Back in March, Amazon Studios announced that it had ordered six comedy series pilots to debut on Amazon Instant Video, further proof that the current television model is desperate for disruption. Today those pilots are finally available, released into the hands of viewers here in the US and the UK.

Based on user feedback, Amazon will decide which of the pilots will be ordered for a full season available exclusively on Amazon’s Prime Instant Video network in the US and LoveFilm in the UK. In fact, Amazon surprised with two extra comedy pilots, as well as the simultaneous launch of six children’s series pilots which were ordered back in January.

While competitors like Netflix and Hulu are working on their own exclusive content offerings, Amazon has taken a different route. Hulu has been offering exclusive content for more than two years with a broad range of different offerings, whereas Netflix has gone big with one drama, House of Cards, delivered binge-style with a full season available at once.

Amazon, on the other hand, has decided to leave the power in the hands of consumers. User feedback will determine which of the total 14 pilots will become a real-life TV show based on ratings and reviews. Amazon will also monitor a number of other metrics like chatter on social media, focus group responses, and the general voice (or lack thereof) of the internet.

There are no hard and fast rules about how many series will be built into full seasons — it all depends on user feedback.

At first thought, I had some pretty serious reservations about this pilot-first, season-later ploy from Amazon. For one, it’s tough to fall in love with a show after 28 minutes, and only 28 minutes. And let’s say you do fall in love with Tallahassee, just a young guy in love in the middle of Zombieland, or the three charming young high school teachers in Those Who Can’t. How, then, do you stay interested while Amazon takes these shows back to the drawing board for full season production and development.

Yet, after speaking with the company about the reasons behind the decision (and seeing the content myself), it actually makes sense.

“To pick just one show would mean that we’re rejecting many other shows,” said Roy Price, Director of Amazon Studios. “We’re doing it this way presumably because we don’t believe in the guru model of television where we should just make decisions using our great wisdom. When you have the internet as a platform for your service, the right way to do this is to give people a sample and see what they like.”

As it stands now, a very small group of old rich people are the ones deciding which scripts become the shows we watch on Primetime and beyond. But what do they know? They might see me on the streets, but homie, they don’t know me. That’s why Amazon Studios deliberately wanted to do multiple series pilots at once, to offer a breadth of potential content to its users.

If you’re interested in checking out Amazon’s new comedy and children’s series, head on over to Amazon Instant in the U.S. or LOVEfilm in the UK and grab a bowl of popcorn. And be sure to tell Amazon what you think, lest you find yourself five months down the road wondering what became of your favorite characters.

We’ll be hitting you with a full review of the comedy pilots a little later in the day, but for now you can head on over to Amazon Instant to check them out yourself.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

At the end of last year, Netflix suffered a prolonged outage because Amazon’s cloud services, which Netflix uses to host most of its infrastructure, went down. At the time, Amazon’s own video services continued to function without any issues. Last night, it was Amazon’s turn own to suffer from a multi-hour outage. According to a number of tips we received, as well as a number of reports on Twitter and other social networks, Amazon’s Instant Video service and Prime Instant Video went down sometime in the late afternoon yesterday and remained offline for a large part of the evening.

So far, Amazon hasn’t publicly acknowledge last night’s outage and its @amazonvideo account has remained silent since the first reports came in. Amazon Web Services, which powers Amazon’s Video Services, continued to work without issues last night.

One of our readers provided us with a boilerplate email he received from Amazon last night after he complained about the outage:

Hello,

We’re sorry for the trouble you had while trying to connect to Amazon Instant Video. If you try again, you should be able to connect without encountering further problems.

We look forward to seeing you again soon.

We have contacted Amazon for more details about this outage and will update this post once we hear back from them.

Hey @AmazonVideo maybe mention VOD is down right now. It's nice when the marketing tweets come with useful info between them.—
Ry4an Brase (@Ry4an) March 30, 2013

Seriously, I get emails from @amazon every day, you'd think they could use one of those to let us know why @AmazonVideo is down.—
Aaron Gardner (@Aaron_RS) March 30, 2013

@amazonvideo #fail. A little notice of when you're going to do maintenance would be nice. I expect a credit, or will cancel Amazon Prime.—

Amazon just announced that it is adding its X-Ray feature to TV shows. The feature already worked with movies thanks to data from IMDb, but the company will now use this very same data for other video content. The entire Kindle Fire family will receive the feature and the Amazon Instant Video app on Wii U will get is as well.

