United States. On September 4, 2008, the service was renamed Amazon Video on Demand. The Unbox name still refers to the local program, which as of August 2014 is no longer available for downloading purchased instant videos. On February 22, 2011, the service rebranded as Amazon Instant Video and added access to 5,000 movies and TV shows for Amazon Prime members. On September 4, 2012, Amazon signed a deal with pay-TV channel Epix to feature movies on their streaming service, in a move to rival their competitor Netflix. Additionally, in November 2013, Amazon premiered the comedies Alpha House and Betas, which are original series available exclusively online via the Prime Instant Video service. Amazon offered the first three episodes of both series at once for free, with each subsequent episode released weekly thereafter for Prime members.
In February 2014, Amazon announced that the streaming service of its UK subsidiary LoveFilm would be folded into the Instant Video service on 26 February 2014. In January 2015, Transparent became the first show produced by Amazon Studios to win a major award and the first series from a streaming video service to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy.
On July 30, 2015, Amazon announced that they had hired Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May to produce an untitled motoring show for Amazon Prime Video that would later be named The Grand Tour. Neither Jeff Bezos nor Amazon.com had stated how much Clarkson, Hammond, or May are being paid to produce the programme via their production company W. Chump & Sons, but Jeff Bezos stated that the deal was "very expensive, but worth it". The budget for the show has not officially been announced, but Andy Wilman, the former executive producer of Top Gear stated that each episode would have a budget of around £4.5 million, nine times larger than Top Gear's budget. Also in July, Amazon announced plans to expand the service into India.
In September 2015 the word "Instant" was dropped from its title in the US, and it was renamed simply Amazon Video. In November 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon was pursuing streaming rights to U.S. professional sports leagues to further differentiate the service.
Amazon announced in November 2016 that it planned to stream The Grand Tour globally, which led to speculation over whether the full Amazon Video service would begin a wider international rollout to compete with Netflix. On December 14, 2016, Amazon Video expanded into 200 additional countries.
In January 2017, Amazon announced the first branded on-demand subscription service for Amazon Channels, the company's streaming partners program. The channel, Anime Strike, will feature more than 1,000 series episodes and movies for a $4.99 per month subscription fee.
Video quality
Depending on the device, Amazon supports up to 4K (UHD) and High Dynamic Range (HDR) streaming. UHD/HDR rolled out with its original content. Other titles support 1080p (HD) streaming with 5.1 Dolby Digital or Dolby Digital Plus audio. For titles available for purchase (and not included in a customer's Amazon Prime subscription), the HD option is often offered at an additional price.
Requirements
Amazon Video is currently available to residents of the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Germany and Austria. Customers living outside Amazon Video's available countries are increasingly using VPN to get around the geographical restrictions. Customers of Amazon Video can stream on the web using an HTML5 player (supported in Chrome, IE11 and Microsoft Edge). In Firefox and Safari, only Microsoft Silverlight is supported.
Amazon video is available on Amazon's "Fire" devices, smart phones, tablets, PCs, and various TVs, Blu-ray players and consoles with a broadband connection. TVs supporting the service include LG, Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony. Sony TVs supporting Android TV include the Amazon Video app. Consoles supporting Amazon Video include recent PlayStation, Xbox, Wii and Wii U.
On October 1, 2015, Amazon announced that Chromecast and Apple TV products were banned from sale on its online marketplace effective October 29, 2015. Amazon argued that this was to reduce "customer confusion", as these devices do not support the Amazon Video ecosystem.