Amazon Prime Video will start showing ads on January 29th unless you pay extra for ad-free
Get ready for ads — or pony up an extra $2.99 each month.
Yo ho yo ho.
I don't understand how people paying for prime can stand that crappy prime video UI anyway.
I'm deep into the seven seas but I still use prime because a family member pays for it. Its a decent enough ui and has some live stuff I can throw on to keep kids entertained. However, I've already added the shows I watch on prime to my jellyfin server just because this change is going to make me not want to use it anymore.
Yep. I don’t consider it as a valuable streaming platform. If they removed it from the general prime I would not buy it separately.
I can understand 1 and 2, although, for 3, even though, most of my (nontechie) friends don't know how to pirate, they know how to look up grey streaming sites like 123movies, sflix, fmovies, etc
I’m a shameless sailor but my wife has it for the free shipping.
Their menus are ass but I really like the actual player ui. Love pausing and seeing who is in the scene.
I can't agree with #1. The interface is that of Amazon's regular storefront and it often mixes paid media in with the free stuff or has stupid stuff like seasons 2, 4, & 6 being free while 1, 3, & 5 are paid. Maybe it's different in the TV apps, but the browser version is atrocious.
The player interface is excellent. Being able to see who the actors are in each scene is one of my favorite UI features.
I agree that finding a thing you want to watch is meh at best. Especially because they mix in rentals, purchasable content, and prime content all in the home interface window.
That said, yo ho matey.
They also have a ton of subtitles and audio options. Like a shit ton.
Meanwhile Netflix most times doesn’t even have subtitles in one or more of the official languages where I live. And for sure they could have more, considering where they operate, they just choose not to.
However prime UI sucks for splitting shows between seasons so they get recommended multiple times. It just makes no sense
Poster might be describing how fucking awful Prime arranges shit on a Fire stick. Search taking you to specific episodes rather than to the show. Seasons split up into mini seasons 201, 202, 203, 204. Kids shows are the worst, sometimes the seasons are split into different show listings.
It's truly impressive how a huge corporation can build the shittiest UI of them all.
When I still was paying for prime (cancelled it last price increase) I was pirating any prime videos as that was easier than dealing with the shitty prime video UI.
Not to mention the shockingly bad picture quality.
The 4k stuff isn't terrible, but anything that's in HD is bloody awful.
I originally started paying for prime for the free shipping. Prime video is a perk as far as I'm concerned. I haven't re-evaluated it in a long time though to see if it's worth it. I do order a ton of stuff on amazon since I live 160km from the nearest city.
I pay for Amazon prime. The only time I watch Prime Video is every once in a while I wonder: is Stargate: Universe as terrible as I remember? And then I try watching it and remember that it is. 
I honestly thought it wasn't terrible and would have benefitted from fleshing out the rest of the story. It was definitely a huge departure from the styling of SGU and Atlantis but not horrible on its own.
It's slightly more convenient than sailing, considering it's attached to my unlimited photo backup
I hit the high seas when they wouldn't let me watch the shit i paid for in high def. Fuck that.
The UI had a "recent" glow up, it was way worse before.
The moment each show got a pre-reel for another Amazon show this was clearly the path they where taking.
Already cancelled a good 6 months ago.
Yeah, Prime Video already has commercials.
Yeah I thought that was a pretty obvious attempt to ease people into it. So this news doesn't come as a shock. If anything I'm surprised it took this long.
At least they give you a slip button, unlike Paramount+
“We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership,”
The double-speak is relatively subtle, but it's always interesting to see how much work they put into gaslighting their customers:
Pretty gross, Amazon.
The enshittification will continue until profit margins improve
Enshitification won't stop until the frogs realize that they are being boiled to death and jump out of the pot.
until profit margins improve
Lol
What is this mythical profit margin/amount that companies would be willing to accept? There is no limit to corporate greed...
I am in the exact same boat. The removal of "free" rotating streaming video content and limiting it to only Amazon funded shows with "free with prime" videos being hosted by 3rd party apps (fuck off, freevee) was bad enough but to start showing ads was the final straw
I cancelled my prime today. $150/yr. I can wait a few extra days for the things I need to order
I went through this a couple years ago. Decided Jeff Bezos does not need any more money, cancelled prime. Funny this was that most things ship the same as always, get them in like 2 or 3 days.
In fact, most other online retailers offer similar free 2 day shipping to stay competitive and I usually find stuff of Amazon first.
Same.
Should have done it sooner.
I can wait a few extra days for the things I need to order
Amazon’s already provided that. Their delivery went from stellar to shit.