As a reminder, X-Ray allows you to discover more about the content you are reading or watching. It first appeared with books — it shows you the different characters, where they appear in the book and how they are related to the story. Then Amazon added X-Ray to movies back in September 2012. In that case, watchers can instantly know the name of an actor in a scene. IMDb is owned by Amazon, allowing the Kindle team to tap into a very comprehensive movie database. As IMDb provides data for TV shows as well, adding TV shows to X-Ray was just a matter of time.

The idea is to make the video experience unique on Amazon’s devices, making people want to buy those tablets or download those Amazon apps and stay in the Amazon ecosystem. It’s been known that Amazon doesn’t make much profit from selling hardware. Instead, it wants people to use the Kindle Fire tablets to buy content.

Of course, the X-Ray feature only works with videos you buy or rent from Amazon Instant Video or videos from the Amazon Prime collection. X-Ray could be one of those little features that make you choose to watch a movie or TV show on Amazon over Netflix or iTunes.

In addition to providing the X-Ray feature to Kindle Fire users, the feature will make its way to Amazon Instant Video’s Wii U app. This fact shows that what matters for Amazon is that people consume content from Amazon, even if it’s not on an Amazon-branded device. X-Ray for movies and TV shows may eventually come to Android and iOS as X-Ray for books is already available in many Kindle apps.

X-Ray is more important than you may think at first. If the experience is not compelling enough, customers will neglect their tablets and Amazon won’t make any money from those users. That’s why Amazon cut the price of the Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ as well from $299 to $269 for the base model. It’s still the best way to tap into Amazon’s ecosystem. Amazon now wants to get the best tablet they can make in everyone’s hand so that people can start reading and watching content — Amazon’s content.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Amazon is again announcing an expansion to its Amazon Instant Video lineup, with today’s addition of back catalog content from Scripps Networks, home to HGTV, DIY Network, Food Network, Cooking Channel and Travel Channel. The deal involves “hundreds” of episodes of past seasons, and is notable for being the first online-only distribution agreement Scripps has signed to date, according to Amazon’s announcement.

That statement could be misunderstood to imply that this is the first time Scripps Networks has licensed its content for streaming, and that’s not the case. The company already has an agreement in place with Hulu, where you can find episodes from several of its most popular shows now. It also distributes video (in some cases, just clips) to YouTube, AT&T’s U-verse, and last summer it stuck a deal with Comcast, as well. We’ve asked Amazon to clarify what it means by noting this is an “online-only” deal, since it could mean that Scripps Networks TV shows won’t be available in Amazon Instant Video on mobile. We’ll update when we hear back.

Update – Amazon explains what it means by that, saying that while up until this point these shows have been available for streaming a la carte, such as with Hulu’s free service, but haven’t yet been packaged within a subscription service, like Prime Instant Video. The company says it did not mean to imply by saying “online only” that the streams would not be available on mobile; they will.

In addition to being able to stream these new shows starting today, many will also be available for purchase and download, Amazon says.

Scripps Networks owns channels that primarily pump out low-cost reality programming, but have produced some small-scale hits which include things like Rachael Ray’s Week in a Day; Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations; Cupcake Wars; Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives; House Hunters and House Hunters International; Iron Chef America; Man v. Food; Selling New York and Selling LA; Throwdown With Bobby Flay; Chopped; Ghost Adventures; and Yard Crashers.

“One of the guiding principles at Scripps Networks Interactive is to make our valued lifestyle content accessible to consumers wherever and whenever they want,” said Henry Ahn, Executive Vice President of Content Distribution and Marketing for Scripps Networks Interactive in a release. “Licensing content from our extensive library to Amazon provides our millions of avid fans with yet another opportunity to engage with our entertaining and informative content. And the Amazon platform is a great complement to our branded products such as books, cookware, furniture and accessories, lighting and more.”

