Amazon sets up subscription service for Showtime, Starz and others

I see Amazon has started a subscription service for movies and TV shows from Showtime, Starz and a couple others. This puts Black Sails, Outlander, Ray Donovan, Da Vinci’s Demons and quite a few others available for streaming just like Netflix. And the subscription price is $8.99 a month, just like Netflix. Well, it’s $8.99 on top of what you’re already paying for Prime. But Prime comes with a ton of it’s own benefits so $8.99 for specific content doesn’t seem too bad a deal. And to be honest, I wouldn’t mind paying a few bucks more on top of Prime to get all the Netflix content in one spot. This seems to be right in line with what I was saying a year ago, that Amazon is either going to consume, buy or merge with Netflix. Personally, this looks to be the start of an agreement with a content merger to follow later on once all the licensing is worked […]

Has Netflix sunk its own ship?

So, I’m reading the poll results and it looks like nearly 60% of the subscribers are going to bail out on Netflix because of the claimed price hike. I really have to question why. Sure, it used to be DVD and VOD were bundled under the same plan, but let’s be serious here that was way too damn cheap for Netflix to really make any money and we all knew it wouldn’t last. That was to get you hooked and thwart competitors. $16 a month is still insanely cheap for the entertainment Netflix offers. Let’s put it this way, that is still less than going to the movies one time with a date/spouse/vagabond. For that same cost you get thousands of TV shows available at the click of a button and tens of thousands of movies including the latest releases. Any price hike is going to rub people the wrong way, but let’s keep this in perspective. If you only […]