Should you subscribe to Amazon Prime Video?

Amazon Prime Video, or simply Prime Video, is a subscription video-on-demand over-the-top streaming and rental service of Amazon.com, Inc., offered as a standalone service or as part of Amazon's Prime subscription. The service primarily distributes films and television series produced by Amazon Studios or licensed to Amazon, as Prime Originals (or Amazon Originals) or Exclusives, with the service also hosting content from other providers, content add-ons, live sporting events and video rental and purchasing operating worldwide, the service may require a full Prime subscription to be accessed.

In countries such as the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, the service can be accessed without a full Prime subscription, whereas in Australia, Canada, France, India, Turkey and Italy, it can only be accessed through a dedicated website. Prime Video additionally offers a content add-on service in the form of channels, called Amazon Channels, or Prime Video Channels, which allow users to subscribe to additional video subscription services from other content providers within Prime Video, such as HBO, Showtime, StarzPlay, and Shudder Services.

Available on:

Supported Devices

Amazon Devices with the Prime Video App.

Blu-Ray Players with the Prime Video App.

Games Consoles with the Prime Video App.

Mobile Devices with the Prime Video App.

Prime Video System Requirements for Computers.

Set-Top Boxes and Media Players with the Prime Video App.

Smart TVs with the Prime Video App.

Subscription Plan:

To enjoy Prime benefits, you can purchase Prime membership by paying Rs. 329 for 3 months or ₹999 per year.

When your free trial or membership period ends, they will automatically charge for the next membership period.

–Rs 329 Amazon Prime membership: This is a three-month Prime membership that gives access to all the prime benefits including access to Prime video, free home delivery of products and much more. There was a one-month Prime membership available as well but Amazon recently discontinued the subscription plan in India.

What to expect:

Prime Video: Unlimited video streaming of latest movies, award-winning Amazon originals and TV shows from India and around the world. For more details, go to Prime Video.

Prime Music: Unlimited, ad-free access to playlists, stations, and millions of songs and albums at no additional cost. For more details, go to Amazon Music.

Prime Reading: Borrow eBooks, comics, and more from the Prime Reading catalog. Read them on your Kindle E-reader or the free Kindle reading apps for Android, iOS, PC, and macOS. For more information, go to Kindle Store Terms of Use.

Amazon Pay ICICI Bank Credit Card: Eligible Prime members earn 5% back on Amazon purchases. Digital and Gift Card purchases are exempt because they earn 2% back, in addition to rewards everywhere else you shop. For more information, go to Amazon Pay ICICI Bank Credit Card..

Best Amazon Prime originals: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Fleabag, and Bollywood Hits like Sultan, Kabali, Raaz, Kapoor & Sons, Sarabjit, Fan, Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, Dil Dhadakne Do, Shaandaar, Rock On, Talaash, Student of the Year and Fukrey among others are exclusive to the service.

It allows viewers to continue where they left off as well as watching a series or film again. It also has the option of browsing via language and many select widgets for award-winning films and shows as well as recommended content as per your preference.

Design and experience:

The design is simple and neat with lots of widgets like Amazon Originals, Coming Soon, Celebrating Friendship, Binge-Worthy TV, etc which makes it easier for the user to choose content. The dark background colour makes the content stand out and the lighter text is clearly readable on all screens. The swipe option for the widgets in the app provides more options to the user in the same category.

Amazon Prime boasts of all the Harry Potter films, shows like Family Man, The Last Hour, Comicstaan, Paatal Lok, Four More Shots Please as well as latest and upcoming releases like Sherni and Toofan. Highly loved shows and films such s Bandish Bandits, 3 Idiots, Dil Chahta Hai, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and The Big Bang Theory are also available to stream. Bollywood classics like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and critically acclaimed films like Raincoat, Chokher Bali and Newton, numerous documentaries, Anime, Live Sports are also available.

I watched the show, The Family Man, as part of this review.

The movie/show detail page has the following information:

• Season
• Rating
• Year
• Availability
• Synopsis
• Starring
• Genres
• Subtitles
• Audio languages
• Episodes
• Related content
• Details

The standard features available on the video player include:

• Trivia about the cast in the scene
• Subtitles and Audio
• Video Quality Options
• Volume adjustment
• Fullscreen
• Closing Player
• Skipping intro
• Skipping to the next episode

Search:

• Recent and trending searches are shown as a search keyword is typed.

It also gives you the option to:

• Search by language
• Search only TV shows
• Search only movies
• Search only kids content
• Search in genres

Pros & Cons:

Pros

• Excellent original content. 4K and HDR streaming. Supports offline downloads, multiple viewer profiles and Audio Descriptions.
• Amazon Prime Video’s playback interface is brilliant.
• In Prime Video, you get the option to change the quality at which you want to stream the video. Plus it even displays an estimate of how much data will be used on an hourly basis, which is definitely a nice touch.
• Amazon Prime Video offers customizability options for subtitles. So if you need to make the subtitle text larger, or smaller, or make it have the background to make it easier to read, Amazon Prime Video will let you do that.
• Another great feature in Amazon Prime Video is what Amazon calls “X-Ray“. This feature shows details about the scene currently on the screen. It shows information like the actor in the scene, the song playing in the background (if any), and even has the option to view the entire cast, interesting trivia and do a lot more.
• Amazon Prime stands out with over 18 thousand titles compared to Netflix's 4,059 as of 2021.
• Amazon Prime Video comes included with an Amazon Prime subscription (which will set you back by Rs 999), which also includes things like free one-day delivery, and two-day delivery, along with the other benefits of being a Prime member.

Cons

• Continues to lose third-party content to other services. Not as many high-quality shows as Netflix.
• Amazon Prime Video’s navigation seems to be just slightly more complicated.
• In Amazon Prime Video, you will have to type out the entire query, and then hit “Return/Enter”
• in Amazon Prime Video, a lot of the content is stuff that the user will have to pay for.

Why should one subscribe?

• Amazon Prime is cheaper than its competitors.
• Not just Mirzapur, local content on Prime is better.
• Prime has added benefits like one-day shipping for Prime users along with Prime Music and Gaming.

Rating:

Based on the user experience, the pros and cons, the rating given to Amazon Prime Video is 7 on 10.