"Much of PBS Kids programming . . . will be REMOVED from rival streaming sites like Netflix and Hulu, and will be available only on Amazon Prime."
Oh goody.
So now instead of being able to use Netflix via Apple TV to watch her favorite PBS show my 5 year old is going to have to figure out how to bring up Amazon Prime through the shitty Samsung TV interface.
Or better yet maybe I'll have to buy another device that will be obsolete in a year.
This Amazon / Apple bs war of not supporting eachother's devices has got to stop, it sets a terrible precedence which seem to be aimed at protecting the devices which are so incredibly commoditized!
Apple - please just let us have an Amazon app on Apple TV. Is it such a protective move when I can just airplay prime from an iphone / ipad / macbook to apple tv?
While we are Amazon Prime subscribers, the hassle of actually watching anything on Amazon Prime Instant Video means we never bother. I think we have a BluRay player that is technically capable of it, but it's a couple minutes worth of annoying menu navigation to use it...
My three year old has an old android phone that she has no trouble casting from. Fortunately, it seems the PBS Kids app will still work.
Having had the unfortunate experience of using one Amazon app (xbox), I wonder if PBS will see viewership decrease, simply because of the buggy garbage interface their viewers will have to use. To me, it's actually that bad. I have AP for free, never use it.
Apple isn't preventing an Amazon app from existing! Amazon is just not willing to create one under the current terms-and-conditions.
The terms are the same as iOS: if your app allows in-app purchase of digital goods, then you have to use Apple's payments system and Apple gets their 30% cut.
On iOS, Amazon Video works fine, Amazon works around the 30% by not allowing signups within the app, and by not providing a link to the Amazon website for signing up.
Amazon is using the AppleTV as a test case for fighting against this policy. They can afford to do that because so few people have AppleTVs compared to iOS devices.
I refuse to use Amazon video for this specific reason. Their "prime instant" is really just a teaser; it is very difficult to search for stuff that you don't have to pay for.
It's designed to get you to buy/rent from the Amazon digital store, and hardly much else.
My children will simply not watch those shows. Zaboomafoo will be a big loss, but not much else was interesting to them.
As far as I've read and understand, Apple isn't preventing Amazon from releasing a video streaming app on the AppleTV. Amazon is the one that has been playing hard ball, removing other streaming devices from their store and not releasing a video app (just like they have on iOS) for AppleTV.
edit: I should add that I believe the reason Amazon isn't releasing on AppleTV is that Apple won't allow people to subscribe for Prime via the App without requiring their 30% cut. All the other streaming services (and there are dozens if not hundreds) on AppleTV require users to subscribe via means outside of the AppleTV app itself.
For what it's worth, PBS has an app[1] for Apple TV, and it has much of PBS' content.
With that said, the general problem of certain services being restricted from/to specific platforms is extremely frustrating, and will only get more painful as exclusives become common.
We're basically witnessing the unbundling of cable providers networks and rebundling of content on different platforms and companies. Two steps forward, one step back.
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Oh goody.
So now instead of being able to use Netflix via Apple TV to watch her favorite PBS show my 5 year old is going to have to figure out how to bring up Amazon Prime through the shitty Samsung TV interface.
Or better yet maybe I'll have to buy another device that will be obsolete in a year.
This Amazon / Apple bs war of not supporting eachother's devices has got to stop, it sets a terrible precedence which seem to be aimed at protecting the devices which are so incredibly commoditized!
Apple - please just let us have an Amazon app on Apple TV. Is it such a protective move when I can just airplay prime from an iphone / ipad / macbook to apple tv?