Jump to content

Menu

Amazon Prime movies...not so free for prime members??


ProudGrandma
 Share

Recommended Posts

What am I missing?  Everytime I go to look for a movie on Amazon Prime to stream....they want to charge me to rent or buy it...I thought there were supposed to be so many movies for prime members to watch for free....what am I missing?

And now Hulu also has all sorts of movies....but only if you want to pay $22 a month....well...I don't want to pay $22 a month....and Netflix doesn't seem to be much better....their movie selections are becoming worse and worse too...or so it seems.

Some of the titles I was looking for are: Remember the Titans, Money Ball, McFarlan, USA, Akeelah and the Bee, Saving Mr Banks and the Odd Life of Timothy Green.  But there are others too...and I just can't seem to find them anywhere.

Is there something I just don't know...

Thanks for sharing your insight. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

amazon has rotating movies, so their selection changes.  some are free for prime members, and others are "rented".   I agree netflix seems to have a mediocre selection of movies, and they seem to be focusing more on their own original content.  (i'm waiting for the new season of the crown.)

and while cable is supposed to have all these "on demand" movies, many of them have a rental fee.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The included movies have a “prime” banner. It usually does not include new releases or popular Disney movies. Sometimes a movie will only be free for a month or two. MacFarlane and Akeelah have been free in the recent past on one of those streaming services. 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm finding that Netflix has better selections for movies lately, but like others are saying, it's rotating. If you go to Amazon Prime streaming, it'll show you everything they have - both the free and the paid stuff. If you want it to be just the prime content, you can have it sort it that way - select it at the top. And you can always see the little banner in  the corner. If the image of the movie says "Prime" in the corner, then it's free for Prime members.

Both Netflix and Prime are really focused on TV over movies in general right now. The movies are rotating, but the TV they keep and want you to binge. I think they're assuming that most people only watch movies every so often and that they're willing to rent them sometimes.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

When you search on amazon, you can click to narrow to prime only movies. If you have a device (fire tv, app, whatever) you can usually go to a spot that only shows prime movies.

If you're wanting first run, brand new movies, no. Yes they rotate. We watch TONS on prime, totally free and seldom if ever pay to rent anything. But we must have really bad taste, lol. Right now ds is watching the Asterix series. 

Remember you can also do music with prime. Again, I must have really bad taste, because anything I am looking for is on there, lol.

For prime, your older tv series will be on there. With movies, it just varies. I usually just go in and look around a while. Add to your watchlist and then it will be there. Monk is on prime, so my dh has been watching that. Young Dracula (like I said, I have bad taste) is/was on there. The movies rotate, so I just snoop. You can filter by rating and then what is prime.

So I just played with it. From my amazon home page I can go over to the right where the account info, orders, etc. pull-downs are and select prime and then "watch". That takes me to https://www.amazon.com/b/?node=2676882011&ref=dvm_us_eg_cs_pin_be_modaLapse2_middle_cta&ms3_c=685de19f728c6cd75151a2d574ed4e2d  which is ALL PRIME

Edited by PeterPan
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hoopla is a digital streaming platform that libraries provide access to - through an app. (You log in with your library card) Like Overdrive but Hoopla is more focused onTV, movies and music, sometimes audio books whereas Overdrive is mostly digital books and audiobooks. Contact your local library and ask them if there are any apps they use/support for digital media. 

Our library supports:

Overdrive

Hoopla

Freading 

Biblioboard 

Freegal

Gale Reference 

Kanopy

Tumblebooks

RbDigital /oneclick

Plus things like Mango languages. 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not much of a movie or tv watcher but dh and the kids are. We have Prime for the free shipping because we have to order so much living in the middle of nowhere, the Prime streaming is just a perk. We love most of the young kids programming on Prime and we have additional subscriptions to Noggin and PBS kids through Amazon streaming. All of it is totally worth it for us but we don't have any other TV service where we live, just what we can stream online. 

We have Netflix because it is free with dh's phone service but he is the one who watches the most on Netflix. At the moment he is watching Youtube how-to videos which is another service we use a lot. He was watching a documentary a little bit ago, not sure if it was on Netflix or Youtube.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Netflix and Amazon Prime seem to be less disappointing if you're just sort of open to what happens to be available at the moment. We have access to Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Hoopla, and Kanopy, and if I decide, "Oh, hey, I'd like to watch XYZ movie right now," I'm often unable to find it available.  Honestly, lately I've had better luck checking the library catalog for specific titles and checking them out as DVDs (I tend to be looking for stuff that's a little less mainstream, though, so there's usually not a bunch of holds on them -- things like The Rider and Death of Stalin are just sitting there on the shelves ready to give me relatively instant gratification).

On the other hand, if I just randomly browse through streaming services I often come up with something interesting.  Tonight we watched The Tuskegee Airmen, which we had never seen before -- we really enjoyed it.  There were a couple of other choices, too, that sounded interesting, although I wasn't thinking of them when I started looking ... okay, honestly, I'd never heard of them, but now I'd be interested in watching them sometime.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...