You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
Economy
People are cancelling Amazon Prime subscriptions after it makes major change to viewing experience
2024-01-06
[Self-Reliance Center] Amazon sent an email to millions of Prime Video users last Wednesday to inform them that advertising will appear on the streaming platform starting next month unless they pay an additional subscription fee.

Amazon’s Prime Video will start including "limited advertisements" on its movies and TV shows beginning January 29.

It appears that the annual subscription with free Prime streaming access is not being honored — the Bezos-owned giant is arbitrarily introducing ads at the end of the month. People are ticked and have started to unsubscribe. The hook that Amazon has is free shipping on Prime account orders. This just looks like a way to make another $2.99 from members who prefer uninterrupted movies.

Having forced millions of Gen X and Z users to ditch cable, they are recreating it in a directly delivered form.

Posted by:Besoeker

#9  ^ Healthy hacking community devoted to that.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2024-01-06 15:49  

#8  Anybody remember VHS recorders? Looks like Amazon still sells them. Your record the movie and fast forward through the commercials. Technically, you should be able to do that with the cable company's DVR as well but AFIK you can't get the file off the DVR. Somebody needs to start working on that if they haven't already.
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2024-01-06 14:24  

#7  I try to avoid Amazon but we do not have even a WalMart in our county and Dollar General is 8 miles away.
Posted by: Glenmore   2024-01-06 13:01  

#6  I gotta say that the Amazon Prime service (I'm not a member/subscriber) taps in to the fast-food, "gotta have it now" mentality of some Americans. There's absolutely nothing I order from Amazon (1-3 orders per year) that I absolutely need within
immediately.

I don't and NEVER will use Alexa, either.

I cancelled my Internet/cable TV bundle 18 months ago (kept Internet)...$200 per month for the most basic of packages and rising. Some of that rise was courtesy of some government jurisdiction raising "fees".
Posted by: DooDahMan   2024-01-06 12:19  

#5  I quit Amazon Prime a year ago. They promised free shipping but when I went to check-out shipping was always included. I complained but never got an answer as to why. Piss on Amazon.
Posted by: Deacon Blues   2024-01-06 11:45  

#4  ^ Never discussed is that there is nothing "green" about streaming, except for the green being sucked out of your pocket.

An Amazon or Dizney datacenter is a poor substitute for a stand-alone blu-ray player, energy use wise.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2024-01-06 11:20  

#3  I think Darth has it; this is about conditioning customers.

I'm going to say it again, especially for the youngsters.

Streaming content means you are paying someone to rent back your purchase. If you don't have a copy, you don't have a copy.

Since nobody has seen the movie Moose, I'll pull another example. Jurassic Park 2. In the original the little girl on the beach gets attacked and as the mother screams, the film transitions to Malcolm on a subway. Its actually a great transition. Today, the scream transitions to a lawyer yawning and a over long lawsuit scene which is bland and pointless, and a creation scene for the safari man which is unnecessary and kind of dumb. People who bought the original to stream, now have the new and crappy version. DVD owners, at the moment technology wise, have and keep the better version.

*Moose is a campy, quirky movie and the original was fun. They went through and changed some cuts and most importantly, changed the music, which changed the ambiance, which ruined the atmosphere IMHO, and haven't watched it since. I paid for a movie I liked, now I have a movie I don't like.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2024-01-06 11:17  

#2  They have to make up all their 'yuge' losses in their 'woke' version of Rings of Power.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2024-01-06 08:12  

#1  That is what pissed me off. I pay NOT to see commercials. If they just sent me an email that said, "Due to rising costs and inflation, we are increasing the cost by $2.99 a month, I wouldn't have given a shit. But they say "Oh, we are putting in commercials and you can opt out for $3 a month really pissed me off.
Posted by: DarthVader   2024-01-06 00:51  

00:00