I don't stream much but being disabled, I can't get to the store so I do order stuff from Amazon. What I've seen in the last few years is an influx of Chinese sellers with tons and tons of garbage and all of the reviews are completely worthless, of course.
This has been my main observation with Amazon over the past few years. It’s just cheap knockoffs that have gamed the system. It’s frustrating to shop there and a dice roll whenever you order something.
I'm getting really tired of all this enshitification.
Now corporations start with that bulshit of "oh, that model wasn't sustainable actually" even though it worked perfectly fine for the last decade and they still get record profits year after year. They keep ripping everything from under us, this gotta stop.
The only reason I ever had Prime was free shipping, then I realized as soon as I bundled my orders to be over a certain dollar figure I STILL got free shipping, I kicked Prime to the curb.
For me it was the "Amazon Day" shipping that bundles up a week's worth of separate orders into one shipping day. Convenient sure but now I'm not getting 2-day shipping... so what am I paying for again? I'll just bundle up the orders and shipping my damn self.
Yeah, if I need something next day, I'll go buy it today. :)
I cancelled Amazon Prime awhile ago when the customer service took a nose dive and I realized too many of the 3rd party vendors were using Amazon as their defective products outlet.
But I actively and permanently skipped out on an Amazon Prime subscription because they refused to give me a pro-rated refund on the remaining 8-9 months of service after I cancelled. They literally told me that they start with the pro-rated amount, then subtract out the cost of all the "free" movie/show/music rentals as well as all the "free" shipping on orders during the time you've had prime, and you only get whatever remains (if anything). Within the first 3 -4 months, I had already accrued enough "free" $5.99 shipping and $3 - $4 rentals that it exceeded the $100 or whatever cost of a prime membership was back in those days, so I got no refund. Bunch of crooks.
No surprise, I'm completely on board with folks kicking Prime to the curb.
wow, wtf. what a scam.
You can even get a free week of prime for 2 dollars by just not giving-in which you can then immediately cancel and get ovre and over and over and over again.
Amazon has been progressively getting worse and worse. I was not a member of Prime for the video. It was a nice perk.
The combination of Amazon making it hard to search for things to buy, the huge amount of low quality crap for sale with confusing descriptions, and this most recent change of putting in place ads if I do not pay an additional fee has led me to cancel my subscription.
They have taken the enshittification too far. Good bye Amazon. Hello Home Depot, Target, et al.
Sadly, both Home Depot and Target have “marketplaced” their online stores as well, so you have to sort through the garbage just like Amazon.
Select the "available for local pickup" option to weed out all the trash. Even if you're buying to be shipped.
I did a review on Amazon yesterday that said I was shocked to receive a quality product because everything on modem Amazon is post war recycled tin toy quality.
They have not approved my review.
It's like a second golden age of internet piracy, and it's happening because streaming over saturated itself just like cable lmao
The cancelled Coyote vs ACME movie might only be available on the high seas, matey. It be my current white whale, yarr.
streaming has absolutely no future. if they keep pulling shit like this it's going to decline even faster. i suppose it's more about sucking off advertisers than it is pleasing customers, too....if you're going to fail anyway why can't you at least make a positive difference in the world?
My prediction is that it all goes back to Netflix when they decide it’s not worth the time and expense to run their own services. They had a nice passive income thing going on there for many years and can have it again if they just license their IP again.
streaming has absolutely no future.
Streaming isn't going anywhere, and if anything will likely continue to grow for as cable dies off. It's just going to consolidate and get shittier (ads) as basically things move back to a model more cable-like. Piracy will probably ramp back to like levels for music in the early 2000's, but it will remain a niche. Amazon specifically will see blowback for this, but it's unlikely to move many off of Prime since it's sort of a tertiary benefit to having a Prime membership, and even if it's all you got for your Prime membership, it's still one of the cheapest streaming services.
We need open source streaming or something... Ya kno?
Ppl should make their own YouTube Amazon / Google companies or else we shall all perish do to advertisements
oooh yay more content to collect from torrents. Bye Bye Prime.
Pirate services are cheaper and have better apps
Pirate "services"?
Servarr Suite. Netflix interface, piracy backend. Operates over Usenet. Can handle movies, tv, music and ebooks. I've been told there are viable workarounds for televised sports, specifically F1.
Yeah, streaming services are losing the plot. I'm good lol.
Give it time and we’ll all be back on Netflix with all the catalogs available there.
Jellyfin
Planning a build with my friend, we are going 50/50 in for a dedicated Jellyfin server + NAS to preserve all our media.
