Amazon Prime Video: What You Need to Know

When an Amazon customer signs up for Amazon Prime Shipping, they get free shipping on several “Prime Eligible” products. Shipping is even free for same-day delivery! If you order items from Amazon even a few times a year, the free shipping benefit is easily worth the money. However, there is another perk to being a Prime customer; Amazon Prime Video

What Is Amazon Prime Video

All Amazon Prime Shipping customers get Amazon Prime Video included at no extra cost. Prime Video provides free streaming access to tens of thousands of Movies and TV episodes. This includes Blockbuster movies, hit TV shows, and Amazon Original shows like The Boys, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Homecoming, and more. You can see everything currently available through this link.

How Much is Amazon Prime

Amazon Prime costs $12.99 per month, but you can save a good deal of money signing up for 1 year for $119. Regardless of the payment plan you pick, Amazon Prime provides the following benefits:

• Prime Video: Access to all movie and TV titles available through Amazon Prime
• 2 million songs ad-free and on-demand through prime music
• 10 Prime Reading titles at a time from more than 1,000 options
• a free Twitch channel subscription, free games, free add-on content to games with Prime Gaming
• Unlimited photo storage
• Access to millions of deals every year on “Prime Day”
• Free 2-Day and Same day Shipping
• Scheduled delivery days
• Grocery delivery through Amazon Fresh
• Prime Now 2-hour delivery on household items in select areas
• Lightning Deals and exclusive discounts
• and more

Just Prime Video

You can get access to Only Prime Video for $8.99 per month, but that only includes access to prime video. You do not get shipping, deals, music, storage, and other benefits. When you take the yearly price of Prime, it amounts to $9.92 per month. Therefore, those added Prime perks will cost you less than $1 per month. We are all constrained by budgets, but if you are going to sign up for Prime, you will likely make up the $11 per year in shipping costs and other Prime benefits.

You can sign up for Amazon Prime through this link.

How Does Amazon Prime Video Work

Once you sign up for Amazon Prime, you can watch Amazon Prime Video through the Amazon Prime Video section of the Amazon website or the Prime Video App. The Prime Video app is supported on the following devices:

• Amazon Fire TV
• Amazon Fire TV Stick and Stick Like
• Amazon Fire Stick 4K
• Google Chromecast
• Roku
• Apple TV
• and many more

Amazon Prime Video supports 5.1 surround sound and up to 4K video resolution with HDR on specific titles. Of course, your streaming device and sound system would have to support these features. While Prime Video has supported Dolby Atmos sound and Dolby Vision video in the past, there currently no titles with those features available to watch. This seems more like a licensing issue than a technical support issue.

Watching Prime Video on Your TV

Watching Amazon Prime on your TV is very easy. The Amazon Prime app is already installed and supported on many Smart TVs. If you do not own one of those, you can use a streaming device that supports Prime Video. You simply download the Amazon Prime Video app to your device and log in with your prime account. 

Not only will you have access to all Prime Videos through the app. You will also have access to all digital movies and TV you’ve purchased through Amazon. You can also add channels like Starz, HBO, CBS All Access, or any of about 100 more through Amazon Prime Channels. This will provide access to those streaming add-on services through the Prime Video app. Not only is all your streaming in one app, but all your billing is in one place.

Required Internet Speed

Amazon Prime video recommends the following bandwidth speeds based on video quality:

• 900Kbps – recommended for SD quality.
• 3.5Mbps – recommended for HD quality.
• 15Mbps – recommended for 4K Ultra HD quality.