Prime Video isn't anywhere near as good as Netflix in terms of content or in terms of technical prowess. The Xbox apps are pretty bad. The Android Prime Video app can't even be used without enabling Unknown Sources and then manually installing the whole Amazon App Store on your Android device. Even then, it doesn't work that well. It's kind of a joke.
Yes, but it's probably also the only justification for paying money for prime.
I also use it mainly because it's a requirement for their DVD/Blu-Ray rental service. However that got a massive price increase the last month - so I'm considering stopping to use both.
Regarding delivery the interesting thing is that before prime emerged nearly all orders here in Germany were delivered on the next day. Then prime came up and from there on orders without prime took 2 days and looked artificially delayed so that you would have a reason to pay for prime.
I observed the same thing in Germany: pretty much all delivery services deliver packages the day after they receive the package, so that for Amazon to achieve 2-day delivery they need to deliberately wait a day before they start packaging a non-prime order. Maybe not so customer-obsessed after all.
I had the same experience with much slower normal shipping suddenly after the introduction of Prime. But I just recently allowed my Prime subscription to lapse, and based on my very limited data it seems back to normal again.
We got a price reduction for DVD rental. However, we use Lovefilm-1DVD-without-streaming, because streaming does not work reliably for us. Amazon streaming often stutters and hangs. For comparison, Youtube works great.
The reason I got Prime in Germany (at student rates: €24/y) was free delivery without a minimum amount. Nowadays it's even free same-day delivery (when it's available).
I was surprised how popular DVD rental still was in Germany. Someone I know from Amazon was telling me. I get the impression they desperately want to kill off the market for it though?
I also got the impression because after they took the company over that provided the rental service before (Lovefilm) everything got worse. Amazons website is far worse than what existed before, prices got up and in the first phase the delivery also took longer.
However Streaming and especially Amazons offering is no alternative for Blu-Ray rental in my opinion:
- The video quality for streaming is lacking.
- The amount of movies (not shows) that amazon is offering through VOD is quite low and most of it is old and uninteresting stuff. Outside of prime you can get newer videos also through VOD. But the prices are not really attractive when you can get a higher quality version on disc for a lower or equal price.