I've got the next week off, migrating from Plex to Jellyfin is on my todo list, but I really like the pipeline I have set up now for .. my sailing habit. arrr
I've been trying, but for some reason, it will not recognize my HD. I'be reformatted my drive...tried different drives...I don't know what else to do.
Thanks for reminding me to cancel my prime.
You're welcome.
I have Prime and have never actually used it. I still watch Amazon shows, but I'll be fucked if I use their shit interface or expose myself to their datamining to do it. Let alone watch fucking ads.
Piracy is a UX issue.
I tried to use their UX. Its bad. And the worst is I fell asleep watching something like Project Bluebook once. And the Prime Reccomendations streamed a SHITLOAD of alien conspiracy content while i slept. It ruined the recs etc. And you cant delete the primary account profile....only the sub-profiles.
Frankly i only go on it to see what I should maybe load into Sonarr/Radarr at this point. fuck em.
I was watching Yellowstone on Prime back in 2021, before they moved it to a premium tier, and the audio was always out of sync when using Prime Video, so I had to adjust the audio sync latency, and remember to switch it back when watching other content. This was on an Nvidia Shield Pro, too, so not some scrappy TV vendor's implementation of the app on some underpowered SoC.
After a while, I gave up and just watched it on my Plex server instead. I could also use the Watch Together feature to watch it synchronously with friends, a feature not supported by Prime Video.
In my case, the piracy (if you call it that, when I was at the time a Prime member) was absolutely a UX issue, not a price issue.
Remember the times when we paid for such a service to get rid of ads? By now I cancelled my prime membership.
If there are commercials, why should someone need an Amazon Prime membership at all? It becomes just like broadcast TV then, and they should just allow anyone to watch to maximize revenue. They have all this AWS infrastructure to deliver video, why not maximize the use of it?
Nice to know I can finally cancel Prime though. The entire value proposition has now gone. Free shipping is hugely conditional (and prices are artificially jacked to cover it in the first place), and now they want to put the worst thing on the internet (ads) into the only component of Prime I still sorta kinda use sometimes. I'd rather keep the $140 a year or whatever.
Personally, idgaf what they do with Prime Video. After about a decade of having Prime, the only thing that has ever caught my attention was Rings of Power and that shat the bed so I'm good there.
I order enough off Amazon that faster delivery is a major draw for me. Ordering from other merchants is a drag because Amazon set the standard forever ago. But is it worth $140/year? Idk, I'll have to do the value calculation on that one. But it's getting closer to not being worth it. Especially if they continue to bundle the cost of video that I don't use onto my shipping subscription.
I canceled my Prime account this past summer when I was informed they were going to increase my yearly fee. I've been a Prime member since 2003. It used to be FREE strict 2 day shipping on everything amazon sold. I think it was $85 a year then. 100% worth the fee. The shipping got worse and worse until the peak shit when they sold the contract for shipping to USPS from UPS for the majority of packages. Used to be if something wasn't there by the guaranteed delivery date, you could call and complain and you'd get a month of prime added to your account. Then it got so frequent they started changing that to a $5 credit if you complained. Now they just change the "guaranteed" date if it's going to be late, and no one gives a fuck if it still doesn't get there. All this time the fee has ballooned to over $140. Now you're telling me they're going to start adding commercials to their streaming? It's total horse shit from one of the largest companies in the world. They shit the bed with the gawd awful Rings of Power and are passing that cost on to us. Fuck Amazon, Hulu, Disney, Netflix. They are all garbage companies. Fcuking pirate everything you can.
Guess I’ll just start downloading that content too because I’m not paying you more for the same shit. I’d get rid of it altogether if it wasn’t just included as part of prime in general.
I don't have prime any longer and I don't miss it, it's overrated really. I don't need stuff within 2 days all the time
I never use prime, and stuff usually shows up in 2 or 3 days, anyway. They optimized their shipping abilities, and then convinced some people to pay more for it.
Amazon has turned to utter shit these days. They've been requiring you to show your ID to get a refund. Getting asked by some Indian dude who I can barely understand a picture of my government issued ID sure doesn't feel comforting.
I wish delivery / video was separate because I'd cancel immediately.
You can use Amazon to buy things without subscribing. $35+ order gets free shipping
this is one reason why i have never had prime. not that i order much from amazon anyway (very rarely, in fact).
i think people think amazon is a lot more indispensable than it actually is.
Oh look. Another reason for piracy.
Cancelled! Bye!
