After trying out Amazon Prime Video for a few months, Hadlee Simons concludes that the service’s biggest problem is everything but content.
I’m not the movie and TV show enthusiast in my household. I usually prefer to play video games on PC or console instead. Still, there are times when I’d like to just laze on the couch and watch something instead of playing a game. I have a Netflix account and one or two accounts for niche streaming services, but recently I’d been looking for additional options. So I thought it’d be a good idea to sign up for Amazon Prime Video a few months ago. After all, Prime Video is only $6 a month here in South Africa compared to $9 a month for the basic Netflix plan. But after using it for some time now, it’s clear why Netflix is still largely seen as the gold standard — and it’s not just the variety of things to watch. No, the biggest problem with Prime Video isn’t the content, but rather everything else around the service. Probably the main issue with Prime Video is just how terrible the content discovery is. One annoyance in my book is the fact that Amazon lists seasons of shows separately instead of just listing the show once with a sub-menu for seasons. It feels like a particularly transparent way to pad the homepage and search index, giving the illusion of there being more content than there is. Speaking of padding, it also has a habit of recommending content in a language or from a locale I’ve never shown any interest in. Whatever content suggestion algorithm is at work isn’t up to scratch. I’m not alone in this either. I asked some of Android Authority‘s staff about their experiences as subscribers.
