What’s the difference between the catalogues of Netflix and Amazon? Are they vastly different? Does one dwarf the other? I’m specifically thinking of Amazon Prime, not its on-demand fee-based rental.
Netflix has a larger catalogue than Amazon, but not that much larger given the amount of time it’s had to build up before Amazon got into the game. Netflix also has some deals that Amazon doesn’t, like the Dreamworks deal which we’ll see in 2013 (provided Netflix is still around by then).
Amazon Prime is, however, cheaper than Netflix (Prime is $80/year, Netflix streaming only is $96/year), and you get access to all the other goodies Amazon Prime offers.
Honestly, given the massive leverage Amazon has to work with, and given the ineptitude Netflix’s leadership has shown this year, I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon becomes better for streaming than Netflix period next year.
Thanks. So for the time being, switching from Netflix to Amazon (or shelling out for both) won’t produce a large increase in available titles.
We already get the Prime free shipping via Amazon’s family club, so we’d only benefit from a larger/different catalogue.
Don’t suppose there’s a Web site that notes the differences out there. I tried searching, but I mostly found somewhat old articles describing the services without a direct comparison.
Well, I have both, and I use Netflix 99% of the time. (I just use Amazon Prime for the shipping.)
If you want to give me three sample programs (not very scientific, but still) I can look them up on each and see what’s available.
We have both, and the catalogs are definitely not the same. However, I wouldn’t say one is clearly better as a service. You can’t queue anything in Amazon for watching later, and that’s annoying. I would say we watch Netflix 75% of the time for that reason, but we use them both.
I have Amazon Prime, but don’t have a device that streams it, so you might want to take that into account. Amazon hasn’t been very good at pushing it out to hardware; despite having a brand-new TV, brand-new Blu Ray player, and one of the best TiVos out there, none of them support Amazon streaming. C’mon, Amazon! Get with it!
Examples are a bit problematic–Amazon lets you search and select ‘prime only’, so I did a bit of poking around before posting.
The question pretty much stems from browsing. I’ve been watching a lot of television/movies lately (for the past seven or eight months I’ve been spending an hour and a half a day on cardio and will likely continue that through at least March before scaling back a bit). I’m running out of good things to watch (for certain definitions of ‘good’), so I spend a lot of time browsing through the Netflix catalogue, hoping to find something watchable. Most ideas/examples I’ve come up with (e.g. Excalibur, Back to the Future) aren’t available on either. I was basically wondering if I Amazon’s catalogue will provide more ideas (as in “oh, I didn’t think of that!”) while searching for something to watch.
ETA
We feathered the nest in the exercise area pretty well (anything to keep going). Besides the TV, there’s a host of electronics including a Mac mini. If the Mac doesn’t work, I’ve enough spare parts to build an HTPC.
You can queue as many movies as you like in your video library on amazon for watching later.
Yes, but its my husband’s Amazon prime accunt, which means I can never queue anything, and no one can queue anything on the fly when you browse with the Roku; when we’re watching TV is when we think about watching tv, so it’s a drag.
I’ve had Amazon Prime for years–buy a lot of stuff (not just books) & the free quick shipment is especially valuable for gift season.
Periodically I check their free streaming video option; then go back to Netflix on the Roku rather than try to set up Amazon Prime.
So far, Netflix wins.
Relevant link: Why Netflix Is A Goner, from MSN Money. I don’t know much (anything) about business, but the author explains pretty clearly, IMO, why Netflix may soon be dead. It’d be a shame, really, because I like Netflix and still don’t consider it a bad deal at all, but as others mentioned, Amazon’s streaming service currently has some rather large flaws as a Netflix replacement.
I thought about getting Amazon Prime, but it seems as though it’s not natively supported by Wii etc.
When I looked into it recently (after Netflix started to piss me off with their price hike and their now-cancelled plans to split their disc service from their streaming) Netflix streaming had about 20,000 titles, while Amazon Prime had about 9,000.
So I still have Netflix streaming and disc. One nice thing is that I’ve noticed a lot more of their titles are streaming in HD now than there were a few months ago.
He explains why he thinks you shouldn’t *invest *in Netflix stock. Not about why you should switch to Amazon Prime Streaming–per the OP–because you shouldn’t.
I hope Netflix continues to do business; the number of members they’ve lost throughout the recent kerfluffle is really a pretty small percentage. Of course the people who own the content (not always the ones who made it) want to sell it more expensively–so they’d love to switch to Pay Per View.
If a Better-Than-Netflix-Streaming option comes out, I’ll switch. (I still don’t mind paying for* legal* access to content.) Hasn’t happened yet.
Same here. Amazon, Hulu Plus (which is also being gutted), and Blockbuster are not as good as Netflix. Personally, I think one of Netflix’ biggest problems is that Netflix can’t point their fingers at the parties really causing all the issues because Netflix needs to stay on good terms to continue to get content.