App / Streaming Service Review | Amazon’s Prime Video

“No, not really,” was the response that immediately leapt to mind when my mobile provider asked me if I’d like a six-month free trial of Prime Video. Having tried the service periodically before – whenever Amazon have pushed a free trial on me or the missus – I had always found it difficult to navigate; riddled with bugs; and, crucially, chock full of movies and shows that I either already owned or had no interesting in watching. This all changed when I heard that Prime had secured the rights to stream the then-upcoming Star Trek: Picard in the UK. “No, not really,” quickly became, “Yes please!”

Above: And here's me thinking that Star Trek: Picard is a CBS All Access original! Surely "Amazon Exclusive" would be a more honest slogan?

It’s telling, though, that in my five-month wait for Star Trek: Picard to drop, the only show that I watched on the platform was DC’s Swamp Thing (a bold and singularly scary series inexplicably cancelled by DC Universe as soon as its first episode aired), but even that could have been enjoyed elsewhere as it is now widely available for purchase digitally and on Blu-ray. One of my daughters has also watched a few Little Princesses, and together this accounts for the total sum of our household’s pre-Picard viewing. Admittedly, there is a plethora of content available on the platform that we love (the American version of The Office, Smallville, Arrow…) but why would we waste gigabytes of our monthly usage allowance streaming it over the Internet when we could just watch it on Apple TV using home sharing? Why to pay to rent what we’ve already purchased outright?

Above: Unless you're talking about Swamp Thing, which, even in this territory, is also available to purchase digitally. There's even a region-free Blu-ray knocking about for physical media enthusiasts. Hardly exclusive.

One such reason might be a better interface, which Prime Video does not have. In fact, Prime’s apps are even worse than NOW TV’s; ugly and laden with traps. Whilst the landing screen at least has the reserve to limit its offerings to those tagged with “Prime” in the top-left corner, if you search for a movie or programme you will often get a positive result even if the video in question isn’t available to stream as part of the subscription package. For adult subscribers watching alone, this is probably a bit annoying; for those of us with kids, it makes life impossible. “But it’s found it, Dad, look!” This mandatory store integration might be welcome for those heavily invested in the Amazon ecosystem, who also want to use the Prime Video app to stream the videos that they’ve bought from Amazon, but I’m sure that most subscribers to the streaming service would prefer a cleaner interface such as those offered by their main competitors. There’s nothing to prevent Amazon creating a separate app for consumers to make and stream their purchases or, better still, download them to PCs or home media servers to share within their homes along the lines of iTunes’ home sharing via the Apple TV’s Computers app.

Another reason would be simple convenience, but again Prime Video crashes and burns. The unpleasantness of the cheap-looking layout is indicative of the service’s rigid and clunky functionality – trying to skip backwards and forwards is a painful experience irrespective of which app or remote I’m using, while crucial functions like zoom are missing entirely. This was a particular problem for me as both shows that I watched during my free trial were letterboxed. For some elusive reason, the ability to blow up a picture is disabled entirely on my Samsung TV’s Prime app (the app actually goes to the trouble of overriding the TV’s built-in zoom feature, leaving it greyed out), while the tvOS app for Apple TV does not respond to the remote’s convenient double-tap zoom. Similarly, the iOS apps prevent you from blowing up an image, which is particularly preposterous on an iPad, where a 2.35:1 video fills only about half the available screen. The only way I could get Picard into 16:9 was by watching it on the Apple TV’s Prime app while using my Samsung TV to blow up the entire Apple TV input (controls and all) from 2.35:1 to 16:9. Losing a bit off the sides of an image may be heresy to some purists, but for me the opposite is true - at least when it comes to programmes supposedly made to be enjoyed on TVs. Whatever your view, though, if studios are going to deliberately make a TV programme the wrong shape, then viewers should at least retain the choice of how they want to view it. Amazon, in their dictatorial wisdom, take that decision away from you.

Above: Another red cross for Prime.

