hello i am wander001 and this is my revisitation of prime video what used to be known as amazon
prime instant video i did a review of this back in 2014. so it's been several years since i've
last done a revisitation of amazon prime and back then my recommendation was pretty much don't use
it unless you're getting it as part of your prime bundle because well the offerings they had at the
time not great they didn't have any originals and they were really not anywhere up to snuff compared
to Netflix or even free hulu at that time but here we are in 2020 and we're all spending a lot more
time in our houses so what better time to take a look and see if prime video is something that
you should be paying for in my case it is part of my prime subscription which as of now is like 120
a month depending on where you live so i still say as a primary video service not quite up to
snuff however as an extra for free shipping access to the kindle loan library and amazon music it's
it has improved vastly so let's go take a look we are going to check this out on my Roku here
and i'm just going to let the load times go so you get an idea of what your what you can expect all
right you should see the first thing that has vastly changed with amazon prime finally they
have caught up with everybody else and now offer profiles so each person in your household can have
their own profile so here i have mine my wife and notice a designated kids profile when selecting a
new profile you can determine you know give it a name but you can select right here if i come
across that it is a kids profile and that tv shows and movies for 12 and under now i'm going
to go back to my main page here just so you can see if i come down and let's say i want to edit
my wife's profile you can come in here and you can change the name or all the way down at the bottom
select remove i will admit the navigation on this screen is a little janky because i can't just
press up on the Roku remote to go up to save to changing my profile name i have to go all the way
over here and then go it's just it's a little clunky but i am happy that it is here because
they've finally caught up to let's be honest everybody else i'm gonna go under my main profile
here which is pretty much a hodgepodge of both my stuff and my wife's stuff because well originally
that's what we had to work with what you're looking at right here is the landing page you will
notice at the top right here highlighted now in yellow a giant ad banner this will be a rotating
ad banner i can live with this because prime video since you're paying for it unlike other services
Hulu uh you don't get ads during your programming so a small banner ad i will deal with it does not
hurt me in any way shape or form i'm going to pop back up to the top as you can see the home
is now highlighted just so i can come over to the search function to show you what that looks like
it's again very rudimentary we are on the Roku device so this is search for
the Roku you would have to kind of come in here and hunt pec what you're looking for
so if i do this really quickly and again like i said it's not the greatest to do so
you can see it auto populates over here this is kind of the customary thing i do to try and find
because well it's just easy to spell i'm very quick so highlighting that you know i can come
over and say okay yes it's this one or it's this one or it's this one selecting the asterisk key
on your Roku remote will add it to your watch list we'll discuss that in a moment but if i
select okay on the Roku remote it actually will bring me into information about this and here you
can see this one is not actually part of amazon prime video it is part of the amazon service so
i can rent this but it's not prime video which means i can't watch it for free so just know
if you are going to search you're going to get a mixture of paid and free content i'm going
to go all the way back up and of course pressing the back button on my Roku remote brings me back
to the last screen that i was on but i'm going to come back up here to the top menu and select home
and the reason i'm doing this and did it in that order is because i wanted to show you that there
are movies and tv shows that you would have to pay for but on your home and what i greatly appreciate
is that amazon stripped out hodgepodging the paid content and non-paid content together they totally
separated them so here you can see what's next these are things in my watch list to let me know
hey maybe you want to watch these things and i was showing my mother-in-law something with that
one i remember what that was it was it was odd but scrolling down they break things down into
categories just like a lot of other services so it's kind of this weird tiled but film strip
service so here you go included with prime and these are prime originals i still stand by i
wish they would make the banner in the upper left-hand corner of each of these thumbnails
a little bigger so that i know that these these are free prime content that i can be watching
one of my other complaints is i you know almost have like an infinite scroll here there's no way
for me to select show me all the prime originals in a tiled interface it's just this continuous
film strip scrolling is that bad yeah you can be the judge of that for me it's a little annoying
but here we go so included with prime movies they think i like tv shows they think i like here
specified category rent new releases prime video channels at least these are pushed down the page
and not intermingled with the other stuff because these things you will have to pay for
or have a subscription for and then blockbuster movies included with prime kids and family
you have categories so yes i can come over and say show me a bunch of documentaries
and here we go all the documentaries that are included and then rent or buy rent or buy so at
least again they segment those out into individual categories so i'm gonna go back on my Roku
and the rest of the things on this page are just again individual categories that they think you'd
like here we go sports black voices prime cinema and here we are actually and here we are again
popular prime so they're breaking out a lot of these categories i'm going to select back on my
roku remote twice to bring me up to the top coming over to the right we have originals so these are
all the amazon originals so that little film strip that i was showing you before well here they break
it down into categories within that category so originals original stand up original kids
original series and back again notice the ad strip on the top has changed coming over to tv
prime video what we're watching again all prime this is this is all prime
and before amazon did not have their own content i will admit they have stepped up their game in
things like the boys or good omen they they have really embraced making their own stuff similar to
Netflix the other thing with amazon that i really appreciate i'm going to go into the boys here
and i'm going to select resume now this will still be on the first episode so if you haven't seen it
so what i was going to show you is x-ray mode which is something that amazon has introduced
for their movies and tv shows i will put a clip in now because apparently they don't like
the capture card that i'm using which i guess dmca trying to protect that i get that
but it is one of the features that is nice about amazon and their videos is that you have this
option for extra information or context about a show who's in it things like that that is pretty
cool and the fact that they don't limit it to just their devices like the fire stick and they let you
do it on devices like the Roku i do appreciate that coming along movies same thing it's going
to be prime movies broken down into categories and then your film strip style of stuff back to the
top one more time you've got kids again that's going to break it down all your kids offerings
for prime stuff because i know i complained in my first video back in 2014 about they need to
segregate this stuff a little better well now they really have and they've broken it down into
lots and lots of categories my stuff is just that it's your watch list your movies your purchases
they keep that all in one place here is interesting this purchases and rental these
are not movies that i got through amazon prime they are movies however that i have with my movies
anywhere so it has brought those in that i can watch those in amazon using their app so that's
that's kind of cool and then at the top here the last is our settings and it's going to show you
memberships here's your parental controls all of this is pretty much going to tell you go to amazon
on the web to actually view this content so thoughts on amazon prime video in 2020 as a
primary viewing option not quite there yet i do like all the originals that they have
and they're definitely upping their game but i don't know if i would pay for it as a standalone
service just yet in the infinite amount of services that are coming out as an add-on
for paying for prime for delivery or the kindle or the music yes there's no reason not to have this
as part of your cord cutting arsenal so if you are like me and probably like most people these
days and you already have a prime membership it is worth revisiting and looking at amazon prime video
i have been wanderer001 if you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them in the
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