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Review on amazon prime video vs netflix
With all this advancement in technology, we came up across a very interesting concept of video streaming. Now, we all are very much aware of this all thanks to Netflix and other video streaming biggies. Before moving forward let’s first try to understand what happens while streaming a video.
What is Video Streaming
In simple words, video streaming is nothing but simply a compressed form of content that is sent over the internet and the viewer can see it in real time. So, no need to wait till the download is finished to watch the video. Since the content is sent in a continuous stream of data and players as soon as it arrives.
All these new features and designs coming up in mobile phones, set-top boxes, and powerful game consoles are the strong reasons behind the popularity and success of online video streaming. The biggies like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon prime are ruling the market with more than 100 million subscribers in total.
Amazon’s Brings Video Streaming
The good news is Amazon is one of the biggest video-on-demand streaming company, you must have heard of the Amazon Prime, that’s how it brings the video streaming to India. Not just India but more than 200 countries are enjoying Amazon Prime Videos, which makes more popular than Netflix globally.
However, Netflix strikes back, by adding 130 countries to its kitty. Now, India is the biggest platform for video streaming services along with global as well as local streaming companies. The war between two global streaming giants is on, both battling to get the average Indian to watch over their 4G connection and new and exciting broadband plans.
Amazon Prime Vs. Netflix
Without much delay let’s see the cut to cut the difference between Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, so first let’s talk about Amazon Prime. The best part about Amazon Prime is its cost. Amazon offers its member to enjoy exclusive deals and interesting offers along with free deliveries on the e-commerce platform.
One can simply start using Amazon Prime video right away, it provides a 30-day free trial, after which the user will be charged Rs. 499 per annum, that is Rs. 42 monthly. With this subscription, you can watch videos on 3 different screens at the very same time. Wow
Hiked Membership Plans
Oh wait, there’s more to it, Amazon is planning to hike up the members right up to Rs. 999 per annum, but for now you can happily stick to your Rs. 499 plan as they are in no hurry to make separate pricing plans for different streaming quality. They are only worried about a larger piece of the pie chart.
On the other hand, Netflix subscriptions starts with a basic plan of Rs. 500 monthly, that too just for a single screen. The price varies over different screens, like Rs. 650 for 2 screens, of course in HD and Rs. 800 monthly for 4 screens in UHD/4k quality. So one point to Amazon prime, in terms of pricing as, it is lot cheaper and affordable as compared to Netflix.
Captivating Content
when we talk about content, Amazon has a decent Bollywood collection of recent movies, all thanks to its bonding with Dharma Productions, T-series, and others. Talking about its collection of English movie and TV shows, it grabs the popular show Grand Tour along with the award-winning series Transparent and much more.
The problem is not that Amazon has less content, but the problem is Netflix has an amazing collection of contents. Even though the regional content collection is not that amazing but Netflix nails it, when we talk about original TV series, English movies, and documentaries.
So, when it comes to content Netflix is way out of the league when compared to Amazon Prime video, although one can never say for how long Netflix is going to stay at that position as it may change if Amazon plans to add more categories to its catalog. With this, the score comes to one on one.
App availability and UI
You can get loads of articles saying how hard it is to access Amazon Prime Video, all though Android users. might find it an easy search and install thing but iOS users. in India are still struggling to spot the app on App store. A major reason behind this might be because of the previous App Storage outage, which according to Apple has been fixed now.
As per our latest attempts on downloading Amazon Prime Video app on iPhone 7, we could not find it in the app store, yes but there was a link via the Amazon app that directed to a different App store download link of Prime, where you could download the app. Oh, what a trick ride!
Easy Availability of Netflix
On the other hand, Netflix is easily available on the app store, and with a single click, you are done installing the app. No link, no confusion. So, in terms of App availability Netflix grabs another point. If we talk about User Interface, of course, Netflix feels a lot more familiar to use as compared to Amazon Prime, but on the other hand, it won’t take a lot of time to get familiar with the Prime Video app, you got to try that once too.
There are some exciting features in Prime Video app, which Netflix fails to provide. Like, the users can the see the IMDB rating of all the movies, titles in addition to an X-ray view of the casting team, trivia and much more during the video playback? Hold on a sec, there’s more to it, the users are also notified every time they are streaming through their mobile data plans instead of Wi-Fi connections. What a plan, to save mobile data.
No Separate User Profiles in Prime
But, yes there is a but in Prime video app, it doesn’t have separate profiles for users. On the other hand, Netflix lets the users. customize the profiles which help them distinguish their show preferences, watched durations, and personal content lists from fellow users of the same account.
So in conclusion, Amazon Prime offers different features but gives a miss to separate profiles while Netflix lacks all these cool and exciting features but provides separate profiles for users. So, if you use the Prime, be prepared to rewind and replay the video every time you share your account with someone else. Now, this makes it a difficult choice to decide, so let’s say both earned one point for their User Interface.
Streaming Towards Success
Amazon Prime is taking baby steps towards the streaming business, so it might be too early to comment anything about that, but in the current review, the streaming is fairly poor. We used both Netflix and Amazon Prime on 4G connections as well as on Wi-Fi and the results are very different.
The video streaming is Netflix took no time, while Prime took approx. 20-30 secs. Although the quality of both services was set so high and HD but videos in Prime were nowhere near to HD quality, while Netflix video quality was simply awesome. That’s where Netflix’s experience of customer service over the years came in handy.
An interesting point here is, the Prime Video app settings show that it uses 5.8GB of data for an hour of streaming in HD, on the other hand, Netflix merely uses 3GB for the same duration. Both the streaming apps allow offline viewing of some titles, and we have not yet tried downloading for them. Let’s keep that for the near future.
So, Prime is budget friendly and screen friendly but has to work on its video quality, availability, user interface and streaming of course. There are many more aspects to check and state which one of the two is better, comparing them with Hotstar and many more. However, one must give a shot to both the apps and then opt the one, that suits them well. As for now, Netflix moves ahead of Amazon Prime.
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