Me too! I'd been meaning to, but finally did it yesterday right after they sent the email letting me know hahaha
I don’t use Amazon much anymore anyway, because the products are overwhelmed with cheap, poor quality trash you couldn’t peddle on alibaba and completely worthless, largely faked reviews and ratings. I order once or twice a year some replacement cable or adapter I can’t find anywhere else reasonably quick, but that’s pretty much it, so canceling over this ad bullshit doesn’t really hurt me much.
Next on the list is my Netflix sub, which I largely use just for oldtrek reruns as second screen background noise while I use my computer. I could probably, uh, procure those shows fairly easy, or splurge on a collectors edition and would still save money.
Check your local public libary, a lot of them have DVDs you can check out for free.
Mine also partners with streaming services like hoopla and kanopy so I can stream like 10 movies per month.
If it's available where you are PlutoTV is free and has a Star Trek channel. You don't get to pick the shows and it's only original and tng, but you can leave it on for days with almost as much Star Trek as the average fan could want...
Nah, most of it is coming from Alibaba, but at a markup.
There’s a used media shop down the street and I’m contemplating getting dvd/bluray box sets of my favorites so that I have offline media available.
Go ahead, I did the same and I really don't miss Netflix. I should also mention I have crappy internet, so it's much better/easier to just download good quality vidéo files overnight than sit through a constantly-buffering 240p stream
fuck this company, the only thing i bought on amazon was filament for my 3d-printers. now that i zeroed in on a brand, i can just buy it at their online store. goodbye amazon.
Which brand filament did you decide on? I found that Hatchbox filament is really good and that they sell it on their site for the same price as amazon with free shipping options as well. So I just buy from their site directly now.
i mainly buy esun. pretty consistent for the price, and they offer multiple different materials and colors. they even have those fancy dual/triple color filaments.
and they have cardboard spools. that's good.
Yeah, I never thought all the people on lemmy actively support Jeff Benzos.
Sometimes even local, you just have to search and find! I stopped using amazon, because I found local shopping more efficient, I order online and I pick up.
Can I just get free shipping and opt out of video?
You know, they'll ship stuff to your house for free as long as each order is over $35 (or maybe it's $50?). It's just that you have to plan ahead a bit more because it's no longer the "guaranteed" 2 day shipping.
I quit prime because that guaranteed delivery date was frequently not the actual delivery date.
I quit prime because prices for item + delivery were still worse than ebay even when I had prime.
You can't opt out because it's included in prime
You don't have to use it, though, and you don't have to pay for the ads
Also, ad blockers seem to work pretty well with prime video
What a bunch of cunts. FFS, it is never enough. Their return policy sucks now, too. It used to be that if Amazon fucked up your order, they'd refund you and you could keep the product. It made ordering online a relatively risk-free proposition. Now, they won't refund you until you ship it back, even if it is their fuck up, which really kills the convenience factor. Plus, you get to over-pay for most things. What's not to love?
What you describe at the end is how it became a monopoly.
The beginning is how a monopoly acts.
People surely abused things and rather than take a measured approach, they brought out Thor’s hammer like a bunch of chuds.
You expect a company to let you keep stuff that they send you wrongly? Let me know which company still has this policy. I need to trick them into sending me some very expensive graphic cards wrongfully
I didn't say that they should, I said that they did. And they did it to overcome people's hesitation to buy online. You take a risk ordering online because you don't physically pick the item you want.
Your comment is relevant nonetheless since I suspect they stopped their original return policy because of scams.
Depends where you live but unsolicited goods acts will often let you keep stuff in this way.
Enshitification continues to march ever boldly onward.
Amazon wants us to learn how to safely pirate? We'll ok if that's what they want.
USENET is my happy place.
This is the way
I had never heard of usenet, this is eye opening thank you! I have been thinking about reverting back to torrents, might have to try this out first though.
Taking notes right now
I looked into usenet but I first tried RealDebrid and it's been great. I personally have went with Alldebrid
It’s a good thing I recently switched to piracy.
Ahoy matey
You guys should have the same reaction to all bad software news. It would be consistent.
Thankfully, much of Amazons content shows up on Usenet so I can just download the ad-free versions there and then watch it.
Say less.
Looks like I'm cancelling.
Is Prime Video something that people sign up for a d would cancel? I thought it was something they just happened to get when buying the express shipping package.
Each part of Prime just keeps getting shittier and shittier, this could definitely be a straw that broke the camel's back situation. Shipping stopped being 2-days every time during the pandemic, returns used to allow for pick up at your house are now drop off at a store. Music catalog is being slowly locked behind Unlimited, and now it's all station-ified so you can't even listen to what you want.
time to stop paying for that shit
My Prime membership is up in March. I've already decided to not renew it, since they decided to cancel The Peripheral. Had I not already made that decision, this change would have made it for me anyway.