This may not be the only deal Scripps Networks has in store. During its Q4 2012 earnings call, CEO Kenneth Lowe responded when asked if the company was talking to Netflix and Amazon: “we are, in fact, talking with everybody and being judicious about it.”

“We’re weighing, frankly, as we have been, all along the upside of the incremental revenue against any downside it might create in terms of ratings competition for the incumbent business model, if you will,” Lowe said at the time. “But I’m confident that we’ll have some announcements coming in the next few months as to some of those distribution deals as the discussions have advanced very well.”

Amazon has been very, very quickly ramping up on its content and distribution deals for Amazon Instant Video. This year alone, it has signed new agreements with CBS, won the exclusive subscription streaming rights to PBS’s “Downtown Abbey,” and signed a deal with A&E Networks. In late 2012, the company added ESPN content, EPIX, Turner and Warner Bros.

Today, the company says it offers over 150,000 titles for rent or purchase, and its streaming subscription service has grown to over 38,000 movies and TV episodes. That’s up from 145,000 titles for rent or purchase and 33,000 titles in mid-January, to give you an idea.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Amazon today announced that its membership program Amazon Prime is now available in Canada, offering customers free two-day shipping for an annual fee of CAD $79.00 and one-day shipping at $3.99 per item. Amazon Instant Video and Kindle e-book lending, which are both major benefits to the U.S. version of the service, are not being included with the deal, despite similar pricing. In the U.S., it’s $79 USD per year, which makes Canada’s pricing on par with the U.S. version, given the current exchange rate.

Rural areas will only have access to free standard shipping, Amazon also notes. No minimum purchases are required, and a one-month trial of the service is available.

Amazon says that residents in Quebec aren’t eligible for the free trial, however, but those who sign up for a 13-month membership can get the first month for free. So essentially, it’s the same deal, just structured in a different way. Quebec users will also not have their memberships renewed automatically, but will instead need to log into their account settings to choose whether to sign up again.

Free and discounted shipping will be available on millions of items on the Amazon.ca website, including electronics, baby, kitchen, books, movies, music, watches, sporting goods, tools, and more.

Amazon told Canadian press that there are no plans to include Kindle e-book lending or Amazon Prime video in the Canadian version of Amazon Prime at this point. The company recently opened a second fulfillment center in Delta, B.C., south of Vancouver, this fall, the report also notes.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Amazon Studios, the online retailer’s department responsible for sourcing scripts and developing original video content, today announced the development of six original comedy series pilots. When production is completed, the series will air on Amazon’s Instant Video platform, which delivers video content like TV and movies to users’ set top boxes, phones, tablets, and computers.

Perhaps the best part of the news is that Amazon will be bringing us a show from The Onion satirical newspaper titled “The Onion Presents: The News.”

The six pilots (listed below) will be aired on Amazon Instant Video once they’re finished. Based on consumer feedback, Amazon will then decide which series to move forward with and continue producing.

After that, completed seasons will only be available to Prime members via Prime Instant Video and through LOVEFiLM for free in the UK.

Here’s what Roy Price, Director of Amazon Studios, had to say about it:

Since launching our original series development effort, we have received more than 2,000 series ideas from creators around the world with all different backgrounds, and we are extremely excited to begin production on our very first set of pilots. The six comedy pilots will begin production shortly, and once they are complete, we plan to post the pilots on Amazon Instant Video for feedback. We want Amazon customers to help us decide which original series we should produce.

This is just the natural next step in the war between library streaming services. In return for loyal viewership on Netflix, Arrested Development is coming back with new episodes directly on Netflix. Amazon’s original content, which includes crowdsourcing original content through funding programs.

Here is a list of pilots to look forward to on Amazon:

Alpha House – Alpha House was written by Academy Award nominee and Pulitzer-Prize winner Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury, Tanner ’88). Alpha House follows four senators who live together in a rented house in Washington DC.

Browsers – Written by 12-time Emmy-winning comedy writer David Javerbaum (The Daily Show) and to be directed by Don Scardino (30 Rock), Browsers is a musical comedy set in contemporary Manhattan that follows four young people as they start their first jobs at a news website.

