Yo ho yo ho.
I don’t understand how people paying for prime can stand that crappy prime video UI anyway.
- it’s basically fine and unoffensive ui to 99.9% of people
- people see it as functionally free because they bought prime for free delivery
- People don’t know how to pirate
I’m deep into the seven seas but I still use prime because a family member pays for it. Its a decent enough ui and has some live stuff I can throw on to keep kids entertained. However, I’ve already added the shows I watch on prime to my jellyfin server just because this change is going to make me not want to use it anymore.
I weighed anchor despite paying for Prime for years. For one, you never know when they’ll drop a show, and two I prefer all my media in my polled interface.
I ended up dropping Prime two years ago because Amazon simply can’t hold up their end of their 2 day bargain. I live in a college town and when the school year starts their delivery time stretches to nearly 2 weeks. The rest of the year it fluctuates between 3 and 7 days. That’s not Prime in any way. Of course, without prime, note they wait 3-6 days before even shipping my packages so everything is a week to ten days. OTOH, Walmart - though having a smaller selection- is being me next day service on about 60% of my orders and two day on the rest …for less than half the annual fee.
My only lament is the weird Chinese electronics/components Amazon sellers stock FBA. It doesn’t take me too long to get to $35, but I do miss the $5 impulse buy of small packs of arduino actuators or pneumatic push connectors when inspiration strikes.
Yep. I don’t consider it as a valuable streaming platform. If they removed it from the general prime I would not buy it separately.
Still a better UI than Disney+ too
I can understand 1 and 2, although, for 3, even though, most of my (nontechie) friends don’t know how to pirate, they know how to look up grey streaming sites like 123movies, sflix, fmovies, etc
I’m a shameless sailor but my wife has it for the free shipping.
Their menus are ass but I really like the actual player ui. Love pausing and seeing who is in the scene.
I can’t agree with #1. The interface is that of Amazon’s regular storefront and it often mixes paid media in with the free stuff or has stupid stuff like seasons 2, 4, & 6 being free while 1, 3, & 5 are paid. Maybe it’s different in the TV apps, but the browser version is atrocious.
The player interface is excellent. Being able to see who the actors are in each scene is one of my favorite UI features.
I agree that finding a thing you want to watch is meh at best. Especially because they mix in rentals, purchasable content, and prime content all in the home interface window.
That said, yo ho matey.
When I still was paying for prime (cancelled it last price increase) I was pirating any prime videos as that was easier than dealing with the shitty prime video UI.
Not to mention the shockingly bad picture quality.
The 4k stuff isn’t terrible, but anything that’s in HD is bloody awful.
I originally started paying for prime for the free shipping. Prime video is a perk as far as I’m concerned. I haven’t re-evaluated it in a long time though to see if it’s worth it. I do order a ton of stuff on amazon since I live 160km from the nearest city.
I pay for Amazon prime. The only time I watch Prime Video is every once in a while I wonder: is Stargate: Universe as terrible as I remember? And then I try watching it and remember that it is. 
I honestly thought it wasn’t terrible and would have benefitted from fleshing out the rest of the story. It was definitely a huge departure from the styling of SGU and Atlantis but not horrible on its own.
I hit the high seas when they wouldn’t let me watch the shit i paid for in high def. Fuck that.
It’s slightly more convenient than sailing, considering it’s attached to my unlimited photo backup
The UI had a “recent” glow up, it was way worse before.
“We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership,”
The double-speak is relatively subtle, but it’s always interesting to see how much work they put into gaslighting their customers:
- “No action is required from you…” - yes, Amazon hopes we do nothing, but Amazon unilaterally changed the assumptions underlying agreement, so “no action” is an acquiescence to a materially worse reality for us and a better one for Amazon.
- “…there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership” - yes, no additional dollars are required because Amazon is now selling our time and attention, but that is still a new “fee” we are paying.
Pretty gross, Amazon.
The enshittification will continue until profit margins improve
Enshitification won’t stop until the frogs realize that they are being boiled to death and jump out of the pot.
The enshittification will continue until the demand for profit is removed*
…demand for constant growth is removed.*
until profit margins improve
Lol
What is this mythical profit margin/amount that companies would be willing to accept? There is no limit to corporate greed…
The moment each show got a pre-reel for another Amazon show this was clearly the path they where taking.
Already cancelled a good 6 months ago.
Yeah, Prime Video already has commercials.
Yeah I thought that was a pretty obvious attempt to ease people into it. So this news doesn’t come as a shock. If anything I’m surprised it took this long.
At least they give you a slip button, unlike Paramount+
I’m getting really tired of all this enshitification.
Now corporations start with that bulshit of “oh, that model wasn’t sustainable actually” even though it worked perfectly fine for the last decade and they still get record profits year after year. They keep ripping everything from under us, this gotta stop.
It’s not enough to make money, they have to make all the money. They have a requirement for perpetual growth.
It’s not enough to make money, they have to make all the money. They have a requirement for perpetual growth.
