| It is interesting. I have a streaming subscription to Amazon Film (previously Lovefilm) and Netflix. The Android Lovefilm app (even for just choosing discs on a rental service) is hopeless. Despite being a massive company, they managed to employ what appears to be buffoons to write the software - it seems to embed a browser for showing film data and slow data parsing at that; there is no obvious navigation within it (guess where back goes - who knows if you follow down more than one tree node?!); it may crash if you press "BACK"; it doesn't cache images within the list (there's an article on Android Developer reference they could probably copy); it crashes frequently and has the largest licence list ever which makes me believe it was badly managed or written by an inexperienced developer. Surely it just needs to return JSON about the film and an image URL?
I can't comment on the streaming app as it isn't supported on my Android tablet, but it had been a long long long long time coming. Oddly, YouTube works on my tablet as does Netflix so the tablet can't be incapable of decoding video (it's a Motorola Xoom).... The app on the LG TV was discontinued (it was an under-performing LG TV) so they sent me a Sony Bluray with the Amazon Instant app on it (and an ethernet port for network connectivity, not wifi) - thanks Amazon! Not only was the Amazon app slow in loading, it was slow to do anything. Starting to stream takes a while as it has to spend 30 seconds (?) working out what Internet speeds you have, and don't even attempt rewinding - it may or may not crash the Bluray player! (I have fibre Internet so it's not a bandwidth problem). Searching for films within it was an exercise in frustration. The iOS app was far superior but didn't like me plugging it into a TV, limiting its use - unlike others, I don't want to sit around a tiny coffee table watching a film in mono out of the one tiny speaker on the back of the iPad. Contrast this with Netflix - it started quickly on the Bluray, started films quickly, didn't take forever to use the menu system and actually coped with rewinding and fast-forwarding. And on Android and iOS too! Additionally, Amazon streaming appears to want you to BUY all of the films you'd actually want to see, as they are not included in the subscription cost, making the subscription pointless. The only films they offer are horror films, from what I can see; if you want mindless violence and people hurting each other as entertainment (why would anyone want that???), it might be good. You get better films for selection if you go with their £2 disc option and get Blurays in the post - far better value and selection. I would heartily NOT recommend Amazon streaming, but do think that the Lovefilm disc system is a good deal! If I were Amazon, I would even think twice about using Amazon Streaming as a selling point - it really is quite bad. |