Dark Minions – Written by Big Bang Theory co-stars Kevin Sussman and John Ross Bowie, Dark Minions is an animated workplace series about two slackers just trying to make a paycheck working an intergalactic warship. The pilot will be produced by Principato-Young (Reno 911).

The Onion Presents: The News – The Onion Presents: The News is a smart, fast-paced scripted comedy set behind the scenes of The Onion News Network that shows just how far journalists will go to stay at the top of their game. The Onion Presents: The News is from The Onion’s Will Graham & Dan Mirk (The Onion News Network, The Onion Sportsdome).

Supanatural – Supanatural is an animated comedy series about two outspoken divas who are humanity’s last line of defense against the supernatural, when they’re not working at the mall. The series, written by Lily Sparks, Price Peterson and Ryan Sandoval, will be produced by Jason Micallef (Butter) and Kristen Schaal (The Daily Show).

Those Who Can’t – Written by Andrew Orvedahl, Adam Cayton-Holland and Benjamin Roy (Grawlix), who were discovered through Amazon Studios online open door process, Those Who Can’t is a comedy about three juvenile, misfit teachers who are just as immature, if not more so, than the students they teach.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Amazon has announced a number of new platform expansions for its streaming media services today, including Cloud Player apps for Samsung Smart TVs and Roku set top boxes, as well as dedicated Amazon Instant Video apps for iPhone and iPod touch. The move indicates a strong push to get streaming media content on as many platforms as possible, which is the right move for a company now competing with giants like Apple and Google mostly on the strength of its media ecosystem.

The iPhone and iPod touch apps are a small screen update for the iPad app Amazon previously offered, delivering access to its library of Instant Video content, which includes over 140,000 titles. It’s a free download, and it means Amazon now covers the range of Apple mobile devices, at least in regions where Instant Video is available to Amazon shoppers. The Roku and Samsung Smart TV offerings provide access to music stored on Amazon’s Cloud Player, which can include both tracks purchased from Amazon’s own music store, and tracks matched or uploaded from a user’s own locally stored collection. Cloud Player was previously available on a variety of platforms, including Sonos Music Players, Mac, PC, Kindle Fire and Android.

Amazon is clearly serious about extending its platform reach, at least in terms of hardware partners and platforms. These apps will serve to add considerably to its potential mobile and at-home audience, reaching the iPhone and iPod touch’s combined worldwide user base which is likely well north of 50 million people at this point, taking into account sales to date and the likelihood that some, or even many of those users may have since moved on to different devices. Samsung Smart TVs and Roku also likely represent a significant combined audience, though I haven’t seen updated sales figures from Roku since mentioning 2.5 million devices sold at the end of 2011. Samsung announced 1.15 million HDTV sales in October alone, but it didn’t provide a breakdown of how many of those were “smart.”

Apple recently made a significant expansion of its own media system, albeit by a different route: the Mac maker opened iTunes stores in 56 new countries around the world in early December, and just this week rolled out new movie rental and purchase options to the majority of those marketplaces. Apple is taking a global approach to reaching new audiences with its content ecosystem, but keeping device and hardware pretty much in the family (though iTunes is available on Windows, and iTunes music content is DRM-free and thus not tied to any specific player). Amazon, by contrast, seems to want to focus on a few core markets first, with the U.S. at center, and make its content and services available through as many devices and OEM partners as possible.

So which approach wins? Based strictly on providing access to the greatest percentage of the world’s population, Apple is far ahead. But that’s likely an oversimplification of the problem, since Amazon’s strategy offers users more choice in how they get that content, meaning users are more likely to be able to purchase and access it on the devices they already have or want to buy. Amazon is also using its blanket approach to target markets with higher average revenue per user, so trying to reach greater saturation by being platform agnostic could ultimately reap big rewards.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Have a Roku streaming device? Cool. Now have a movie or TV show you want to watch, but don’t know whether it’s on Netflix, or Amazon, or Hulu? Well, I’ve got good news for you, as Roku has just launched a universal search feature, which will help you discover content available across some of the more popular video services available on its streaming set-top boxes.