Above: Prime Video on an iPhone

Another key failing of Prime is the iOS apps’ download supposed download function. Even with the download quality set at “Best”, a forty-four-minute episode of Picard weighs in at a paltry 215.7MB. To put that in context, a 64-second Doctor Who trailer for that I recently downloaded from iTunes takes up 43.8MB disc space. On an iPhone 6s Plus’s 5.5” 1080p screen, trying to watch downloaded Prime content is scarcely any better than watching an old .avi file on a mid-’90s CD-ROM or dial-up Internet connection. I’d take a screengrab to illustrate my point but, true to form, none of the Prime Video apps support them – you can screengrab the menus all you like, but if media is playing, then you’ll either just get a blank screen or a blank screen with the interface on top. Another red cross for Prime.

A further irritation for me is my watchlist’s tendency to populate itself. It’s as if it’s incredulous that I’ve only got Picard on there; it can’t accept it, so it takes matters into its own hands and starts loading it up with whatever mass-market tripe Amazon Studios have recently farmed out. Having to suffer through unsolicited and irrelevant trailers half the time I try to watch anything is bad enough, but don’t go messing with my watchlist.

Above: Not X-Men, X-Ray...

Watching Picard, though, one unexpected feature has really impressed me – X-Ray. Exhaustive cast metadata is commonplace now; any half-decent media server (Plex, Emby, MediaPortal…) can readily extract information from IMDb or the TheTVDB and turn it into a prettier-than-Prime interface, but Prime Video is the first that I’ve come across to offer scene-specific cast information. I discovered the feature by accident when pausing the show, but have found it particularly enlightening ever since. I was convinced Marvel’s Clark Gregg was playing a Romulan in “Maps and Legends”, but thanks to X-ray, I could prove myself wrong without even having to reach for my phone. At last, Prime earns its first green tick.

Above: Prime Video on an iPad

Another welcome feature is how Prime deals with movies and programmes that will be leaving the service soon. These are all clearly identified and even promoted on the apps’ landing pages, encouraging viewers to get them watched while they can. Of course, the very need for this feature highlights Prime’s greatest failing: its continuing dependence on third-party content, the extent of which is diminishing as more and more studios claw back their own content to host on rival services. While Amazon offers a wide array of “Originals”, as they stand they are hardly comparable to Disney’s peerless archives, let alone the combined output of BBC and ITV. There’s not a single, Amazon-produced programme (i.e. a genuine “Original”, as opposed to licenced exclusives like Picard and Swamp Thing) currently on the service that appeals to me. That will change if the long-rumoured Lord of the Rings prequel series ever drops, of course, but that particular project is still without an expected date, two and a half years on from being announced.

Another coup for the service is its recently-acquired Premiership football, which for too long has been the exclusive preserve of BT and Sky. However, with only “up to” twenty games all season, it’s little more than a taster for viewers, as opposed to a viable means of following the competition. Again, Prime isn’t setting itself up as a workable alternative to the market leaders here – for now, it’s just a purveyor of a limited number of matches that other broadcasters can’t get or don’t want.

Above: The selling point.

For £7.99 per month or £79.00 per year, Prime Video offers its subscribers a random assortment of eclectic entertainment that’s quite capable of keeping any household entertained for a while, subject to personal tastes and the extent of people’s own media libraries. However, it lacks the easy-to-grasp focus of cheaper offerings such as Britbox and the upcoming Disney+, both of which offer near-exhaustive libraries of particular types of content for £2.00 per month less (£29.01 per year less, if you take Disney+ up on their pre-order offer). Prime can’t market itself as the home of Star Trek, for instance, or the exclusive home of Premiership football, because it’s not – it’s mostly just a rag-tag assemblage of smash-and-grabs, devoid of identity and permanence. Unless you simply can’t wait for Picard’s eventual home video release, Prime is a service best avoided – even when it’s offered for free.

You can start a 30-day free trial of Prime Video by signing up here. If you’re only planning to watch Star Trek: Picard, you might want to hold fire until at least 27th February 2020 to make sure you can watch the whole thing without having to become a paid subscriber.