Amazon has been progressively getting worse and worse. I was not a member of Prime for the video. It was a nice perk.
The combination of Amazon making it hard to search for things to buy, the huge amount of low quality crap for sale with confusing descriptions, and this most recent change of putting in place ads if I do not pay an additional fee has led me to cancel my subscription.
They have taken the enshittification too far. Good bye Amazon. Hello Home Depot, Target, et al.
Sadly, both Home Depot and Target have “marketplaced” their online stores as well, so you have to sort through the garbage just like Amazon.
Select the “available for local pickup” option to weed out all the trash. Even if you’re buying to be shipped.
I’ve pretty much stopped buying stuff online, except from small brick-and-mortar stores who have their own independent online store.
I did a review on Amazon yesterday that said I was shocked to receive a quality product because everything on modem Amazon is post war recycled tin toy quality.
They have not approved my review.
streaming has absolutely no future. if they keep pulling shit like this it’s going to decline even faster. i suppose it’s more about sucking off advertisers than it is pleasing customers, too…if you’re going to fail anyway why can’t you at least make a positive difference in the world?
Are their profits going down?
It will be like the Netflix exodus, the reddit exodus, etc. They’ll make more money. The best you can do is be true to yourself and not participate if you don’t want to.
Sadly, this. Average consumer, and I don’t mean it as an insult, will not look for an alternative to streaming. All these giant streaming companies are gauging how far they can go to increase the profit margins.
I’m a technically savvy average consumer. I’ve just been accepting the enshitification. It feels like every month a different company is raising prices.
I’m about ready to put on an eye patch and fly the Jolly Roger at this point.
Yarr
Clever
streaming has absolutely no future.
Streaming isn’t going anywhere, and if anything will likely continue to grow for as cable dies off. It’s just going to consolidate and get shittier (ads) as basically things move back to a model more cable-like. Piracy will probably ramp back to like levels for music in the early 2000’s, but it will remain a niche. Amazon specifically will see blowback for this, but it’s unlikely to move many off of Prime since it’s sort of a tertiary benefit to having a Prime membership, and even if it’s all you got for your Prime membership, it’s still one of the cheapest streaming services.
My prediction is that it all goes back to Netflix when they decide it’s not worth the time and expense to run their own services. They had a nice passive income thing going on there for many years and can have it again if they just license their IP again.
We need open source streaming or something… Ya kno?
Ppl should make their own YouTube Amazon / Google companies or else we shall all perish do to advertisements
The only reason I ever had Prime was free shipping, then I realized as soon as I bundled my orders to be over a certain dollar figure I STILL got free shipping, I kicked Prime to the curb.
You can even get a free week of prime for 2 dollars by just not giving-in which you can then immediately cancel and get ovre and over and over and over again.
The mods removed my comment with a link to a great free streaming site with the reason “don’t link directly to pirated content.” (great censorship!)
I don’t see that in the rules, so I guess it’s one of those “mystery” rules they can just make up on the spot.
Anyways, you can find free streaming sites here: https://rentry.co/megathread-movies-and-tv#streaming
I recommend using fmovies. Make sure you have Adnauseam or uBlock Origin installed.
Gotta love phantom rules, just make it up as you go along.
It’s fun to watch people react and move on rather than stop and consider.
Nobody wants a cease and desist from the MPAA or RIAA. Least of all Lemmy admins with no money for lawyers.
I don’t see that in the rules
Then you didn’t look too closely. [email protected]’s first rule is to follow the lemmy.world rules and links to the mastodon.world rules page. The first server rule there is “No illegal content.”
Chitak is Swedish - no laws broken.
It’s more about where the host server is located. Server owners in the US can lose protection from law suits if they don’t actively moderate.
oooh yay more content to collect from torrents. Bye Bye Prime.
Yeah, streaming services are losing the plot. I’m good lol.
Give it time and we’ll all be back on Netflix with all the catalogs available there.
Remember the times when we paid for such a service to get rid of ads? By now I cancelled my prime membership.
I wish delivery / video was separate because I’d cancel immediately.
You can use Amazon to buy things without subscribing. $35+ order gets free shipping
Amazon has turned to utter shit these days. They’ve been requiring you to show your ID to get a refund. Getting asked by some Indian dude who I can barely understand a picture of my government issued ID sure doesn’t feel comforting.
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You can also torrent all movies. That way if you want to watch it again later on you don’t need to download the whole thing again like you would with streaming. Streaming is really just downloading without saving.
Absolutely. The problem with torrenting is that it is less-accessible to laymen.
They need a VPN to torrent safely, which immediately cuts out most of them. They also need storage, which many of them do not know how to manage.
You don’t really need that much storage to stream torrents.
Downloading entire seasons of shows? Yes you do, especially if you want to watch whatever you want whenever you want like with free streaming sites. I also mentioned managing storage, not just having it. Many users of paid streaming services have never interacted with a file manager.
You need to keep the layman’s perspective in mind if you want to appeal to them.
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