The availability of a new, universal search option will help to solve a major problem that exists not just on Roku, but on most devices capable of streaming video from multiple channels or apps. That is, when faced with hundreds of thousands of pieces of content across multiple services, it’s nearly impossible to know where to find a single piece of content. And in the case of Roku in particular, going into one channel to search for a piece of content — only to not find it — can be a frustrating experience, thanks to the overall side-scrolling UI and lack of a keyboard on its remote.

Other streaming devices have solved for the search issue in a few different ways. In the case of the iPad, there are now universal search and discovery apps, like Fanhattan or Dijit’s NextGuide, which collapse multiple streaming services into one easy-to-navigate interface. And with the availability of new video services, Microsoft recently rolled out a universal search function for its Xbox Live service.

In Roku’s case, the new Roku Search channel will peer into some of the most popular apps available on the device, including Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, Crackle, VUDU, and HBO GO. In addition to searching for a movie or TV show title, users can also search for available titles that include specific actors or directors. Once you’ve found a title you’re looking for, you can see which services a piece of content is available on and choose between them.

I played around with the new Roku Search feature and found it a welcome change to the old way of finding anything on the Roku device — i.e. endlessly poking around. But, to be honest, it’s still pretty clunky due to the general Roku UI and the way you have to scroll through and click letters to search on the screen.

Roku says that there are more than 130,000 titles searchable through the new channel, as well as nearly 100,000 actors and directors. Roku Search will work with all Roku 2, Roku LT, and new Roku HD players, as well as the Roku Streaming Stick. And users of the Roku iOS and Android mobile apps will be able to access the keyboard through those apps, eliminating some of the up-down-left-right issues scrolling through letters on the device.

Roku Search became available as part of a free update that the company will push to users over the next week. Or, if you’re impatient, just go to Settings, choose “Software Update,” and the streaming box should update to the latest version and install Roku Search via channel code.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The Gillmor Gang: John Borthwick, Danny Sullivan, Doc Searls, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — struggled with Comcastic bandwidth and hours on hold as Twitter and Apple tweaked their business models. It seems that Twitter is refurbishing the accomodations within 140 characters to create a nice new home for Twitter apps, in the process giving the Flipboard to aggregators outside the mother ship.

Apple, on the other hand, is opening Apple TV and the iPad to Hulu Plus and Amazon Instant Video respectively. @dannysullivan thinks it’s bad news for Roku fans, and Doc, who’s now working on Rupert Murdoch’s boat, is busy stealing content from his own bad self over transcontinental Slingbox. It’s TV Everywhere, except here.

@stevegillmor, @dsearls, @borthwick, @dannysullivan, @kevinmarks

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Amazon Prime members who like to rock an iPad, not the Kindle Fire, now have access to Amazon’s ever-growing collection of movies and TV with today’s launch of the Amazon Instant Video app, which just popped up this morning in the App Store for iPad. As with the desktop and Kindle tablet version, the app allows users to watch videos for free, but only if they’re already a paying member of Amazon Prime ($79/year).

The app offers over 120,000 videos from the Amazon Instant Video library, but keep in mind that’s titles for purchase or rent. Last we checked in July, Amazon’s library only offered around 18,000 streaming titles due to its various tricky content deals with the major studios.

The app’s description in the app store doesn’t cite the number of streaming titles viewable in the app, only referring to the “thousands” available, so you can bet that the number hasn’t changed significantly since last month. It also makes sense for Amazon not to spell out the size of its Instant Video Collection (streaming collection), since the number is constantly in flux.

As with iTunes, Amazon’s service also offers a TV Season Pass subscription option, which includes the handy feature of having TV shows automatically downloaded to the iPad the day after they air. And, if you pause while watching a video, then later pick it up on another device (Kindle Fire, PS3, PC, Mac, or supported TV or Blu-ray player), it will continue playing where it left off.

The app is only being offered on the iPad at present, not iPhone or iPod. And it doesn’t stream to Apple TV at present. But that may only be a matter of time. After all, Apple only yesterday added Hulu Plus support to Apple TV, where it joined Netflix. Although Amazon is a fierce competitor, due to the fact that it also sells its own hardware (and may even be working on a phone!), it would raise eyebrows for Apple to selectively keep Amazon out while allowing Hulu and Netflix in.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch