Amazon prime/ Wii report

[Dug B.]

I never saw anyone post any results on Wii/ Amazon streaming video from an earlier thread. Here's my stab at doing so:

Since Netflix has decided to make my life hell by removing Dora, Go Diego Go *and* Blues Clues as of tomorrow I signed up for a 30 day trial membership on Amazon Prime so we would still have a streaming source for our kids' crack.

Signing up for the trial was extremely easy; if you have an Amazon account you pretty much just turn on the trial. At the end of the 30 day trial it converts to the $79/ year Amazon Prime cost unless you at any point in the trial sign on and say don't upgrade. Easy-peasy. Registering my wii was extremely simple as well and worked about like Netflix and Hulu did for their registrations. The only additional step was picking a 5 digit PIN so our kids can't rent things without our permission. If you don't know, there is a lot of streaming content for free with your prime membership and also a lot that is not free but available to rent at prices that I'm still not sold on. I've been jonesing for Casablanca for a while, but 2.99 for a 3 day rental? I can buy the dvd for 10 bucks at WalMart and my library probably has it for free, I'm just not loving their pricing structure on rentals (and why is Casablanca not available for free or subscription streaming ANYWHERE?).

Our dsl connection is RIDICULOUSLY SLOW. 1.5 mb/s. Yes, I said 1.5. It's the best our phone company seems able to provide even though we're close enough for 6 mb/s and they are basically our only broadband option. I guess you can count us as a near worst case test site. So far video has been seamless with no buffering and much better quality than Hulu. Obviously only one device can stream at a time at this speed; but that's on me. Or on my isp. Netflix recently dramatically improved their video on the Wii (at least for slow speed users like us) and this is at least as good. If things continue like this we may stick with them at the end of the trial.

Oh, Prime of course also comes with free 2 day shipping and free Kindle books from the Kindle Owners Lending Library for that e-reader I don't own.

[Edward Crosby]

Love Amazon Prime. My membership comes up for renewal next month and I am totally renewing.

Keep in mind that about 99.9% of time it's not Netflix or Amazon's fault for the availability and pricing of a video. Most of the time that is driven by the studios. But, I hear what you are saying. There has been so many times that I have wanted to rent a movie from Amazon and see that $3 or $4 price and say, "forget it". You would think that even with Prime membership those rental prices would be discounted. If it's a new movie I can just take a few minutes to drive up to the local Redbox (I have three within a two mile radius) and rent it for $1, and sometimes less if I have a promo code they email me every week.

You would think that with the ease and availability of streaming these days, and competition, that the rental prices would have gone down. But, again, we can blame the crooks that are the studios who own those videos.

Glad your Wii streaming worked out.

----------------------------------------
Have a Better One,
Edward Crosby
http://about.me/edwardcrosby

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[Cary Preston]

We keep Prime membership for the better shipping. I haven't even used the video streaming yet. 

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