Amazon.com looks like it is about to wade deeper into competition with Netflix, by making at least one of its new self-produced programs available for viewing around the world.
At about the 45-second mark of the video below, James May of new "Amazon Original" The Grand Tour says "In December we will be launching the show globally which means you will be able to watch ... in over 200 countries around the world."
The Grand Tour retains most of the talent from the BBC's global hit Top Gear and has become Amazon's flagship as it seeks to create a global entertainment business. But at the time of writing, Amazon's video service only operates in a handful of countries.
Announcing that The Grand Tour is ready to roll through 200 nations suggests that Amazon has made the necessary investments to offer streamed video around the world. And even though Amazon.com is rather close to a provider of the necessary infrastructure - sibling Amazon Web Services - it is hard to imagine it would go to all the trouble of global rollout just so that customers can enjoy Clarkson & Co.
There can be only one.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @06:00PM
Sounds like you utterly fail to understand how streaming video works.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday November 22 2016, @06:20PM
Sounds like you fail to understand why media streams you! Copyright, artificial scarcity, per-view revenue. All restrictions on the intellectual and artistic heritage of humanity.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Tuesday November 22 2016, @07:11PM
You completely miss the point of his post. He's saying what is *our* (the consumer) motivation to stream anything instead of downloading it?
Yes, Captain Obvious, streaming and downloading are two different things. Although strictly speaking they both involve downloading bits from a server somewhere.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Tuesday November 22 2016, @08:05PM
Not to mention that Amazon Prime lets you literally download their Prime Video shows for offline viewing, so the line is even blurrier.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Wednesday November 23 2016, @01:50PM
does it? for linux too?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday November 24 2016, @12:29AM
If they are letting you download it, and they are calling it "streaming", then it is *they* who do not understand what streaming is.
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