As a pioneer in digital shopping, Amazon.com is now battling competitors who have made delivery digital a key element as well. Firing back at Netflix, Hulu Plus and the like, Amazon has rolled out unlimited commercial-free streaming of movies and TV shows to its Amazon Prime members.
People already pay $79 per year to join Amazon Prime, which gives them free two-day shipping of their purchases. Now that $79 will also include unlimited, commercial-free, instant streaming of more than 5,000 movies and TV shows.
“Millions of Amazon Prime members already enjoy the convenience of free Two-Day Shipping. Adding unlimited instant access to thousands of movies and TV shows at no additional cost is a great way to give members even more value for their $79 annual Amazon Prime membership,” said Robbie Schwietzer, vice president of Amazon Prime.
Amazon appears to have cut deals with all of the major broadcast and cable networks for streaming. Shows from ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC are all listed as being available for streaming, along with a long list of cable nets from Disney, Discovery, NBC Universal, CBS, Viacom, Fox and others.
The company says movies and TV shows included with an Amazon Prime membership can be watched instantly on Macs, PCs and nearly 200 models of Internet-connected TVs, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes that are compatible with Amazon Instant Video. The latter is Amazon’s digital video service that offers customers more than 90,000 commercial-free movies and television shows to buy or rent on an a la carte basis.
