Amazon to Offer Video Streaming Service?

Rumors have begun to spring up suggesting that Amazon will begin offering streaming video service to Amazon Prime subscribers. The service would offer about 5,000 titles to start, with additional titles to be added over time. If the rumors are to be believed, any Amazon Prime subscriber would have access to Amazon’s streaming library. Rumors have been circulating for a long time indicating that Amazon intends to compete with Netflix with a streaming service of its own, which lends credibility to the latest rumor.

An Amazon Prime subscription will set you back $80 per year, which actually puts it ahead of Netflix’s $7.99 per month streaming plan which will set you back a total of $95.88 per year. Amazon Prime subscribers also receive free two day shipping on all their Amazon orders, which would certainly add value to the service when compared with Netflix.

Although Amazon’s streaming service would be priced lower than Netflix, the success of such a service would lean heavily on Amazon’s ability to continue to add new titles to the service, as well as their ability to bring the service into their customers’ living rooms. Netflix currently offers tens of thousands of movies and TV shows to their customers, and Netflix subscribers can stream the content to their televisions through a wide variety of devices. In order for Amazon’s service to present any real competition to Netflix, they would have to build up a comparable catalog of videos, and a similar distribution model.

Amazon has been working hard to expand their digital offerings over the past five years. While their streaming service hasn’t been officially announced or addressed by anyone at the company, it would fit in nicely with Amazon’s efforts to offer more digital content to their customers. Amazon has gone as far as to register several domain names that lend credit to this rumor. Amazon-owned DPReview has registered the domain primeinstantvideos.com, as well as several variants of that domain. The service may not be official just yet, but if Amazon is buying up domain names, chances are an announcement isn’t far off.