And this is how I found out The Peripheral was cancelled 😭
Stay strong
Yeah wtf. I was looking forward to season 2
I also cancelled, mainly because "prime" shipping is meaningless now. But the addition of ads is the cherry on top.
Yarrr, this be some bullshit.
Hoist the sails.
🏴☠️
Their catalog is so shit that I don't even know what plays on Amazon. Back when they refused to make an Android video app I just got all their crap from other means. I've had prime for years just for the shipping I've never watched a video through their service.
It seems like every streaming service catalog is deteriorating. Almost every time I've looked up a movie to watch on justwatch, they're only available for rental/"purchase." I'm done paying my hard earned money for dogshit services.
I've also just kind of given up on watching much of anything, I have better things to do than sit in front of the TV for hours on end.
I have better things to do than sit in front of the TV for hours on end.
I hear that. I watch way less than I used to. I've also made it a point to stay out of other people's algorithms as much as I can. I only pull exactly what I want from youtube then go do something else. You can't doom scroll Lemmy because you run out of doom after 30-40 minutes.
My guilty pleasure is still binging certain series, but I try to wait to watch stuff until it's canceled or at the very least until the season is over and I can just catch up in a weekend.
No point in paying for Prime Video when other services like Tubi or even Pluto TV offer free movies/shows with ads built-in. When I realized that it was easy to cancel.
Sounds like a great time to cancel.
If Video is the reason you have prime, sure. Personally the shipping is still the reason I have it. I don't really use the video service at all. Frankly I wish they'd unbundle all of the stuff and let me pay for just shipping.
This year the shipping has gone from two days from ordering to two days from processing to two weeks to maybe we'll just lose the order entirely.
Add to that that so many of the sellers seem to have migrated over from the eBay "hey look at this cheap knockoff crap that fell off a truck" crowd, and I'm just not seeing the benefit anymore.
My renewal is a week from today. I think I'm going to cancel by then.
I really don't know where I go from here vis a vis online ordering. Probably just use my boss' account when there's something that I just can't get anywhere else.
Man, the enshitification is really taking over.
These companies have to compete in a higher interest rate environment. Otherwise their stock will fall and they won't be able to refinance debt. The free money era is over.
Or... CEOs could stop giving themselves such large bonuses I guess?
Probably going to work. Just another company trying to wring money from their user base since they can't reasonably grow. So many people were like "oh I'm cancelling Netflix if I can't share it" and then it was record sign ups for them and overall more money.
They are doing this right before The Boys comes back on and somewhat during Invincibles part 2 airing. People will be annoyed and pay the upcharge.
And like me pirating those still won't change much since I already was.
Oh well.
I
hate
ads. I will gladly let go of anything I lose when I drop it.
Ads have been designed by psychologists to be as Intrusive and stimulating as possible.
I barely watch anything anyway, so good bye TV, I've suffered thee long enough
Bummer. Not because of the extra $3, honestly I'll probably just pay it. But because until now Prime programming has been able to operate with a certain freedom. I know 0 people with prime for the video (as opposed to the free delivery) so they were willing to take risks with the shows.
Solos and Tales from the Loop are both amazing works of art that would never have shown up on network TV, or Netflix which would much rather make cheap mass appeal shows with little depth. Even more shows with wider appeal (e.g. The Expanse) might not survive the TV Executive mindset now that they have a reason to care about the number of views as a primary metric, over user happiness.
And honestly, it all baffles me, I will gladly subscribe to a streaming service for one great show. Produce 3 or 4 a year and I'm subscribed for good. If I wanted an endless string of medicore baking reality shows, I'd get cable again.
Ugh yes. I canceled my Amazon Prime like 5 years ago, and swore off Amazon completely until they started streaming Vox Machina. Sucks that's the service Critical Role went with, but it is what it is.
I should check out Tales from the Loop too.... and cancel AppleTV now that Ted Lasso is over.
Prime's entire UI already sucks dick. I can't even tell which shows/movies I can watch without having to pay, rent, or subscribe. Like mfer I'm paying to watch whatever Amazon has to offer. I only use it for The Boys, Reacher, and Invincible. Even with how much I would love to support these shows, fuck Amazon.
FYI here is a site with instructions on how to cancel your prime membership since it's not the easiest thing to find.
I was able to cancel on the mobile app using this same process.
And bring that keg of mead on board with ya, ya dastardly scallywags 🏴☠️