Creator / Prime Video

(aka: Amazon Prime)

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Prime Video ^note (formerly Amazon Unbox, Amazon Video on Demand, Amazon Instant Video, and Amazon Video) is the video on-demand service owned and operated by Amazon, featuring original programming produced by sister company Amazon MGM Studios, as well as third-party acquisitions.

Launched in 2006, Prime Video is essentially a competitor to similar subscription video streaming services Netflix and Hulu, but it also doubles as a storefront for buying and renting content, placing it as a competitor to the likes of iTunes as well. Prime Video was originally only available as a perk for Amazon Prime customers, but it became an independent service with its own subscription plan in 2016.

In conjunction with Amazon Studios, Prime Video was one of the first streaming services to begin producing their own original content, with Alpha House and Betas premiering in April 2013. Whereas Netflix produced and released seasons of their episodic programming without outside influence, however, Prime Video implemented a "pilot season" model of developing theirs. After premiering a set of pilots on the service, they allowed customers to vote on which ones they'd like to see continued to series. This process lasted for five years; as of 2018, successful pilots are now ordered straight-to-series. Woody Allen's Crisis in Six Scenes was an early beneficiary of the new model. Amazon has also picked up third-party series from cancelation, with the BBC's Ripper Street and Syfy's The Expanse getting second life on Prime.

Critical and popular response towards Prime Video's shows have generally been mixed, at least in comparison to those produced for (and released by) Netflix, though there have been some standouts. Transparent made history when it became the first show from an online streaming distribution service to win awards from major industry organizations, earning the Golden Globe for Best Musical or Comedy Series, and Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for Jeffrey Tambor, who would go on to win an Emmy for his performance as well. The Boys is also a notable mainstream success, while The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and BBC co-production Fleabag have each won Outstanding Comedy Series at the Emmys. On the children's programming side, Prime tends to fare well.

The Prime Video platform also incorporates Amazon's ad-supported streaming service IMDb TV, which is also freely available on the IMDb website. The service competes with other ad-based streamers such as Tubi, Peacock and Crackle. In 2020, IMDb TV began distributing some originals of its own, including the US distribution of Alex Rider (2020)^note a Prime Video original in its native UK and Ireland. In 2022, the service was renamed to Amazon Freevee.

It should be noted that, like Netflix and Hulu, international availability for Prime Video has varied by territory. Needless to say, many folks from outside these regions were not pleased, especially when it comes to being blocked out of award winners like Creative Galaxy and Transparent. ^note (In Canada, Transparent and a few other Amazon series were available on Rogers and Shaw's streaming platform Shomi, before the site was shut down on November 30, 2016. Meanwhile, Gortimer Gibbon's Life on Normal Street aired on Family Channel.) Though Prime Video officially expanded worldwide in 2016, some areas have a wider catalog of content of others, which Amazon compensates for with reduced subscription costs for them. Global subscribers also need to use a different URL to access the content as opposed to those in countries where the service was launched earlier. The service isn't available on as many devices as the standard service is either: it appears to be a placeholder while Amazon is behind Netflix in global expansion.

See their logo here.

Prime Video Originals

International distribution

Tropes related to Prime Video:

• Audience Shift: Throughout the 2010s, Amazon Prime Video mainly offered kids shows while sometimes having adult cartoons. When it was seen that adults are usually the ones that are more involved with buying from Amazon, their animated programming skewed more towards an adult audience while kids programming was downplayed.
• Bad Export for You: While it's better than No Export for You, content for the global site often takes longer to appear (shows usually appear almost immediately after premier in the US in countries with a dedicated Prime site, while for the global site content can take up to half a year to appear), if at all. Notably, shows like Bookaboo and Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood are only available to countries with a dedicated Prime site, countries stuck with the global site are SOL.
• Friendly Enemy: While both Amazon and Netflix have competing streaming services (Amazon Prime vs Netflix), and both are heavy-hitters in distributing original content, and are always going to be in an endless war for bidding for films and TV Shows (comes with the territory), they don't exactly hate each other outside of being business rivals. Netflix (except for content delivery, which is housed in Netflix-maintained boxes throughout Internet backbone providers) uses all data center operations for the streaming service on Amazon's cloud services, which is rather amusing. Legally speaking, Amazon can't turn Netflix away for wanting to use their data servers, as that would be seen as an anti-competitive practice. Only the DVD rental business still uses a physical data center. And to top it off, Amazon Studios went worldwide 11 months later, which many saw as a bid to play catch up with Netflix.